Parshath Shelach: Aydah

The calculation that a minyan consists of 10 men is attributed to parshat Shleach (megilla..., quited by Rashi....) . The word is Aydah. Ayin dalth hey. It is taken to refer to the 10 of 12 spies who slandered the land of Israel, thereby delaying by 40 years the entry into the Pormised LAnd.

There are several issues here:

1. The spies were not ordinary citizens, they were princes ()
   1. therefore, perhaps a minyan consists only of princes.
2. there is a slippage of the punushment
   1. it seesm that initialy only the Aydah itself was to be punished
   2. but ultimately the entire people is punished.
      1. perhaps even Moshe

The issue of the slippage is appealing in that a representative body, an aydah can bear the burden of the entire community and the entire community can be held reponsible for the actions of an Aydah ( under the appropriate circumstances).

The word is interesting.

One can immagine the misspelling that replaces the ayin (70) with the homonymic aleph (1). THat would make the gemmatria of aydah 10.

Better: Ayin takes on the meaning of the letter: the eye, to see. Each individual sees 4(daleth) and 5 (hey) people around him, the security in numbers that validates the comittee's statement. ( Not the commit in commitee)

Deeper: the Ayin and the daleth are a key pair. They are the large letters of Shema. They spell Ayd, witness.and they are the root of daath, knowledge ( or opinion or sex)