Naso 5772

It is a well-known fact that Naso is the longest Parsha in the Torah with 176 verses.  (Interestingly, it is not the most difficult to prepare. As the reading contains twelve repetitions of the five-verse section which describes the offerings of the Princes, a substantial portion of the Parsha can be mastered in minutes!) .We also find this number as the number of pages in the longest tractate in Babylonian Talmud, Bava Basra.  Likewise, the longest psalm in Tehillim is Chapter 119 which has – you guessed it – 176 verses.

What is the significance of the number 176? 

It represents the combination of two key numbers since it is the product of 22 times 8.  The number 22 represents the letters of the entire Hebrew alphabet and as such signifies a body of material that is all encompassing in its length and breadth. 

Maharal explains that the number 6 represents the physical world as it corresponds to the six directions – up, down, right, left, forward and back – in which a person can travel from a point in physical space. The number 7 is symbolic of the spiritual core of the physical world which gives it coherence and meaning. Thus, we have the six weekdays devoted to physical labor and the seventh – Shabbos – which gives them their ultimate spiritual dimension.

The number 8, being one higher than seven, rises beyond the material world and symbolizes the supernatural.  Bris Milah, for example, is performed on the eighth day as it is the supernatural perfection of the body; Chanukah is celebrated for eight days as it commemorates a supernatural miracle of the oil lasting much longer than the laws of chemistry and physics would have allowed for.

This is also alluded to in Az Yashir, the song of Moshe and the Jewish people at the Red Sea. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 91b) comments that the use of the future tense (Yashir) alludes to the future resurrection when Moshe will rise from the dead and perform the song again. Of course, resurrection is the most supernatural event that can be imagined and it has a connection to the very word Az whose numerical value is 8.

So the formula of the number 22 – the vastness and completeness of torah – times the number 8 – the supernatural – comes together to create the infinite depth of the number 176.  On the Shabbos after Shavuos, having committed ourselves again to lives of Torah study and observance, we are given this particular portion of the Torah.  We know that Psalm 119 is Dovid HaMelech’s love song for the Torah in which he declares his total devotion to it. So too does this number find its way into the Oral Law. Although the pagination of the Talmud is a human creation, we know that nothing is by coincidence alone. The fact that the largest tractate has this same number of pages reflects upon the breadth and depth of the Talmud and the Oral Law generally.