Naso – What happens at night

"God spoke to Moses, saying: 'Also take a census (raise their heads) of Gershon's descendants by families...'"

To explain this, Rabbi Abba quoted, "Happy is the man for whom God does not account his wrongdoings, and whose soul is pure" - and said that it does not make sense. If God does not count his wrongdoings, then they must exist. If so, why is his soul pure?

However, he explained that the world experiences judgment in the afternoon, which continues into the evening. The man's soul goes up and, free from the body's restrictions, testifies about his actions during that day. At midnight the righteous praise God and study Torah, and cause joy to the spiritual beings. Meanwhile, the soul that testifies retells man's words spoken during that day, and if they were only good and if he said nothing wrong about his fellows that he was not permitted to say, then his soul is pure. So now we understand that when is it that "God does not account his wrongdoings?" – When his soul is pure because he does not recount the wrongdoings of others.

Now here is what God said to Moses: Raise the righteous in the spiritual world where they cause joy, called 'head,' for the service that they do in Dispersion (Gershon is a hint to this since that word means 'I am a stranger here.')

Art: Procession of Souls By Louis Welden Hawkins

Bamidbar – Why count the community of Israel?

“God spoke to Moses in the Sinai Desert, in the Communion Tent...saying 'Take a census of the entire community of Israel.'”

To explain this, the Zohar goes all the way back to God creating a man and a woman, the man violating the first commandment, and how the rectification of his act was started with Adam's son, then continuing with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and still not be completed until the descendants of the twelve tribes accepted the Torah. It was not completed until the building of the Communion Tent, with its most important part – the Ark, containing the Tablets.

The actual means of correction was God's love to Israel, exhibited through counting the community three times. This counting served to bind their souls to the spiritual worlds above and correct both the souls and the worlds. Thus the words “in the Sinai Desert" and "in the Communion Tent,” which seem to be redundant, in reality, denote different worlds – giving Israel connection to both the theory and the practice of the Divine love.

Art: Adam and Eve Mourning for Abel By Johann Liss