Shalom y'all,
I hope you enjoy this vort.

Rashi tells us that even though Hashem counted the yordei mitzraim - those who descended to mitzraim - while they were alive, He counts them again after their death. Just as Hashem counts the stars when he takes them out and again when he brings them back in, so too does He count Klal Yisrael who are compared to stars, when they are alive (when He brings them out)and again in death(when He brings them in.)

Why is Klal Yisroel compared to stars? Perhaps we can explain as follows. The Gemara, berachos 32b, quotes Hashem assuring the yiddin He did not forget them even though they sinned. He proves His love by telling us how He created 12 constellations. Each constellation has 30 "chail" - army generals, signifying an amount of stars. Each chail has 30 "ligyon" - another type of army general - symbolizing a different amount of stars. Each ligyon has 30 "rahaton", each rahaton has 30 "karton", each karton has 30 "gistara", each gistara has 365,000 stars. The total amount of stars must be in the trillions. And all these stars were created only for the sake of Klal Yisrael. This proves His tremendous love for us.

The question is: why does the creation of the stars prove His love more than anything else He created? He created millions of trees, trillions of blades of grass, oceans etc. Why does that not prove His love?

Perhaps we can say that the world inherently requires trees and grass and oceans etc. It would seem that inherently the world did not need this abundance of stars. The reason Hashem created this redundancy of stars was to show His tremendous love for us. ( This is not to say that now the stars are useless - once He created them, He might have created their necessity - just that the inherent reason for creating them was not because they were needed.)

Klal Yisrael is compared to stars in the sense that our service to Hashem is also with an overwhelming redundancy of love, of devotion. We serve Him with an abundance of enthusiasm. When we do a mitzva or learn Torah, we do not do just enough to fulfill our obligation. Rather we do them with an abundance, with a redundancy, of ahavas Hashem,avodas Hashem.

quote:

When we do a mitzva or learn Torah, we do not do just enough to fulfill our obligation. Rather we do them with an abundance, with a redundancy, of ahavas Hashem,avodas Hashem.

I have to agree. I believe the more amazing feat is that He writes the love on our hearts, encodes it into our very DNA. Which makes it very sad, to say the least, to meet someone by evidence of character, or to look into their eyes and witness a complete void.

Just as I believe that each one of those stars has it's own intrinsic purpose and meaning. That each light is a testament to HaShem's inestimable love for His creation.

I want to believe that He allows no light to return, that He brings no light back in without fulfilling His purpose for creating it.

How then do we live in the face of dispicable evil?

B"H

R. Yisroel,

I have generally found that it is easier, as far as Hebrew words that were borrowed from the Latin and Greek are concerned, to translate these words into proper English.

חיל (Chail) = infantrymen

לגיון (Legion) = legions

רהטון (Rahaton) = cohorts

קרטון (Karton) = auxilliaries

גסטרא (Gistara) = camps

Respectfully yours,
David