When the ark would journey Moses said, “Arise Hashem, and let your enemies be scattered, let those who hate You, flee from before You”. And when it rested he would say, “Reside tranquilly, o Hashem, among the myriad thousands of Israel”. (Bamidbor 11:35-36)
The verses “vayehi bineso’a ho’oron” and “u’venucho yomar” are familiar to us from the Siddur. We open the ark to their familiar tunes. In the Chumash and the Torah itself, these two verses appear surrounded with inverted letter nuns. This unique manner of highlighting the verses, brackets them off, signifying that they constitute a separate book of the Torah (Talmud Bavli Shabbos 116a).
The Torah is, by definition, a book of mitzvos. What practical instruction do these two verses contain, to warrant their consideration as a book of the Torah in their own right?
A clue lies in the words “rivevos” (which means literally 2×10,000 = 20,000) and “alfey” (which means literally 2×1,000 = 2,000). From the verse “Reside tranquilly, o Hashem, among the rivevos alfey of Israel”, the Gemoro (Yevamos 64) derives that the Divine Presence only comes to the rest on the people of Israel if a minimum population level of 22,000 (20,000 + 2,000) children of Israel, is maintained.
Kli Yokor maintains, therefore, that these words contain an allusion to the need for the people of Israel to maintain a minimum threshold level of Jewish population. The first mitzvah of the Torah is to be fruitful and multiply (“Peru U’Revu”). Our two verses, enclosed by the inverted letter nun’s, allude to this most important command, and that is why such a small paragraph could be termed a ‘whole book of the Torah’ by itself.
Six decades after one third of our people perished in Hitler’s Holocaust, and at a time when millions more are being lost through assimilation and intermarriage, great leaders of our people have taught an important lesson in this regard, often leading by personal example. Their message is that there is a particular urgent application of the first mitzvah in Torah in our generation – the responsibility to build up the numbers of the Bney Yisrael, by marriage and raising a family.
Shabbat Shalom, Good Shabbos to all,
Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag