42 Revisited
Several years ago, I wrote the blog 42-and-masay in which I noted that there were 42 designated cities of refuge in all and 42 encampment in the desert. Subsequently, when reviewing Parshas Shmos , I noticed that the gematria of eheye is 21, so the original version of the name that Hashem imparts to Moshe that includes ehey e twice is 42. I wrote: "That may be an allusion to the number of encampments they ended up with that Moshe considered too discouraging to hear about from the outset." It took until July 2026 for me to see that others have declared that gematria to be canonical -- and that it relates to the Divine Name of 42 --rather than just my guess in a parsha piece by Rav Baruch Rosenblum. He wrote: "As is known, Bnei Yisrael traveled through forty-two journeys in the wilderness, and corresponding to them there are forty-two lines in a Sefer Torah, and the Aseret Hadibrot on the Luchot contained forty-two lines. The forty-t...
