From the start of “the book of assemblies” We may be able to learn the qualitative meaning of large – God’s praise is revealed in the multitude of people coming from different backgrounds.
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This week we are starting the book of BaMidbar, a book that is dubbed by Chaza”l as “the Book of Assemblies”. This name faithfully reflects the assemblies in it - twice the people of Israel are assembled, and there is another assembly of the Levites.
According to common sense, the assembly of our Parasha is a military assembly done prior to entering the country, when the need to count men of military age arises. As the Ramban expounds:
As they were now prepared to enter the land and to come to war with the kings of the Amorites […] And Moses and the leaders needed to know the number of the ones primed for war.
Eventually, the sin of the spies occurred, and the generation of the desert was not allowed to enter the land. Thus arose the need for a second assembly, which is described towards the end of our book.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe explains the important characteristic of the assembly as such:
Counting is totally unrelated and does not indicate the contents of the thing at all, since the count counts all equally, without division between large and small, quantity or quality. Just as the larger thing is no less than one, so too the smaller one is no less than one.
His intriguing conclusion is that sometimes there is value in quantity on its own. We are used to thinking that “quantity is not important, but rather quality,” yet the Rebbe teaches from the importance of the assembly that in certain respects quantitative multiplicity creates quality. Thus, for example, the zimun performed by three is different from the zimun performed by ten, and in certain opinions they are both different from the one performed by a hundred, a thousand and tens of thousands.
We may be able to learn the qualitative meaning of large quantities from the wording of the blessing that the Sages had given to the one who saw six hundred thousand people of Israel: “Blessed are you […] Sage of the mystery” [ברוך חכם הרזים]. God’s praise is revealed in the multitude of people coming from different backgrounds. The great diversity creates complexities, differences, and gaps, and, as Rav Kook puts it, leads to ‘radical and fanatical attraction ‘ to each side. This attraction leads to the correction and elevation of the world, and without it Rav Kook claims that “the world would be lacking in different opinions, directions, and ideas .” If so, a multiplicity in quantity brings in additional secrets of other people, and great wisdom that stems from the diversity and lack of identity between all of them. Because of this, something is added on also in quality.
Of course, monochromatic diversity, although varied, does not deliver the message of fullness; at the same time, a multitude of different people requires a lot of community work on withdrawal and inclusion, listening and respect, sharing and uniqueness.
