Rabbi Sacks zt’’l prepared a full year of
Covenant & Conversation for 5781, based on his book
Lessons in Leadership. The Office of Rabbi Sacks will carry on distributing these essays each week, so people around the world can continue to learn and be inspired by his Torah.
The book of Bamidbar begins with a census of the Israelites. That is why this book is known in English as
Numbers. This raises a number of questions: what is the significance of this act of counting? And why here at the beginning of the book? Besides which, there have already been two previous censuses of the people and this is the third within the space of a single year. Surely one would have been sufficient. Additionally, does counting have anything to do with leadership?