Happy New Year all! It’s been a minute since IDROS felt inspired enough to put fingers to keyboard. In many ways, IDROS, like many of you, has been mired for the past year and a quarter in a crippling state of shock. But we must persist. And so IDROS moves forward, much like the nomadic tribe of his ancestors, through the desert fleeing bondage.
Numbers is the fourth book of the Torah.
Numbers continues the story of the Jews’ escape from bondage, and delivers us to the land of Israel, the Promised Land. The Book’s importance to our story cannot be overstated, just as numbers are intertwined with humanity.
First there was creation. Second came freedom. Third, the rule of law. But without numbers, how would we understand the order of things?
Numbers don’t lie. Numbers are ubiquitous in life, death and throughout the universe.
Numbers help us to measure, compare, catalog, calibrate, categorize, name, differentiate, urinate, defecate, navigate, investigate, rate, rank, code and even paint (for those of us not blessed with artistic talent).
Numbers also mark human wrists like cattle.
It’s no accident I am writing this on 1/7, exactly 10 years after the terrorist attack in Paris on Charlie Hebdo.
10 and 7 are numbers.
5785 is a number.
1.6 billion is a number.
15,000,000 is a number.
55 is a number.
1 is a number.
6,000,000 is a number.
1,200 is a number.
240 is a number.
101 is a number.
2025 is a number…
The year reads as if out of a science fiction novel or movie. And the past five years, ten if I’m being honest, have fit the bill.
Reeling from the crushing blow that was October 7, 2023, I trudge through the sand dunes and scorched earth of modern Jewish life, bearing witness to another agonizing hate crime, campus encampment, terrorist ramming or award show double standard.
I truly felt that morning of 10/7 as though I literally had the wind knocked out of me, and have been trying to catch my breath ever since. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. My grandparents had suffered so much, sacrificed so much to ensure that.
We had just survived a pandemic!
And just as the world began to revel in that triumph, as ebullience gripped the economy and ushered in a new Roaring 20’s exactly one century later, IDROS’ people, the world’s rounding error, were doomed to continue our quarantine in a new ghetto fortified by a new spin on humanity’s oldest prejudice. This has been a nightmare far worse than Covid…and now, we weren’t the ones wearing masks.
It has been a trying five years and an unthinkable 460 odd days. Bearing witness to the pervasive and incessant hatred has been harrowing. But the silence and ambivalence has been far worse. Raising children amid this cruelty is a Herculean test.
Still, the more and more IDROS reflects, the more he believes this time is pivotal, even monumental for Jews and our brave allies everywhere. Sure, there have been times of relative peace and prosperity for us as a people…most of us grew up and lived the majority of our lives during such a time, and we were blessed! Blessed for the sacrifices of the millions who paid the ultimate price, the millions more, who like IDROS’ grandparents (and those of Mrs. IDROS), somehow clung to life among the ruins, and last, but certainly not least, blessed for the brave actions of our allies, soldiers and citizens who risked everything at a time when humanity had dipped further into the bowels of hell than ever before, and through their courage, saved humanity from eternal damnation.
It is imperative we honor the memory of the 6 million, and of the 1,200, and of the countless others who we lost along the way. We cannot allow their deaths to be in vain. It’s our time to grab the reins from our grandparents and help ensure that our story continues.
Having Israel is a huge bonus, one our grandparents suffered without. But there is still work to be done across the diaspora. Don’t sit on the sidelines. We have an opportunity to build a better future for not just the Jewish people, but all of the civilized world. It seems daunting. We are outnumbered. But we always have been.
IDROS loves numerology and Gematria. Numbers don’t lie. People lie, but numbers are beacons of truth.
In Numbers god takes a census, the first census, of the Jewish people. Then, 40 years later, a second census is taken, and each counts almost the same exact number of people. There are now approximately the same number of Jews worldwide as there were prior to the Holocaust. We know this because we continue god’s work. This must have significance.
October 7, 2023. This date was significant. Its aftermath is significant.
In the Jewish calendar, the date was the 22/23 Tishrei, 5784.
Tishrei is the seventh month in the Jewish calendar, and means beginning.
By the time the atrocities of 10/7 were known across the diaspora, and we had time to digest the horror, it was 23 Tishrei. 23-7-5784.
2+3+7 = 12
5+7+8+4 = 24
12+24 = 36
18 represents Chai, meaning life, in Hebrew.
The Gematria of 10/7 is double Chai.
IDROS interprets this as a new beginning for life, for both Israel, and for the Jews of the diaspora.
L’chaim.
Thanks as always for reading,
IDROS #BringThemHomeNow
idontrollonshabbas 