Мусар к Бамидбар 4:21

This Parshah deals primarily with the camp of the Israelites. This is strongly suggested by the statement in 8,6: קח את הלוים מתוך בני ישראל וטהרת אותם, "Take the Levites from amongst the Israelites, and purify them." Since the Levites acted as the atonement for the Israelites, they were commanded to place their hands on them (8,10). They were then able to atone for the sin of the golden calf which Israel had made and which the firstborn had worshipped, as Rashi points out on verse 7 in the name of Rabbi Moshe Hadarshan. It follows that the sanctity of the Levites caused a degree of sanctity to be bestowed on the Israelites. This is why the Israelites are mentioned five times in 8,19. Rashi explains that this number corresponds to the five books of the Torah and that it underlines how beloved the Israelites were in the eyes of G–d. This quintuple belovedness refers to the five parts of the soul of the Jewish people, i.e. the נשמה, רוח, נפש, חיה, יחידה, that we discussed in Parshat Nasso. The Levites are perceived as the messengers or agents of the Israelites, and we have a halachic ruling that a man's messenger has equal standing in law to the man who has appointed him as such.

וכי תשגו ולא תעשו את כל המצות האלה . Midrash Tanchuma as well as the Yalkut Shimoni, have the following comment on Leviticus 4,2: "When a person unknowingly commits a transgression in respect of any of G–d's negative commandments, etc." They say that this verse teaches us that transgression of any prohibition is equivalent to transgression of all of the Torah's commandments. Conversely, the Reishit Chochmah writes in Parshat Nasso, that if one performs a single positive commandment in all its pertinent details, it is as if one had performed all 248 positive commandments. The reason of course, is that there is no מצוה that does not contain some element of all the other מצות. Having said this, we understand why transgression of a single negative commandment is viewed as if one had transgressed all of them, seeing that it involved negation of those particular elements of all the other negative commandments that were associated with the single negative commandment one has flouted. This is the real meaning of the wording of the verse quoted above in 15,22.

From all the above, it is clear that the Kehatites who are mentioned in Parshat Bamidbar are part of the כהנים, i.e. the מחנה שכינה, whereas the Gersonites discussed in Parshat Nasso are part of the מחנה לויה, which are the רוח אדם. This is to tell us that the damage done by the sin of "Adam," is capable of rehabilitation.