The Grass is Not Greener on The Other Side

We follow Israel for the first year in the wilderness. With miracles, wonders and the Divine presence resting over them, they are now complaining and looking back on Egypt as if it were a good place to live. Hebrew for “when you step up,” the 11th word, and the first distinctive word, in the parashah) is the 36th weekly Torah portion(פָּרָשָׁה‎, parashah) in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the third in the Book of Numbers. The parashah tells of the Menorah in the Tabernacle, the consecration of the Levites, the Second Passover, how a cloud and fire led the Israelites, the silver trumpets, how the Israelites set out on their journeys, complaining by the Israelites, and how Miriam and Aaron questioned Moses. The parashah constitutes Numbers 8:1–12:16. It is made up of 7,055 Hebrew letters, 1,840 Hebrew words, and 136 verses, and can occupy about 240 lines in a Torah Scroll (סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה‎, Sefer Torah).