{"id":48356,"date":"2019-01-28T17:46:08","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T15:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=48356"},"modified":"2022-08-21T14:09:56","modified_gmt":"2022-08-21T11:09:56","slug":"a-count-that-recounts-those-who-are-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/a-count-that-recounts-those-who-are-not\/","title":{"rendered":"A Count That Recounts Those Who Are Not \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[809,383,601,806],"acf":{"old_id":"48356","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":47016,"related_cahpter":"143","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"For Caleb and Joshua, what is it like to be all that is left?","content":"

The counting that we see in this chapter is a re-count. It brings us back to the first chapter of Numbers which describes the counting in the second year of the travels of Israel in the desert. We run through the names, with a minimum of narrative digression, and we learn that the land will be distributed by lot to these tribes, according to their numbers. None of this surprises. It sounds like simple business.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet when we reach the last verses of this chapter, we learn an astonishing fact. Among those counted now by Moses and by Aaron\u2019s son, Elazar, (Aaron, who had been Moses\u2019 partner in the first count is no longer living), there is not a single man who was counted also in the second year because God had said about them: \u201cthey will die in the desert.\u201d Only Caleb Ben Yefuneh and Joshua Bin Nun remained from that number (26:63-65).<\/span><\/p>\n

Now the count has a very different feel. With this ending, it becomes a count that foregrounds absence perhaps even more than presence. As much as the people has grown, there are no longer the elders, those who left Egypt. It is an utterly new generation, with two survivors in their midst: Caleb and Joshua. And Moses.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Caleb and Joshua, what is it like to outlive the people with whom you have undergone a miraculous historical transformation? What is it like to be all that is left? To look around and to see only those who have replaced their predecessors? What does it mean to know that you are the only figures who will have been on both sides of history? There and here, then and now. They must reckon with leaving behind the life of slavery but recognizing its shadow in inaugurating a meaningful, intentional freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moses, too, looking at the tribes, is looking at shadows. Shadows of those who came out of Egypt. He sees the absences of Miriam and Aaron, and the certainty of his own death. He, of all the children of Israel, is truly alone in this counting. <\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps now the intense emphasis on remembering the exodus takes a new poignancy. We must remember — daily, weekly, yearly — because the event of exodus has been structured so that the memory, rather than the experience of slavery and the first stage of redemption, will be what marks the life of mitzvot in the land of Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

image: Michal Ben Hamu<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":47356,"id":47356,"title":"Num14-MichalBenHamu","filename":"Num14-MichalBenHamu.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Num14-MichalBenHamu.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/ghosts\/num14-michalbenhamu\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"num14-michalbenhamu","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":47355,"date":"2019-01-12 18:34:04","modified":"2019-01-28 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