600,000

The Book of Bamidbar begins with the command to count the Jewish males from the age of twenty to sixty. The purpose of the counting was to bring the Shechina, the Divine Presence, into the Mishkan.

The total was 603,550, where the number, 600,000 was significant in constituting the nation of Israel.

There are two historical “coincidences” connected with the number 600,000 and the number, 1948. The Jewish population of Israel was 600,000 when Israel was declared a state in 1948.

If we do a simple calculation of adding up the generations from Adam to Noach, and Noach to Abraham, we find that twenty generations will have passed. This makes Abraham’s birth taking place 1948 years after creation.

Abraham was the first Jew and is the father of the Jewish people. The State of Israel reflected a rebirth of the Jewish people, as we returned to our ancestral homeland.

What is even more remarkable is comparing the growth of the Jewish people in Egypt and today. In Egypt, we began as a family-nation of seventy, that swelled to 603,550 after 210 years.

The 600,000 that were here in 1948 have grown in seventy eight years to 7.7 million Jews!

This is just another example of outward miracles that we are witnessing right before our eyes. The Shechina was brought into the Mishkan with the presence of 600,000 Jews. The Shechina that helped us through our long and bitter exile, resides again in Israel with the return of our people from the four corners of the earth.