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Bamidbar 2 Generally, (except when Rosh Hashanah is on a Thursday of a leap year) this week's Sedra, Bamidbar, is read the Shabbos before Shavuos. Ezra did this when he established our Sedra pattern, for a number of reasons: · In order to separate with at least one week, between the reading of the Tochacha (rebuke) last week and the festival of Shavuos when we are judged concerning the year's fruit. In the same way, we make sure that a Sedra is always read between the Tochacha in Ki Savo and Rosh Hashanah. · In Bamidbar, we discuss the positioning of the various Shevatim - tribes - in the desert. This was first done at Har Sinai when the Jewish people encamped there. · In order to remind us that through the Torah we can change even a desert (a midbar) into a garden and celebrate Chag HaBikurim - the Festival of the First Fruits. · So that we remember that if we wish to merit and receive the Torah in its entirety, we must make ourselves as humble as the desert. Just as the desert has nothing in it, so too, we should appreciate that relative to G-d we are nothing and have nothing and all that we have is through Him alone. In the Haphtorah this week we read, "And the number of the Jewish people will be like the sands of the sea, that can not be measured and can not be counted. When the first plague of intermarriage struck the Jews of Germany in the middle of the last century, the then Chief Rabbi of Hamburg said, "I now understand an unusual statement of our Sages. The Sages ask concerning the passuk above that it seems self-contradictory. On the one hand, we say the number will be. Then we say they can not be measured or counted. The sages explain. One statement speaks when the Jews fulfil Hashem's will, while the other speaks of when they do not fulfil Hashem's will. Explained R' Yitzchak Hamburger: When the Jews do Hashem's will they are like the sands of the sea, but still they can be counted. However when they do not follow G-d's commands and intermarriage is rife then the number of those whose Jewish status is uncertain grows and then it is indeed impossible to count them for we do not know who is a Jew and who is not.