If There Are 600,000 Letters in the Torah, Where Are the Leviim?

Hi, this is David Eliavsky with our question and answer series. In Bamidbar, it says there are 600,000 Jews without counting the tribe of Levi. Hazal say there are 600,000 letters in the Torah. Where do Leviim fit in? This is such an interesting question. Because when we say there are 600,000 Jews, that's for sure not true. There were 600,000 men between the ages of 20 and 60. It doesn't count children. It doesn't count women. It doesn't count anybody over 60. The number 600,000 did not include Moshe and Aaron. It didn't It didn't include Jews who are older than that. They They weren't not counted at all. And there are not 600,000 letters in the Torah. There are 304,700 and I forgot. >> [laughter] >> So there aren't 600,000 letters. So they say, "Well, you could take compound letters and if you look at a ches as two vavs or a vav and a zayin, depending how you write it, you know, you could look at a taf as a reish and a nun, you know, if you start taking them apart, you can you can do it like that." But conceptually, and this is what Rabbi Shmuel spoke about this once, it's coming to teach me a lesson, not that these two facts are not correct. There were not 600,000 Jews in the desert, there were millions. And there are not 600,000 letters in the Torah, as I mentioned, there's 304,000 and something. So Ella what? It's to teach me a concept. And the concept is that every Jew is a letter in the Sefer Torah. Now you know that if there is a letter missing from the safer Torah, the safer Torah is not kosher to read from. Yeah? And uh it doesn't matter whether it's the large ayin in Shema, in Shema Yisrael, and it doesn't matter if it's some obscure vav in Vayomer Hashem el Moshe. Every letter has to be there. To teach us that every single Jew is essential. I have heard this more than once from people who say, "I don't feel like it makes a difference to God if I live or die." And I tell them, "Make no mistake about it. God has no shortage of ways of getting rid of you. So, if you're still here, I guess he wants you here." You have something essential to do in this world. And that's why you're alive. But it goes more than that. You are needed. The Hazal say, "Why does everybody look different? Why doesn't every man look like the most handsome man, and every woman look like the most beautiful woman?" I'm not going to take any examples because everyone's going to say, "Well, that that sounds like my grandparents." And I I'm going to take someone too old cuz I'm not up that much on the on on current uh current people. But but the point is because every person looks differently cuz every person has an essential job to perform in this world. And that's what we have to do. So, im yirtzah Hashem, everyone should know that you are a letter in the safer Torah. You are essential. God is counting on you. There's something you can do in this world that nobody else can do. And that's the message. The facts don't line up, but the concept does. This is David Icke with our question and answer series.