Sefer BaMidbar is commonly (i.e. in non-Jewish circles) known as the Book of Numbers, and numbers do, indeed, play a large part in what there is to learn that goes much deeper the pshat, simple or surface definition.It’s a basic concept, really, although it is based in the deepest levels of Kabbalah (Judaism’s sacred mysticism) that the approximately 600,000 letters (theoretical, since many of the letters are only implied or part of the “oral tradition”, Torah Sh’b’al Peh, also known as Torah l’Moshe MiSinai (Torah revealed to Moshe from Sinai (while he was transcribing the written Torah we have today)) that make up a full Sefer Torah. And, as I recently explained (see “What Are We Celebrating?”), this number also links together the entirety of our potential knowledge/experience of God Himself to both Torah and Am Yisrael, the Jewish People. Just as a Torah Scroll isn’t kosher if it is missing a single letter (or a single letter is damaged (i.e. hurt), Am Yisrael is defective with the absence (or damage to) a single Jewish soul, conditions which make it impossible for any of us to fully experience The Holy One.

This assumption validates the various “number games”, Gematriya/Gematriyot our sages have employed throughout the millennia to discover deeper truths by manipulating the relationships between the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet (refer to the 32 paths, ל-ב, which, as a word means heart and which, in turn, represents the 22 letters of the Hebrew aleph-bet, את, “et” or “at”, either the indefinite article or the feminine second person of the word that means “you”, occasionally means “and” (B’reishit Bara Elohim EtHaShamayim v’EtHaAretz, commonly translated as “In The Beginning God Created (Et) The Heavens and (Et) the Land”–Books, including the entire Zohar have been written on the first word, Breishit, In The Beginning, alone.) and the ten letters which represent the digits 1-10 (א-י).

Anyhow, these insights validate various rabbinic analysis techniques so that they result in actually revealing deeper meanings that are really there, rather than merely clever word play, “sound and fury signifying nothing”, to quote Shakespeare in Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 6). Thus when the Chernobyler Maggid, Rabbi Menachum Nachum Twerski, in Meor Eynayim, points out that employing another valid letter-substitution technique called את-בש, AtBash, where we replace the letters of a chosen word with the letter equidistant, but from the end of the alphabet rather than the start,  to the first two letters of the word מצוה, Mitzvah, commandment or a mandated action to bind us together, both as a people, Am Yisrael, and to God, the Mem and Tzaddi become Yud Hei, י-ה. Combined with the rest of the word, ו-ה, Vav-Hei, we have generated God’s Name, Yud-Hei-Vav-Hei.

Thus, when we mindfully perform a Mitzvah with the proper kavvana, focus/intention, that focus being to perform that act as a way of embodying God’s Presence (the Name itself, often euphemized as Shem Havayah, discloses an inner meaning of that Name itself, which is Being (“I Will Be What I Will Be”). The Meor Eynayim goes further to point out that the first two letters, Yud and Hei are the flow of energy from the highest realms, passing through the Vav, which resembles a pipe, and which often refers to Masculine Energy, to the final Hei, usually representing Feminine Energy, which gathers and consolidates it all. This final Hei is also called Malchut, Kingship (obviously a masculine term) and, simultaneously, Shechinah, the Holy Divine Feminine Presence (which is what activated/activates the Holy of Holies in the Holy Temple.

The Chernobyler goes even further, relating the relationship of the masculine and feminine before they are combined, as Dalut (from the letter dalet) which means poor and devoid of anything.  It is this unification, represented by the ד (dalet) descending via the ladder-like ל (lamed, related to the word meaning to learn) that empowers, fills the empty tank, as it were, of an otherwise meaningless action, to become a Mitzvah, rather than just a random action, turning it into something that binds us together as a people, unites the masculine and feminine in a way that this union can be truly productive, and joins us with (and invites the participation of ) the  Shechinah herself.

Thus, with this mindfulness which is a product of understanding that the words of Torah, including and especially “The Rule Book” (Halacha) reveal layer upon layer of deep meaning and detailed instructions of how to mentally perform the Mitzvot, that we become agents of true change and benefit to the world, to ourselves and to those with whom we are connected.

Shabbat Shalom