What does “B’midbar” mean?
We tend to think that B’midbar means “In the wilderness”.
That is not the only (or the best) translation.
Why, asks Dr Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg, do we not link it with dabber, to speak?
In that sense the book we commence this week is a historical narrative that speaks of the forty years in which the adult generation that left Egypt grows old and the youngsters become adults.
The new adults have their own ideas and reject some of the ideas of the past: an example is the challenge that Korach mounts against Moses and Aaron, whom he sees as facing a new future with old thinking.
