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and her son away, the Torah tells 
us that when their water ran out 
and the young Ishmael was at 
the point of dying, Hagar cried, 
yet God heard “the voice of the 
child” (Gen. 21:16-17). 
Earlier when the angels came 
to visit Abraham and told him 
that Sarah would have a child, 
Sarah laughed inwardly, that is, 
silently, yet she was heard by 
God (Gen. 18:12-13). God hears 
our thoughts even when they are 
not expressed in speech.
The silence that counts, in 
Judaism, is thus a listening 
silence — and listening is the 
supreme religious art. Listening 
means making space for others 
to speak and be heard. As I point 
out in my commentary to the 
Siddur, there is no English word 
that remotely equals the Hebrew 
verb sh-m-a in its wide range of 
senses: to listen, to hear, to pay 
attention, to understand, to inter-
nalize and to respond in deed.
This was one of the key ele-
ments in the Sinai covenant, 
when the Israelites, having 
already said twice, “
All that God 
says, we will do,
” then said, “
All 
that God says, we will do and we 
will hear [ve-nishma]” (Ex. 24:7). 
It is the nishma — listening, 
hearing, heeding, responding — 
that is the key religious act.
Thus, Judaism is not only a 
religion of doing-and-speaking; 
it is also a religion of listening. 
Faith is the ability to hear the 
music beneath the noise. There is 
the silent music of the spheres, 
about which Psalm 19 speaks:
“The heavens declare the glory 
of God 
 The skies proclaim the work of 
His hands. 
 Day to day they pour forth 
speech, 
 Night to night they communi-
cate knowledge. 
 There is no speech, there are no 
words, 
 Their voice is not heard. 
 Yet their music carries through-
out the earth.
”
- Tehillim 19

There is the voice of history 
that was heard by the prophets. 
And there is the commanding 
voice of Sinai that continues to 
speak to us across the abyss of 
time. I sometimes think that 
people in the modern age have 
found the concept of “Torah 
from Heaven” problematic, not 
because of some new archaeo-
logical discovery but because we 
have lost the habit of listening 
to the sound of transcendence, a 
voice beyond the merely human.
It is fascinating that despite his 
often-fractured relationship with 
Judaism, Sigmund Freud created 
in psychoanalysis a deeply Jewish 
form of healing. He himself 
called it the “speaking cure,
” 
but it is in fact a listening cure. 
Almost all effective forms of 
psychotherapy involve deep 
listening.
Is there enough listening in 
the Jewish world today? Do we, 
in marriage, really listen to our 
spouses? Do we, as parents, truly 
listen to our children? Do we, as 
leaders, hear the unspoken fears 
of those we seek to lead? Do we 
internalize the sense of hurt of 
the people who feel excluded 
from the community? Can we 
really claim to be listening to the 
voice of God if we fail to listen to 
the voices of our fellow humans?
In his poem, “In memory of 
W B Yeats,
” W H Auden wrote: 
“In the deserts of the heart 
Let the healing fountain start.
”
From time to time we need 
to step back from the noise and 
hubbub of the social world and 
create in our hearts the stillness 
of the desert where, within the 
silence, we can hear the kol 
demamah dakah, the still, small 
voice of God, telling us we are 
loved, we are heard, we are 
embraced by God’s everlasting 
arms, we are not alone. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan 

Sacks served as the chief rabbi of 

the United Hebrew Congregations of 

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His 

teachings have been made available to 

all at rabbisacks.org. 

Our Link to the Past
T

he Book of Numbers 
opens with an optimis-
tic picture of a nation 
poised for redemption. The 
Israelites have been freed from 
Egypt. They have received the 
Revelation at Sinai, which pro-
vides them with a moral and 
ethical constitution along 
with a faith commitment 
that establishes their mis-
sion to the world. 
 The nation is now 
structured into 12 
uniquely endowed tribes. 
Physical and spiritual 
defenses are organized 
with a standing army for 
military might and the 
tribe of Levi dedicated 
to teaching Torah and 
arranging the sacrificial 
service. Everything seems ready 
for the conquest and settlement 
of the Promised Land. 
Instead, what follows is total 
degeneration. The Israelites 
become involved in petty squab-
bles and tiresome complaints; 
the reconnaissance mission 
advises against entering Israel. 
Korah, Datan and Aviram stage 
a rebellion against Moses, and a 
prince of one of the tribes pub-
licly fornicates with a Midianite 
woman. The result is that the 
entire generation that left Egypt 
is condemned to die in the 
wilderness; and only Moses’ 
successor, Joshua, and the new 
generation that has been born 
in the desert may live in the 
Promised Land. 
How can a nation so com-
mitted to becoming a “kingdom 
of priest-teachers and a holy 
nation” lose its idealistic sense of 
purpose and “gang up” against 
the very person who was their 
great liberator and law-giver? 
Our portion opens with 
a command to count the 
Israelites. Twenty-five chapters 

later, however, a second census 
is ordered. But the identification 
of each Israelite for the pur-
pose of this census is different. 
The first count included “the 
families (providing everyone’s 
tribal affiliation harking back to 
Jacob, Isaac and Abraham), the 
household parents and 
the individual personal 
names. The second time, 
the tribal affiliation and 
the personal names of 
each were excluded, pro-
viding only the names of 
the household parents of 
each individual. 
In the first census, each 
Israelite felt connected to 
his tribal parent, to his 
biblical patriarchs and 
matriarchs. By the time 
of the second census, that con-
nection was woefully gone. Each 
related only to their immediate 
biological parents. 
Lineage has everything to do 
with responsibility and ancestral 
empowerment. Tragically, the 
desert generation lost its con-
nection with the mission and 
empowerment, with the dream 
and the promise of the patri-
archs and matriarchs. The sec-
ond census no longer connects 
them as the tribal children of 
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This 
loss of connectedness results in 
a disconnect from God, from 
the promise and the covenant 
of that God, from faith in their 
ability to carry out the unique 
message and mission of Israel. 
By disconnecting from their 
past, they lost their future. They 
did not even merit individual 
names, names which could only 
be counted if they were linked 
with the proud names of the 
founders of Jewish eternity. 

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is chancellor of 

Ohr Torah Stone and chief rabbi of 

Efrat, Israel.

TORAH PORTION

Rabbi 
Shlomo 
Riskin

Parshat 

Bamidbar: 

Numbers 

1:1-4:20; 

Hosea 2:1-22.