What's in a number? Well, when it comes to the number 600,000, apparently quite a lot.


Our sedra contains yet another census of B'nei Yisrael - the third taken within a year - as the Jewish People, at

The number of males eligible for military service in 1967 - when we won our greatest victory - was also 600,000.

this juncture, was originally scheduled to enter Eretz Yisrael. It didn't happen, alas - the meraglim (spies) episode got in the way - but the count was held nonetheless.


What is quite amazing is that in all these counts taken of the nation, the final tally comes out at, or around, 600,000. Perhaps, as a result of this, we use the number of six hundred thousand as the classic definition of what constitutes a "multitude" or "public." (For example, r'shut ha'rabim, "a public domain", is made up of no less than 600,000 people).


There is more. The population of modern Israel, at the moment we declared statehood, was about 600,000. And the number of males eligible for military service in 1967 - when we won our greatest victory - was also 600,000. Our sedra, interestingly enough, indicates that the census is focused on males of military age, in order to properly gauge our capacity for defense.


So what is so magical about the number 600,000? Clearly, there is a strong connection to the rabbinic comment that there are also 600,000 letters in a Sefer Torah. The obvious inference here is that in "HaShem's Sefer Torah" each person is a holy letter, each beit knesset is a perek, each community is a parsha, etc. And if any Jew anywhere is lacking, then all of Jewry is incomplete.


Chazal beautifully express this concept and say that the initials of the word Yisrael stand for Yesh Shishim Ribo Otiot L'Torah - "there are 600,000 letters in the Torah".


Of course, we know that the actual number of letters in the Torah (as our computers expertly tell us) is 304,000, not 600,000. But there's an answer for this, too. Either the blank spaces in the Torah are included in the 600,000 (being the "pause that refreshes" or the "white fire" that accompanied the "black fire"), or certain letters are actually composites of several other letters (e.g., the alef is made up of two yuds and a vav, constituting three letters in one).


The implication is that to reach the magic number of 600,000 souls, we need everyone - from the littlest yud (or Yid) to the tallest alef. We often have to combine our talents to make a single unit, and all temperaments and outlooks are equally valuable, from "black" to "white."


If we play the numbers game right, we all come out a winner.