“What They Did Then, We Still Do Now”

 

D’var Torah for Parashat B’midbar¹

“What They Did Then, We Still Do Now”

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This week we begin Sefer B‘midbar, the Book of Numbers—named not for mathematics, but for the act of counting souls. The parshah opens with God instructing Moses to take a census of the Israelite men of military age. Each tribe is counted individually, by name, family, and house². We learn their numbers. We see their arrangement—how the tribes camp in a sacred formation around the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, at the center. The Levites are counted separately and assigned to care for the sanctuary.

At first glance, it seems like an administrative task: numbers, logistics, tribal roles. But B’midbar is doing something deeper.

The Israelites have just emerged from Egypt. They’re in the wilderness, not yet a nation in their own land. They’re disoriented, without allies, surrounded by foreign kingdoms. And before they can journey, before they can become, they must count themselves. They must see themselves.

Rashi famously says that God counts the people out of love—because they are precious³.
Bamidbar Rabbah compares it to a person counting their treasured possessions⁴.
To be counted is to be seen. It’s an act of care, yes—but also one of affirmation.

And it’s more than that: it’s survival. These former slaves are surrounded by threats, and the first step they take toward reclaiming agency is structure. They may have been destined to be a mamlechet kohanim, a kingdom of priests⁵—but at that moment, they were still a nation of slaves. They took the first step to becoming something more by self-organizing in the face of fear.

And I found myself telling my therapist this week: that’s what we’re still doing now.

We were talking about antisemitism—specifically the fire-bombing of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence. On Pesach. With the governor and his family inside. And I said: “What they were doing then, in the wilderness, is what we’re doing now.”

We are surrounded by threats. Not the Amalekites or Moabites this time—but other forces, equally real. Rising antisemitism. Harassment. Violence. Isolation.
And just like then, we’re responding—not by fading, but by counting. By organizing. By placing sacred space at the center, and aligning ourselves around it.

Back then, it was the Mishkan. Today, it’s our synagogues, our communities, our people. And we are taking responsibility for them.

We see it in CSS, the Community Security Service and the SCN, the Secure Community Network. In creating the Jewish caucus to advance our values in the political arena. In synagogues where greeters also know how to respond to threats. Not because we want to live in fear—but because we are reclaiming our agency. We are protecting the holy.
Just like the Israelites arrayed their camps around the Tabernacle like guards around a throne, we arrange ourselves around our sanctuaries—physically, emotionally, spiritually.

We may feel like we’re wandering in the wilderness again, but we are not helpless. We’ve been here before. And we know what to do.

And when tragedy strikes—when Jews are killed, when the world says, “There are no words”—we answer: Yes, there are words.

Dara Horn writes, in People Love Dead Jews, that the phrase “there are no words” is wrong. We have words. We’ve had them for thousands of years. She writes:

“…Jewish prayer is not primarily personal or spontaneous. It is communal reading: public recitations of ancient words, scripts compiled centuries ago and nearly identical in every synagogue in the world. A lot of those words are about exactly this.”⁶

We say:
המקום ינחם אתכם בתוך שאר אבלי ציון וירושלים (HaMakom yenaḥem etchem betokh she’ar avelei Tziyon viYerushalayim)
May the Omnipresent comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

We say the Mourner’s Kaddish. We gather. We prepare food. We tell stories. We make memory into liturgy. Our grief has structure, just like our survival.

B’midbar is a story of people preparing to move forward. And that’s what we’re still doing.
We may be surrounded, uncertain, and grieving—but we are not paralyzed.

We are counting.
We are organizing.
We are showing up.
We are naming each other.
We are protecting each other.
We are comforting each other.

What they did then, we still do now.

Because we are still here.

1. 1Bamidbar vs. Bemidbar vs B’midbar. See below Supplementary Note

2. 2B’midbar 1:2 — “Take a census of the whole Israelite community by their clans, by ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head.”

3. 3Rashi on Bamidbar 1:1 — "Because they were dear to Him, He counted them often."

4. 4Bamidbar Rabbah 2:11 — “Like a person who has a treasure of which he is exceedingly fond, he counts it and counts it again; so does the Holy One, blessed be He, count Israel all the time.”

5. 5Exodus 19:6 — “You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

6. 6Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews (W. W. Norton & Company, 2021), chapter on the Tree of Life massacre.

    

   Supplementary Note

   I initially titled this d’var “Bamidbar,” but Rabbi Solomon helpfully pointed out that the correct form is B’midbar (also written BeMidbar). The distinction lies in Hebrew grammar and the actual Masoretic vocalization.

   The opening words of the parashah include:

   בְּמִדְבַּר סִינַי
   "in the wilderness of Sinai"

   Here, the word בְּמִדְבַּר (B’midbar) begins with a sh’va under the bet (בְּ)—not a qamatz, and crucially, there is no definite article (“ה”) attached. This makes it unambiguously B’midbar, not BaMidbar.

   The confusion likely arises because the book of Numbers is often referred to colloquially as Bamidbar in English sources, perhaps out of convention or misreading. However, the Masoretic text—the vocalized, canonized version used for liturgical and scholarly purposes—makes it clear: the word is B’midbar.

   This is supported in all printed Tanakhim I could reference, in my Tikkun, and in standard Masoretic texts. Even Sefaria, which uses informal naming conventions for the name of the book, renders the opening of the parashah correctly with בְּמִדְבַּר.

   So while “Bamidbar” may appear on book covers and websites, the correct name of the parashah, and the word used in the Torah, is B’midbar.