Parshat Beha’alotekha contains one of the Torah’s most unusual textual interruptions: two inverted letters – upside-down nuns – that bracket a brief, self-contained passage describing the Ark’s journey: “When the Ark set out, Moshe would say: ‘Arise, Lord; let Your enemies be scattered, and Your enemies flee before You.’ And when it rested, he said, ‘Return, Lord, to the ten thousand thousands of Yisra᾽el’” (Numbers 10:35,36). The Talmud (Shabbat 116a) regards these two verses as an independent book in their own right, which means the inverted nuns divide the book of Bamidbar into three distinct literary units.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik understood these verses as capturing the Jewish people in motion – a divinely charged march toward the Land of Israel. At this point in the narrative, however, that march came to a halt. The verses are bracketed, enclosed, as if frozen in time. They represent a trajectory toward destiny that was interrupted, precisely because the Jewish people lost focus on the values and vision that should have animated their journey. What follows in the Torah – beginning with chapter 11 of Numbers........

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