A.
וידבר ד' אל משה במדבר סיני באהל מועד באחד לחדש השני בשנה השנית לצאתם מארץ מצרים לאמר: שאו את ראש כל עדת בני ישראל למשפחתם לבית אבתם במספר שמות כל זכר לגלגתם: (“And Ha-Shem spoke to Moshe in the Sinai desert in the tent of assembly on the first [day] of the second month of the second year of their exodus from Egypt to say: Raise up the head [rosh] of the whole community of bënei Yisra’él to their families, to the house of their fathers in the number of names, every male for their heads [lë-gulgëlotham]”). So begins our parasha.
Rashi offers the following explanation of the Torah’s careful record of the timing of this census: מתוך חבתן לפניו מנה אותם כל שעה כשיצאו ממצרים מנאם וכשנפלו בעגל מנאם לידע מנין הנותרים וכשבא להשרות שכינתו עליהם מנאם. באחד בניסן הוקם המשכן ובאחד באייר מנאם (“Out of affection for them He counted them every hour; when they went out of Egypt He counted them, and when they fell because of the [Golden] Calf He counted them to know the number of those remaining; and when He came to infuse His Presence [Shëchinatho] upon them He counted them. One the first of Nisan the Mishkan was erected, and on the first of Iyyar He counted them”).
The historical context of the census, then, is that it followed shortly after the débâcle of the Golden Calf, as a result of which thousands had perished, and again, just as the Divine Presence, the Shëchina, the soul, as it were, of the universe, was being established in the Mishkan, in Israel’s midst. What G-d was actually telling Moshe, says Rashi, was דע מנין כל שבט ושבט (“Know the count of each and every tribe”). If so, why does the verse noy read that they were to be counted lë-shivteihem, “in their tribes,” rather than lë-mishpëhotham lë-véyth avotham, “by families and father’s house”? Why, instead of using either mana or safar, the more usual terms for “count,” does our passage utilize nasa’, “raise up”? Why are only the males to be counted? And why the peculiar alternation between the most common word for “head,” rosh, near the beginning of the verse, with gulgoleth, a word which more commonly means “skull”?
B.
This is not the first time that we have seen the word nasa’ used to mean “count,” specifically in the context of a census, and the Or ha-Hayyim offers us a clue to its meaning in an earlier verse (Exodus XXX, 12). There, Moshe is commanded, כי תשא את ראש בני ישראל וגו' (“For you will raise up the head of the bënei Yisra’él....”) and the Or ha-Hayyim explains the usage in its context, following the incident of the Golden Calf: כי החוטא גורם בחטאו כפיפת ראשו כי בחינת הרע מהותה "אל ארץ תביט" כי שפלה היא ובחינת הקדושה היא נשיאת ראש והרמת המהות והאיכות וגו' (“For the sinner causes through his sin the bending down of the head, since the test of evil in its essence is ‘you should look down to the ground,’ for it is low, whilst the test of sanctity is the raising of the head and uplifting of the essence and quality....”).
Viewed in this light, we can see that Rashi telling us that each instance of nësi’ath rosh, “raising the head,” is a spiritual ‘aliya, whether from the trough which resulted from the Golden Calf, or, later, the elevation and exaltation which accompanied the hashra’ath ha-Shëchina resulting from the erection of the Mishkan and inauguration of the Divine service therein.
This, it would appear, serves to explain the use of the word nasa’ for “count” in instances such as this one; but what about the rest of the verse?
C.
The debasement or degradation to which the Or ha-Hayyim alludes in his comment refers to the subordination of a person’s spiritual or metaphysical essence to his physical nature. This is what causes sin, the abdication of the nëshama’s control over the urgings and yearnings of the body, expressed through the nefesh. Hence, indeed, evil constitutes “looking down toward the earth,” toward one’s earthier nature, rather than up to the exalted spiritual heights.
The human nëshama is a vast metaphysical structure, and only the smallest portion of it is encased in the body. Hazal refer to the human body as a “shoe,” since just as a shoe encases only a small part of the body (and, indeed, a lower extremity), so does the human body encase only a small part of the nëshama (עיי' ברכות נ"ז: לאור ספר נפש החיים ש"א פ"ה, ובחרת בחיים שם אותיות ה' וו' וע"ע ספר רוח חיים לאסות פ"א מ"א). The root of Israel’s nëshamoth, they tell us, stretches back through the Patriarchs upward to the kissé’ ha-kavod, the collective root of Israel’s souls. Avraham, Yitzhaq, and Ya‘aqov are the pillars on which the universe rests; after it was, as it were, seated firmly upon the patriarchal tripod: ולא הוה מתמוטט. ועם כל דא לא אשתיל בשורשוי עד דאוליד תריסר שבטין ושבעין נפשאן ואשתיל עלמא. ועכ"ד לא אשתלים עד דקבילו ישראל אורייתא בטורא דסיני ואתקם משכנא וגו' (“...it would not totter. And with all that, it was not planted in its roots until [Ya‘aqov] sired the twelve tribes and the seventy souls [cf. Genesis XLVI, 8-34 and Exodus I, 1-5], and the universe was planted. And with all that, it was not complete until Israel had received the Torah on Mt Sinai and the Mishkan was erected....”; זוה"ק ח"ג קי"ז.).
It was this completion of the universe’s metaphysical foundation with the Mishkan’s erection which Moshe to raise up, to elevate and exalt the souls of Israel, which are rooted lë-mishpëhotham, through their families, lë-véyth avotham, to the household of their fathers, the Patriarchs. This is what our verse is intended to remind us.
Why does this elevation through counting involve only kol zachar, every male amongst them?
Because the women were already exalted; as Hazal tell us, they had resisted the blind panic which had led to the Golden Calf, continued to trust that the Al-Mighty had not abandoned them in the howling wilderness at the foot of the mountain. It was the men who required that additional lift (Exodus XXXII, 2-3, Rashi ad loc.).
This exaltation was, as the passage from the Zohar cited supra suggests, not a temporary, fleeting phenomenon. It affected not only the men of that generation, but extended it limbs and branches far into the future, as suggested by the last word in the verse, lë-gulgëlotham, throughout their gilgulim, the reincarnations of the archetypical nëshamoth of the seventy souls who had descended into the crucible of Egypt and endured its purifying fire to perform the transcendent act of sacrificing the Egyptian’s chief idol to Ha-Shem in the qorban Pesah, in whose merit they climbed out of the pit and ascended to receive the Torah and erect the Mishkan.
D.
Here again, in the vaulting exaltation implied in our parasha’s count toward on he inauguration of the Mishkan, we find a relationship and allusion to the edifying and exalting nature of the sëfirath ha-‘omer in which we are now engaged, as we prepare ourselves anew for shavu‘oth and our annual renewal of qabbalath ha-Torah.
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