Parashat Bemidbar II: Rashi and Love

Numbers 1:1: “The Lord spoke . . in the wilderness of Sinai . . . on the first day of the second month . . . [Take a census . . .].
Rashi's comment:
Mitokh hibatan lefanav, moneh otam kol sha’ah.
“It is because of His love for them that He counts them all the time. When they left Egypt, He counted them. And when they died during the sin of the Golden Calf, He counted them in order to find out the number of those remaining. When He came to rest His Presence among them, He counted them. On the first of Nisan, the Tabernacle was built, and on the first of Iyar, He counted them.”

Some thoughts about this Rashi:
1. On repetition and love: Rashi establishes that this is the third time in the course of a little over a year that God has counted the people, and suggests that the reason for these repeated countings is hibah, love or dearness. Elsewhere, Rashi makes a similar connection, suggesting that the reason that God repeats certain individuals’ names when He calls them, e.g. “Abraham! Abraham!” and “Jacob! Jacob!” is also a sign of hibah. Repetition, according to Rashi, is an expression of love. Love expresses itself not through one-time dramatic shows of affection, but through constancy, through repeated acts of caring. See note 6 below for more on this idea.

2. Always starting with love: Rashi begins his commentary to the book of Numbers with this comment on God’s special hibah for Israel, and he also begins his commentaries to the books of Exodus and Leviticus with a comment about God’s love. He seems to want to orient the reader to think about these books through this lens of divine love.

3. The present tense: Note that Rashi uses the present tense in his first statement: “He counts them all the time,” instead of “He counted them all the time.” He does this despite the fact that later in the comment, Rashi is forced into the past tense when speaking of the various actual historical countings. The present tense reaches out and includes the reader, making her feel that God’s loving counting took place not just in biblical times, but continues to this day.

4. Through thick and thin: Note that when Rashi enumerates the three countings, he gives a sense of the up and down nature of the relationship between God and the people – leaving Egypt, sinning, and now the intimacy of the Tabernacle. What emerges is a sense of a relationship which is constant and secure; God counts us when we are weak and when we are strong, when we are distant and sinful, as well as when we are intimate.

5. What is bothering Rashi in the verse? This is a classic question to ask of Rashi, as he is such a close reader of the biblical text. Here he is clearly answering the question of the need for another census so soon. But note that his comment is focused specifically on the timing issue. He makes his remark in relation to the first verse, concerning the timing of the census, rather than in relation to the second verse, where the actual command is given to count. Perhaps he was partly motivated by the Torah’s need to tell us specifically that the count happened on the first of the second month of the second year. Rashi explains that this dating gives us the information we need to understand God’s tremendous love, as it puts this census in very close temporal proximity to the other two countings. The verse’s dating also seems to indicate to Rashi that there is some connection between the building of the Tabernacle and this count; as he says, on the first of Nisan, the Tabernacle was built and on the first of Iyar was the census.

6. Repetition and Love II: Just a note about the pervasiveness of this connection in Judaism. It is present not just in God’s love for us, but also in our love for God. Praying three times a day is an expression of this notion. Indeed, the first paragraph of the Shma makes this connection explicit. One should love God with all one’s heart and soul and might. And how does one express this love? By speaking of His words all the time, when one awakes and when one goes to sleep, walking and sitting, at home and abroad. Here again, love and repetition go hand in hand. There is a kind of all-pervasiveness to these articulations of love which make the relationship feel constant and secure.