Secrets of the Torah Revealed – Book by Book: Part 4 (Bamidbar/Numbers)

God may have taken the Jews out of Egypt, but how to take Egypt out of the Jews? The Book of Numbers recounts the difficulties of what can only be termed the adolescence of the Israelite people, and like everyone’s teenage years, it is not a pretty picture. What skills, what sustaining ideas, what resiliences are put into play when the Israelites, having escaped Egypt, must face both the effects of enslavement on their national character, and the threats of growing up in the desert, an environment arguably more hostile than the slavery to which they—ironically— end up begging to return.