How Do You Measure a Year?

May 8, 2013 By Rabbi Abigail Treu | Commentary | Bemidbar | Shavuot

We are doing an awful lot of counting this week: we count the final days of the Omer, and, as our parashah begins, take the census of the Israelite community. What does all of this counting have to do with the ways in which we measure what really matters?

The Wilderness Speaks

May 22, 2015 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Bemidbar

The summer after graduating college, I went backpacking with a friend in North Cascades National Park in Washington. The sun shone brightly on Lake Chelan as we were ferried deep into the woods, landing at the little outpost of Stehekin to begin our weeklong trek. It was a euphoric beginning, but soon both the weather and my mood grew darker. 

Bemidbar

Jan 1, 1980

¹ The number of the people of Israel shall be like that of the sands of the sea, which cannot be measured or counted; and instead of being told, “You are Not-My-People,” they shall be called Children-of-the-Living-God.

Bemidbar

Jan 1, 1980

¹ On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt, the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, saying:

² Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head.