Enlisted, Not Exalted: Parashat Bamidbar 5785

Parashat Bamidbar opens a new book of the Torah. Its Hebrew name means “In the Wilderness,” but in English we call it Numbers, a reference to the national census that begins the book. As the Israelites prepare to leave Mount Sinai and begin their journey through the wilderness, God instructs Moses to organize and count the people — ostensibly to determine the size of the fighting force they’ll have at the ready for the eventual task of conquering the Promised Land. The adult men of every tribe are dutifully counted — all except those of one tribe. The tribe of Levi is set apart. They aren’t included in the military census. Instead, they’re counted separately and assigned a different kind of role: tending to the sacred, serving in the Tabernacle, and carrying holy objects like the Ark of the Covenant.

And then comes a striking line, explaining why the Levites are set apart from their fellow Israelites and singled out for this unique role: “I have taken the Levites in place of all the firstborn… the Levites shall be Mine.” (Num 3:13)

This verse raises questions that I haven’t been able to shake for weeks, and which feel especially urgent right now. What does it mean for a person or a people to be claimed by God? What, in other words, does it mean to be chosen?

The first time we hear that the firstborn belong to God is back in Exodus, just after the final plague — the death of Egypt’s firstborn. God says to Moses, “Sanctify to Me every firstborn.” (Ex 13:2; cf. 13:14–15) At first glance, it sounds like a response to that particular historical moment: God spared the Israelite firstborn, and now claims them in return.

But this logic is hard to sit with. What kind of God demands human lives — even symbolically — as compensation? Why should divine protection come with strings attached?

One could argue — as I have and often do — that the tenth plague was less about punishment and more about a targeted strike on an ideology: the belief in primogeniture — the idea that birth order determines status, power, and worth. In Egyptian society, status flowed from Pharaoh to his firstborn and down through a rigid hierarchy. Dignity wasn’t equal or inherent; it was contingent — on birth order, family status, and wealth. A system like that doesn’t just produce inequality — it justifies it.

This belief is fundamentally opposed to the Torah’s point of view. As the book of Genesis teaches very clearly, every human life has equal value. The Torah asserts this point so clearly, and so early on, because hierarchies invariably result in oppression and suffering. People who see themselves as superior to others will almost always find ways to dominate those they deem inferior. The oppression of the Israelites in Egypt is a perfect case in point. By striking the Egyptian firstborn, God was attempting to dismantle the foundational logic of a structurally unjust society.

But if that’s true — if the plague was meant to expose the moral bankruptcy of primogeniture and establish a new, egalitarian order — then why would God turn around and grant Israel’s firstborn a special status? Doesn’t that just re-inscribe the very structure the tenth plague was supposed to undo?

Maybe the key to resolving this tension in the text lies in paying closer attention to the language the Torah uses — and where it shifts. When God first commands Moses about the firstborn in Exodus, the term God uses is kadesh li — “Sanctify to Me [every firstborn].” In our parashah, God repeats the same language of sanctification: “At the time that I struck down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, I sanctified every male firstborn in Israel, human and beast, to Myself.” But earlier in the same passage, when God introduces the substitution of the Levites for the Israelite firstborn, the language changes: v’hayu li ha-levi’im — the Levites shall be Mine.

On the surface, both expressions seem to point to the same idea — a person or group set apart for God. But the difference between sanctification and belonging is not merely semantic. To sanctify something is to designate it for a specific kind of purpose or relationship – to elevate it above the mundane. For example, when we call God Kadosh Barukh Hu, the Holy Blessed One, we are identifying God as the most exalted being in existence. Belonging, on the other hand, implies ownership.

In both Exodus and Numbers, God uses the term for sanctification — kadesh — when talking about the firstborn Israelites. The Levites, on the other hand, are described in terms of belonging, not sanctification. That shift might not seem like much, but I think it’s the Torah’s way of telling us that this isn’t just a straightforward substitution. There’s a subtler shift happening here.

Recall that the Israelites had lived for generations in Egypt — a society built on hierarchy and sustained through inequality. Moreover, throughout the ancient Near East — as in most of human history — primogeniture was ubiquitous. The Israelites wouldn’t have known any other system. It’s conceivable that they would have been unable to imagine a society ordered any other way. If God had taken the Israelites out of Egypt and imposed upon them a radical new system that ran counter to every social norm they had ever known, they might have been unable, or at least unwilling, to accept it.

So God speaks in a language the people can understand, maintaining the basic structure of primogeniture, but subtly shifting its meaning. Recall that Exodus says, “Sanctify to Me every firstborn…” This is a commandment, not a statement of fact. No longer are firstborn children to be considered inherently sacred; rather, they are potentially sacred. That potential can only be realized through intentional human action.

But God doesn’t stop there. Once the people had left Egypt, received the Torah, and built the Tabernacle, God alters the command, announcing that the firstborn would be replaced with a whole tribe — indeed, not even the “firstborn” tribe, which would have been Reuben. Instead, God chooses Levi — a tribe further down the birth order of the children of Israel; the smallest of the tribes. And when God does this, the language of the command changes. With the firstborn, God says kadesh li — sanctify. With the Levites, God says v’hayu li — they shall be Mine. No longer is a class of people simply set apart to be exalted. The Levites are not lifted up as holier than thou — they are drafted into divine service. They are to become not God’s most beloved, but God’s most devoted. They are claimed not for privilege, but for purpose. Set apart not to rule, but to serve.

Their job wasn’t to sit on a pedestal. It was to get their hands dirty — to lift, to build, to carry the sacred from place to place. To construct sanctity in every camp and every wilderness.

That’s not a promotion. That’s a conscription. The Levites are enlisted, not exalted — charged with carrying the sacred, not selected to be sacred; called to erect structures of sanctity, not to be venerated as sanctified themselves. And with the substitution of the tribe of Levi for the firstborn of Israel, the Torah deftly undermines the notion that some lives might matter more than others, enshrining a different definition of what it means to be “chosen.” 

Chosenness is, of course, a central concept in our tradition — and one that is often misunderstood and misused. Chosenness is not about being elevated above others. To be part of the chosen people doesn’t mean we are more special or more sacred than anyone else. If that were the case, the concept would stand in direct contradiction to the Torah’s foundational teaching that every human being is created b’tzelem Elohim — in the divine image — and therefore infinitely and equally sacred. As the Mishnah reminds us, all humanity descends from a single ancestor so that no one can say, “My ancestor is greater than yours” (Sanhedrin 4:5). The Torah itself insists that God’s love and concern are not limited to Israel alone: “The Infinite upholds the cause of the orphan and the widow, and loves the stranger” (Deut 10:18). 

And yet, throughout history, this core teaching has sometimes been forgotten — and chosenness has been distorted into a theology of superiority. But that’s not the tradition’s intention. To be chosen doesn’t mean being better. It means being bound — to God, to one another, and to a sacred task. And that task is not abstract or ethereal. It demands something of us — especially in times like these, when the temptation to put our own survival above all else is strong, and when fear or loyalty can cloud our moral clarity.

Thus, the Levites are chosen — but not for power, prestige, or privilege (they aren’t even allowed to own property; their livelihood entirely based on communal contributions). Rather, they’re chosen for service: to carry and assemble the Tabernacle, and to foster connection — among people, between people and God. 

And while the message in our parashah comes through the specific example of the Levites, the value applies to us all. Earlier in the Torah, before the revelation at Sinai, God had already articulated this ideal: “You shall be to Me a nation of priests” (Ex 19:6). Not a people with a priestly class — but a nation in which every person is called to sacred service. Just as the Levites had the specific responsibility of carrying the physical Tabernacle, being part of the chosen people means bearing the burden of building the world that God envisions. It means helping to bring people closer to one another, to all of creation, and to the Creator of all.

The substitution of Levi for the firstborn emphasizes what it truly means to be chosen — not as a reward to enjoy, but as a mission to fulfill: not exalted, but enlisted. Not separated or elevated, but obligated. Not about enjoying greater privilege, but shouldering greater responsibility.

To take this teaching seriously is to stay vigilant against the ways chosenness can be distorted: confused with superiority, wielded as separateness, mistaken for license or entitlement.

And I fear that distortion is playing out in some corners of our community and our world. Sometimes it sounds like the suggestion that Jewish lives are more valuable than Palestinian lives — that political gain or military objectives justify the suffering of innocent people. That the dignity, or even the survival, of others can be set aside when we perceive that it serves our interests.

Sometimes it looks like sacrificing the values we claim to hold most dear — supporting leaders or policies that contradict the core moral imperatives of our tradition — in the name of a narrow idea of what it means to care for our own, as though dismantling democracy, or trampling on the rights and dignity of immigrants and minorities — the very protections that have made this country a home and haven for Jews and for so many others — could ever be in our people’s best interests.

And we see it, too, when acts of antisemitic violence — like the horrific murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim last week — tempt us to retreat in fear. To close ranks. To batten down the hatches and forget about everyone else.

But that’s not what it means to be a nation of priests. That’s not what it means to carry, and to construct, the sacred. 

That’s not, in the end, what it means to be a “chosen people.” We weren’t chosen to be above or against the world. We were chosen to be responsible for it; to help repair it. We’re not meant to wall ourselves off from others’ pain and suffering. We’re meant to step toward it. To help. To heal. To keep choosing, again and again, to care for more than just ourselves.

So may we choose to carry and construct the sacred.

May we lift up and hold one another in a world of callousness and cruelty.

May we build sanctuaries of compassion and justice in a world that aches for both.

And may we move forward — together, with hope in our hearts — supporting one another on the journey toward the promised land: the world that God dreams of, and calls us to help create.

So may it be God’s will. Amen.