Bamidbar: Who counts

Bamidbar: Who counts

 

The Talmud refers to Bamidbar as "Sefer Pikudum."  This is probably the origin of the King James designation of the book as Number.   But Numbers doesn't capture Pikudim, remembered  ones ( And Gd POKAD Sarah).[Breshith 21:1]  Bamidbar  details the people who counted, who mattered.  They mattered because they left Egypt.  They mattered because they stood at Sinai.  They mattered because they contributed to the Mishkan.  They mattered because they entered the land ( this is a later counting).

 

The 600,000 number is eerie. In 1948, it approximated the Jewish population  of Palestine, and, of course it is 1/10 the number  of Jews killed in the  Holocaust ( may they count, too).