Bamidbar - 5th Portion

Join me as we learn kumish for Thursday parishes midbar chapter 3 verse4 continuing the dedication and census of the Levites. Yesterday we spoke about how God chose the Levites to be the ones to serve in the holy temple from amongst the rest of the Jewish people. They would be the ones to guard the holy temple as well as the kohhanim. Today we continue with the actual census and God spoke to Moshe in Sinai desert saying count make it take a tally of the Levite family according to their father's houses according to their families every male you're going to count me from a month old and over they will be counted while everybody else and the Israelites were counted from 20 years old and over by the Levites it was from 30 days and up from a month off because there's a rule that after 30 days a child is considered uh guaranteed to live. You know that on within the first 30 days they are considered a which is a like a miscarriage or not considered a viable child. Once the 30 days old then they are counted to be considered one of their future job that they are going to protect the holy temple. Said he were This tribe has already been accustomed that already from the time when they were right when they were born they already considered counted holy. When is this? Because from the moment when they came into Egypt who was born was number 70 of the count because if you count all the people that came into Egypt you'll find there's only 69. But the Torah says 70 people came. Who is the one that was number 70? Was because she was just born right when they came into Egypt. From here we see already that the Levites the moment they're born they're already being counted which is 30 days old. And over here we see that we count them from 30 days old as well. Verse 16 and Moshe counted them by the word of God like he was commanded. What does it mean by the word of God? 16 Moshe said before God, how is it appropriate for me to go and know to go into their tents? To know how many little children are there? It's not appropriate. It's not modest. You don't know what's happening in their tents. God said, "You do what you have to do and I'll do what I got to do." He stood by the entrance of each one of these tents. And the divine presence would announce before him. When he would approach the tent, the divine presence and a special voice of God would come out and say, "This is the amount of children that are in this tent." And therefore, the Torah uses a terminology on the word of God. Meaning that Moshe himself didn't count. It was announced how many people were in there. Verse 17, these are the children of Lem by their names. Verse 18, these are the children of Gian according to their families. Verse 19, the children of according to their families. 20. These are the families of the ley according to their according to their father's homes, father's houses. Verse 21. Now the Torah tells us is going to tell us the tally the numbers for each one of these families for the family of the Gianni. You have the Livy family, the Shimmy family. These are the Gershuni families. Why does the Rashi over here? Why does he have to tell us again the family of the meaning to say for that included the families of Livy and Shim and their account so on. So therefore, the Torah continues to count each one of the families and tells us what the families were, who the families they came from, and their tally of all the entire family. Their count, their tally according to the count of every male from a month old their total count was 7,500 23. The family of Gishon, where did they camp in the behind the tamarangle? To the west. 24. When the base of the Guni, the leader of the family of Guni was also verse 25ish. What was their job? Each one as we mentioned before that every family of the of the Levites had jobs and places where they were placed when they're traveling. So the job of the Gish family was mu was with the tent of meeting. Their job was withishkan, the actual tabernacle, the covering and the um the the covers and the screen of the entrance before the tent of meeting. So before the tabernacle. So they had the tabernacle, the middle of the tabernacle which were the goat skins and all the coverings and so on. And then they also had to take care of the covers as well. 20 Rashi Hamishk the Mishk we refer over here which is the covers the roof on the bottom the tent over it which is the second cover which as we explained in the book of Exodus the gag which were made in a roof and then the top cover which that was the takkin and the ramskin as we mentioned there were three layers that were the roof of the mishkan the bottom layer that you saw inside the tabernacle is called kamishkan and that was the that was the the uh the lower curtains which was made of the twine, the six different materials. Then you had the one on top of that which was the goat skin and the one on top of that which was the takin. So you the one that you saw on the inside is called the mishkun. The one that you saw on the outside was the oh and the one that was called on layered on top is called that's the entrance door. the door and that that let you in the screen on the front as well as their job was taking care of the nettings of the courtyard and the screen that let you in the entrance of the courtyard which was by the tabern that enclosed the tabernacle and enclosed the altar as well around its pegs and all the work that was involved with it. Verse 26. What kind of pegs? The ones that were holding down the tent and the tabernacle, but not the pegs of the courtyard ones which that was given to the people of Mari. So this is only the pegs that were holding the actual tabernacle, not the courtyards tabernacle, not the not the courtyard screen pillars. Verse 27. Now we've finished discussing the Gisham family. We move on to the next family. The family that Moshe was from as well. And for the family of you, you had the family and family and family. This is the clan. This is where the people in charge were the this being all the families of verse 28. The account of every male that was a month old from a month old, the amount totaled 8,600 8,600. These people were the keepers of the of the sanctuary itself, the holy part of the sanctuary. Verse 29, where did the family of Kahass stay? Where was they? Where were they camped? They were on the south side of the tabernacle. was right next to them was on the south as well was the tribe of Ruv. As the Talmud tells us, woe to a evil person and woe to his neighbor. That means the impact of the neighbors have an effect on the people around them. That's why you're going to notice later on when we come to the story of Korak. Who did the tribe of you have from some of the family of Korak from the family of Korak took along with them the people of Ruven and 250 people together with Korak and his people that joined along Korak in his coup in his tried coup against Moshe. That was because he was from Kahus. They were on the south. They were next to the Reuven people. They influenced them. neighbors have an impact on the people next to them. Verse 30. And the leader of the family of family was 31. Their jobs were what they were in charge of was the ark, the table, the misb, the altars, all the holy vessels that was used in the holy temple and the curtain that was in front of the holy temple and all the work that was involved. This was the curtain that would partition for the holy from the holy of holies. 31. There were two curtains. There was two entrances. We mentioned before the curtain, the screen that was in the front of the actual tabernacle that was for the Gishian family. This was the screen that separated the partition between the holy and the holy of holies. This was by the kahus family. Verse 32. And the leader that presided over all the Levites was the leader of all the leaders was he was the son of Aaron. His appointment was to keep everything in the in the everything in the sanctuary and everything that was holy. He was responsible for verse 33. We now go to the Mrari family. What was Allah's unique task? He was responsible for everybody. And therefore, the Torah goes on to explain what was he in charge of? How was he a leader? Meaning, because of him, all the holy things that happened underneath with all the other Levite families all were under the oposes of Alazer of Alazar. Verse 30. Um verse 33ari the Marari family of the familyari these were the families of the tally of all the firstborn from one month and up was 6,200 the leader of the family of they were camped on the north side of the tabernacle the job that the people of Mrari had. The family of Maruri was Mishkan. They would carry first of all the boards of the Mishkan the planks as well as the bars and the pillars and the sockets and all its vessels and utensils and the work that was involved with it. Verse 37 and the pillars around the courtyard as well and their sockets and their um and their hooks and their ropes that were used to keep them in place. 38 the people camping in the front of the tabernacle. So now you have the north, south and west were the three families whom were the ones right in front of the tabernacle in front of the Mishka to the east was in front of the tent of meeting to its east was Mosha and his sons. They were responsible for they were had to protect and watch. They were the keepers in charge of the sanctuary to trust for the Jewish people. And therefore they were responsible to make sure that no outsider who approached and anyone who would try to approach was then to be put to death by an act of God. They were the ones that were on the east in the front of the tabernacle and they were right next to the banner of Yehuda which were on the east as well and the people with Yehuda which was and like we said previously to the south you had and the family of we said woe to the neighbor woe to the wicked wo to the neighbor. Over here we say just the opposite good to the and good to his neighbors. If you have good neighbors, it has an impact and an effect of the people around him because the neighbors of Moshe, they were people who were studious and studied Torah, which was and so on. So being that Moshe himself studied Torah that had an impact on his neighbors which were as we see later on in it says they were from the ones that made the laws and the people of Yaka were the ones who knew meaning they were the ones who sat in the Sanhedrin they were able to articulate and know exactly to figure out the times of the moon as well and when to make a leap year. And you had Sanhedr there were 200 of the leaders of the Sanhedrin were from the tribe of so and from Zulim were the scribes and the great scholars as well. So you see that Mosha's impact had on the people next to him which was Yehuda the ones that make the laws the Sanhedrin and Zulen the scribes. Verse 39. All the counting, all the tallies that were made of the Levites according to their families by Moshe and Aaron by the word of God according to their families every male from a month old and upim was 22,03 22,000 or 22,000 Rashi If you look in the Torah, the word hasn't it dots on it. Why is there dots on top of and this is also in the actual Torah scroll. You'll see little dots on the word. There's a there are dots on top of the word to tell us something to teach us that though they counted the Levites the only person that was not counted amongst the Levites was Aaron himself 22,000 the interesting thing is that if you do the detail if you do the counting you have Gersh was 7500 then you have Amuter the cost family was 86 600 and the Morari family is 6200. If you do the math, you'll come out to 22,300. So why does the Torah tell us it's only 22,000? We're missing 300. You come out 300 extra. The Gish family was 7,500. 8,600 was 6,200. have 22,300. Why does the Torah not include the last 300 with the other 2,000? And this way that the Levites would be able to redeem all the firstborn. And then you have the other three the others um the other 275 extra they wouldn't need a separate redemption. The rabbis explained in the tracked of as follows those 300 Levites they themselves were firstborn and therefore and therefore they were redeemed on their own. What happens over here is as we're going to learn later on in the next verse in the next chapter in the next aliyah is that the Levites had to take the place of the firstborn. So therefore you had the exact tally of first firstborn versus uh Levites. What happens is there were 300 firstborn Levites. Those 300 firstborn Levites didn't have to redeem themselves because they were firstborn and they were already the job was already given to them as well. So therefore, when the Torah tells us the tally, it's 22,000 that had to be redeemed from the firstborn. And those 300 were remaining extra and they had they were already firstborn and they didn't have to be redeemed. This concludes the Torah reading for the fifth day for Thursday.