Bamidbar 3:1-13

Michael Lomotey’s Drash for Badmidbar

29 Iyyar 5786, 16th May 2026

Last week we read the end of the book of Shemot, Exodus, there was no service so we didn’t get to shout hazak hazak, vnitchazek, be strong, be strong, may we all be strong together. Or Hazak u’Baruch, as our Sephardim family would say, be strong and blessed. And as one book ends, a new one begins.

Later I’m going to expound on the portion in the Torah, Bamidbar, the book of Numbers. Bamidbar the Hebrew name actually means wilderness, Numbers is Greek/Latin name of the book from the Septuagint translation, named because of the counting, the census of the Israelites. The book appears to be set in only the first and the last two years out of the whole 40 years the people spent out there.

The Drasha

The previous time we met on Shabbat, we heard from Rabbi David Seidenberg about the Rambam, Moses ben Maimon, known as Maimonides. What a great guy is Rabbi David. But I always struggle with Maimonides because of the number of times his words have a racist connotation. It can’t be denied, it’s in various of his writings, which I don’t think can be anachronistically argued away as a sign of the times. Indeed, experts like Melamed and Goldenberg who discuss antiblack Jewish racism in context and more recently Marienza Benedetto agrees, the charges placed on Maimonides stick even in his magnum opus, Mishneh Torah. Just because it’s the zeitgeist and all your peers are thinking and acting that way doesn’t mean that someone outside that group does not feels or experience the violence and harm your position puts them in. Maybe Maimonides was a great scholar, not maybe, it’s certain he was, but how then do we take the rough with the smooth?

I recall an incident from when number one daughter was younger and played in the school steel pans band. A successful musical ensemble, they won awards and played at the Albert Hall, Birmingham Symphony. One concert that I was at they played a song by Wagner; curious I asked a schoolteacher about it in the interval and was surprised a few weeks later to receive a letter from the head. It was pages long explaining how much of a quandary and debate my simple query had started in the school. A debate that ensued for weeks I was told, about censorship for instance, versus the composers supposed musical genius. I’m not a musician so can’t comment but I’m told that in terms of music theory par excellence, Wagner is eminently teachable. But he was also a raging and undisputed Jew hater, and antiblack racist. Wagner the composer hated miscegenation calling, interracial partnerships the original sin. Despicable, he became an idol for Jew haters and racists. The leader of the nazis who I refuse to name on Shabbos, adopted his music and named Wagner, who wrote about Jews being lesser people, as his favourite composer because of this. The antisemitic Russian mercenaries who attacked Ukraine, then in a turn of fate, reversed their guns on Moscow, are said to have named themselves after Wagner too, appropriating him because of their nazi fandom. Do we have to take the rough with the smooth?

Another controversial figure is Michael Jackson, there’s a major motion picture out now about his life, which feels cynically like a PR exercise. Many others come to mind sadly, like Gandhi, whose non-violent protest movement led to a successful independence from colonial Britain, yet Gandhi was antiblack and held deep prejudice against Black South Africans. He also failed to stop the violence of the Partition of India. Tension.

We have in all walks of life, those who have a dual impact with profound positive contributions, that coexist with very significant negative aspects in their legacy. And we have some like nigel forage and his political party, who really have amongst them some of the dregs and scuzzy scrapings of the barrel and yet are accepted in many circles and given a platform. Sorry, Maimonides. I don’t have an answer to these quandaries. Perhaps there isn’t one. But I do know this, again and again, our responsibility must be to listen to others, really listen, to those who have been hurt, marginalised or dismissed. Not defensively, not selectively, but listen with care and with a willingness to change. I say this because too often, there’s no smoke, without fire.

Perhaps that is why I find myself turning, not away from the difficulty, but reaching towards a different voice within our tradition. One that does not resolve the tension, but who teaches us how to live within it.

The RambaN, Rabbi Moses ben Nachman, aka Nachmanides,

I prefer the words of the Ramban, aka Nachmanides, who was a mid-12th century CE Sage who reads differently. Where others close down meaning, he opens it. Where others fix a single interpretation, he makes space for multiple possibilities to sit alongside one another. He does not erase complexity, he honours it.

Ramban often starts his commentary with a respectful word on Rashi and then gets into more reflective thinking, drawing on a more kabbalistic and mystical approach.

The Ramban, was born in Girona, Spain, in 1194 and died in Haifa, Eretz Israel, in 1270. In medieval Spain, which was then a major centre of Jewish learning, he was a leading Talmudic authority. He also studied science, philosophy and languages and practised medicine for much of his life. Renowned for his breadth of learning and intellectual depth, he became known simply as Ha-Rav and later Sephardic rabbis regarded him as one of their greatest teachers.

He was not a rationalist like Rashi. You can see this in his commentary on the first verses right at the beginning of Bamidbar, this week’s portion. We hear in v3 Kol yotzei tzava. So often translated as those who go out to war, those ready for battle. But Ramban pauses. He questions. He refuses to accept that the Torah must be speaking in the language of violence when it does not explicitly say so. And instead, he hears something quieter and perhaps more profound.

So, to be clear, the argument at the beginning of Bamidbar is that it is a call for Moses to take a census of the whole Israelite community by clan, list the names, head by head.

Then record them, all those from 20 years and up, all who are kol yotzei tzava “able to bear arms”. This is how the Hebrew is commonly translated suggesting those able to go to war.

The Ramban suggests a broader interpretation, discussing why Rashi and other Sages think it means war. The Ramban says he is not clear why they refer to it in a derogatory manner, explaining that Rashi says the line before that census command is an instruction to the executioner.

Take a census - in Hebrew is Se’uh et rosh - literally means lift up the head. It refers to an instruction to the king’s executioner Rashi teaches, lift off this one’s head”

Ramban’s reasoned approach to these verses is that the Torah would say violence if it meant violence, war if it meant war, because it doesn’t shy away from it in other places. And he gives a few examples.

Ramban then goes on to critique lifting the head in the positive, saying Se’uh means the opposite to execution, quoting Joseph to Pharoah’s cup bearer, lift up your head and be returned to your position, not executed like the baker.

And the word in the next verse is actually tzava, which is not arms but according to Nachmanides a gathering of people. Giving examples of tzavu, women congregated together to give mirrors for the Mishkan. Tzava, gathered for the host of heaven. His interpretation is therefore “count all that are able to go forth to the host in Israel”, as a more accurate reading or meaning "all who go forth to be assembled in the congregation," referring to those eligible for community assembly. What is the purpose of community assembly? To uphold and build united civic institutions. Places of organising, of cultures, of wellbeing. Of care. Release the tension.

Not an army marching out, but a people gathering in. A tzava not of conquest, but of presence. A census not for war, but for belonging. To be counted, then, is not to be measured for strength, but to be recognised as part of a whole, a community called to build, to organise, to sustain one another. A Kehillah – see what I did there?

That shift matters because it reframes everything, it’s not asking for power, but for participation. Neither is it demanding dominance, but dignity and not asking who can fight, but calling for who belongs.

It is the same spirit we hear in that extraordinary meditation, called Iggeret HaRamban, the famous letter Nachmanides wrote to his son in which he advised humility. Listen to your fathers’ thoughts and do not forsake the teaching of your mother, he wrote. I will now explain to you how to always behave humbly, speak gently at all times, give up anger and live through humility. He delivered a poignant tribute to humility, calling for calm speech free from anger and pride and to live a humble live with devotion to Torah. Ramban asks his son to read his letter every week.

Pirkei Avot, which means chapter of the fathers, but which is commonly known as the Ethics is the only book of the Mishnah that doesn’t contain any laws. Traditional communities read a chapter each week after Pesach. This little book which is not without its own controversies, contains many statements of advice on ethics and wisdom. Chapter six which is scheduled for reading this week has a bit on humility, with ideas for the wise person such as listening before speaking. Not least to the voices of the dispossessed. Last week there was a march against antisemitism which I felt is a very, very important stand to take and protest. I admit, despite the importance, I didn’t go because I knew the politics of some of the invited speakers are decidedly antiblack, some blatantly and others ideologically. It made me sad that they are accepted in what should be a space to denounce antisemitism which is actually a racism, and it made me think about how it represented a possible move, a shift towards whiteness by some in the Jewish community. Maybe the only honest response to these tensions is to choose who we stand with. I stand here with you. Will you stand here with me? Because the Torah portion asks Moses to count kol yotzei tzava, who is part of the community. And in that counting we see each other, And as we see, we build and create possibilities of a united future.

Shabbat Shalom

References:

Benedetto, M. (2022) ‘Chapter 3 Black People and Apes: “Racism” in Moses Maimonides’, in N. Faucher and V. Mäkinen (eds) Encountering Others, Understanding Ourselves in Medieval and Early Modern Thought. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, pp. 55–72.

Goldenberg, D.M. (2017) Black and Slave: The Origins and History of the Curse of Ham. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.

Melamed, A. (2020) ‘The image of the Black in Jewish culture: An overview’, Blackness in Israel. Routledge.