A great camp sits in the desert. Soon, they will set out on their journey. Of such a night before departure, Natan Alterman once wrote:

And with the first light of dawn begins the Book of Numbers:

A roll call of the men, marching orders, flags, and tribes. Each one has a place.

Out of this precise order, from the repetitive structure- tribe by tribe, place by place - words are written that echo nights and days of terror.

They pull us back from the battalions to the individual:

From the nation’s encampment in the wilderness, God’s words fling us back to

A day-or was it night? - of which Nathan Alterman also wrote:

I will return to this poem from Alterman’s Poems of the Plagues of Egypt, written during another time of terror: the days of World War II.

But let’s pause for a moment with the words of the parasha:

A strange exchange takes place here.

“Your firstborns,” says God, “are Mine.” It is a deal forged on the night of the plague of the firstborn. As Egypt’s firstborns died, the firstborns of Israel were seized from their families and consecrated to God. This consecration is “released” in our portion and transferred to the tribe of Levi, who are separated from the other twelve tribes arrayed in the camp. The reason for this is mysterious, and our sages offered many stories to explain it.

But I remain with the firstborns.

These nights, when the IDF shells Gaza, and by morning we hear, from foreign media, since our national channels will not say it, of dozens of dead children… these nights do not release me, even when the light rises.

Then it hits me: Even in the days of the Exodus, the Torah taught us that such killing creates a terrible void in the world. We cannot emerge from Egypt as if nothing happened, even after we walk free. Even once the destroyer’s work is seemingly done, nothing will return to how it was.

For the first time in my life, in the days of this horrifying Gaza war, I hear the books of Exodus and Numbers mourning the death of Egypt’s firstborns—like Alterman did during World War II.

Alterman clothes the Egyptian firstborn in a coat of many colors- dust, star, and tears—and mourns him as if he were Jacob’s beloved son.

We are all one living human fabric.

When the children of the Egyptians die, says the Torah, your children will be consecrated to God.

And now, as we set out on the journey, we will need the Levites, dedicated to healing society and restoring the spirit to the center of our camp.

But first, the dreadful night of the firstborn must come to an end.

Enough killing in Gaza.

Enough of the hardened heart of the Pharaohs. The plague of the firstborn is already here: in their firstborn and ours, we have been struck. Let the Levites now go to work instead of the destroyers.

This piece is dedicated to the mother and father, both doctors, of the nine children of the Al-Najjar family who were killed in an IDF bombing in Khan Younis on May 23, 2025. And to the many other children (about 40,000) orphaned in Gaza by the recent war, and the many thousands of parents who lost their children. It is also dedicated to the families of the hostages still suffering.

So hard is the heart of the Israeli Pharaoh, who has yet to reach an agreement that will free them and end this long night of terror, now lasting over 600 days.

The camp must begin to move.

A long wilderness awaits us, in which we must rebuild our camp.

At its heart, the Levites heal the image of God within each human being.

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