Yaakov Hibbert Presents… The Jewish People. A Story of Survival.

A number of years ago on Purim I saw a t-shirt bearing the picture presented here. It made a tremendous impression on me when I thought about the truth of it. The Jews who represent some 0.01% of world population seem to have constantly pulled through, leaving behind them this long list of ancient nations.

I was reminded of the words of Rabbi Yaakov Emden [1697-1776] who remarked that the survival of the Jewish nation through all that they had endured through hundreds of years of exile was a phenomenon that was a greater miracle than the Exodus from Egypt, the forty years He sustained us in the desert and the years we spent in our homeland – together. 

This week we embark on the fourth Book of the Chumash – ‘Bamidbar’, which literally translates as ‘in the desert’. For the next ten or so weeks, we read about the Jew’s ups and downs as they traverse the Sinai Desert for forty years. Besides for calling a whole book after the desert trek – it’s interesting to note the close ties that we have with the desert. We were born into a nation with the giving of the Torah in the desert. The Torah constantly stresses this point. What is so special about the desert that the Torah had to be given there? And that the Jewish Nation had to be born there?

Secondly why is it important with regard to the census which takes place in this week’s Parshah to know that it took place in the Sinai Desert?

As with any good Jewish answer we will start with another question! The Talmud relates how prior to the revelation on Mount Sinai, Hashem held the mountain over our heads like a barrel and said, “if you accept the Torah good, otherwise “sham” – there will be you graves”. Grammatically the wording is wrong: why does Hashem say, “there will be your graves” surely it should have said “poe” (rhyming with toe!) – “right here will be your graves”?

What we see though looking through thousands of years of Jewish history is that statistically we should have been long gone. Over 300 years ago King Louis XIV of France asked Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher, to give him proof of the supernatural. Pascal answered: “Why, the Jews, your Majesty ― the Jews.” An astonishing answer. The best proof of the supernatural that Pascal could think of was: “The Jews.”

We don’t have to speculate what Pascal meant – he took the trouble to spell it out. Pascal said that the fact that the Jewish people survived until the 17th century ― to the time period when he was living ― was nothing short of a supernatural phenomenon. There simply was no logical explanation for it. Jewish history simply doesn’t comply with the rest of history; it does not make sense.

In 1935 Nikolai Berdyaev; a famous Russian philosopher (20th century) wrote about the Jews: “Its survival is a mysterious and wonderful phenomenon demonstrating that the life of this people is governed by special predetermination, transcending the process of adaptation… The survival of the Jews, their resistance to destruction, their endurance under absolute peculiar conditions and the fateful role played by them in history; all point to the particular and mysterious foundations of their destiny.

This is why the Torah was given in the desert. The desert is a place of desolation, a place where nothing survives. But precisely here Hashem nurtured us for the first forty years of our national existence. To teach us that we survive only because we are connected to Him and His Torah.

Furthermore before the census takes place in this week’s Parshah we are reminded that we are in the desert. When Jews take a census we do it in a seemingly strange way. We each donate half a shekel and then we add up the coins. Was this just some fundraising technique? The answer is that it is forbidden to count Jews; King David gets severely punished for doing so. So when there is a reason to count, we don’t count, rather we make each Jew do a Mitzvah and count the Mitzvahs!

The prohibition against counting Jews teaches us that Jews are not statistically viable! Hence this week’s census is done against the backdrop of a reminder that we are in the desert – not a natural place to survive!

Finally we now understand why had we not accepted the Torah then our deaths would have been ‘out there’. If we accept the Torah then we will be ok, but if not then the very fact that we do not have the connection to the Torah will be our death. Being out in the desert, being left to the natural causes will ensure our elimination.

With this I think we have an added dimension to the fact that Bamidbor is virtually always the Parshah that precedes Shavuos. The two share common ideas – accept the Torah – and survive miraculously.

The person who summed this up best was David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel. He said: “A Jew who does not believe in miracles is not a realist.” Why did he say that? Because miracles are the only possible explanation for the existence of the Jewish people.

Good Shabbos, Good Yom Tov, Yaakov