Bamidbar: Making it Count

Tammy related to me the following story about her father. As many of you know, her father Rabbi Herbert Morris of blessed memory, served the Jewish community of San Francisco for 43 years. She told me of his daily practice in the morning, looking in the mirror, he’d say to himself, “Nu, Chayim, how will you be a blessing to others today?” Being a blessing to others --and being so every day; a worthy aspiration. Important to think about. I will come back to this in a moment.

We begin the reading of the fourth book of the Torah this morning, the Book of Numbers. The name comes from the first major theme of the book, numbering the people of Israel, that is, taking a census. We read God’s command to Moses, “Take a census of the entire assembly of the Children of Israel according to their families, according to their fathers’ households, by number of names, every male according to their head count…from twenty years of age up” (Num 1:1-3).

Now, men over the age of twenty were of the age fit to go out to war. Moses knows that war is inevitable in the desert; he needed to count the people to know the strength of his troops. It was a matter of life and death. In the second book of Samuel, King David does the same thing as we read there, “David counted the people who were with him and appointed over them officers of thousands and officers of hundreds” (II Sam 18:1). The Talmud, however, has issues with the taking of the census and counting Jews in general. In Masechet Yoma (22b), it proves the prohibition against counting by citing this verse in the Prophet Hosea: “And the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which will neither be measured or counted.” Already in Exodus, we learn of the “sin” of counting Jews from the following verse in chapter 30: “When you take the sum of the children of Israel according to their counting, then each man will give atonement for his soul when you count them; then there will be no plague as you count them” (v.12). If you count, you have to ask to be forgiven for your sin. So don’t count if you don’t have to.

The commentators claim that the counting of the Israelites in the Torah always happened indirectly. For example, they’d count the half shekel tax levied on all Israelites and from that, they’d come up with the total number of adults among the people. Counting Jews was a serious business that brought plague and disaster if done improperly; if done for a reason other than to fulfill God’s direct command. For example, King David was punished for taking a second census of the people later on in the book of Samuel (II Samuel 24:2). God didn’t command this census, rather, David wanted numbers to satisfy his curiosity as he says, “[take the census] so that I may know [the numbers of my warriors].” For this sin, God took the lives of 70,000 of his men and almost destroyed David’s city, Jerusalem.

Those of you who are minyan-goers have probably witnessed our angst as we wait for the tenth person to join us to make up the minyan. As we have seen, Jewish tradition discourages our counting so we use a trick to count: we recite a 10 word verse from Psalms 28 (v.9), hoshia et amecha, u’vareach nachalatecha, ur’em v’nasem ad olam.” This verse has nothing to do with minyan: it just has ten words: if we have one person for each word, we daven.

So we don’t count Jews, or if we do, we do so carefully and only for Divine purposes. And although no reason is given for this prohibition, we can imagine its rationale. Counting people is risky from a spiritual perspective. It can be dehumanizing. We have seen the numbered forearms of concentration camp survivors: the Nazis took away the names and identities of their victims and referred to them by number. You can kill a number; numbers hide personalities, personal histories, and personhood. We have some 300 people in the sanctuary today –but that number tells us very little about what is actually going on here. . Each person in this room is a world onto him/herself. Our tradition teaches us that he who saves a single human being is as if he has saved the whole world. This is looking at the individual from God’s perspective. If each human soul is made in the image of God, then each individual is as important to us as God. We are not defined by the collective: we are defined by the quality of each individual soul.

On the other hand, and this is a very Jewish thing,there is always an “other hand,” we do count Jews, we just do it cleverly. Whether it is by the half shekel tax or reciting verses or demographic studies: we are still counting individual Jews to know who comprises what we call, Jewish community. But I think there is a lesson in that, as well. When we count the ten of the minyan, we are saying, in effect, that each person in the room makes a difference; each individual “counts,” if you will; there is no community without each and every one of them. It is amusing in the minyan when the tenth person walks into the room. We are so grateful that we give that person a position of honor for the morning. But then we all think to ourselves that once the tenth person walks in, everyone suddenly becomes the tenth person. All become equal, all become important, in fact, all become indispensable in making a single unified whole: a minyan, that can now begin the morning prayers.

We count, when we as individuals make a difference for the benefit of the whole community. This week, we have all been reading about President Obama’s recent nomination to the US Supreme Court, Elena Kagan. Whether you are in support or not of Ms. Kagan’s judicial proclivities, I suspect most of you have taken note that Ms. Kagan had a Bat Mitzvah when she was 13 years old. If she is confirmed by the Senate, she will make the third Jewish Supreme Court Justice in an august body of nine. One third of the Supreme Court coming from a people making up less than 2% of the population in this country.

For American Jews, their small numbers do not adequately reflect the out sized contribution they make to our country. One justice among nine, one minyanaire among ten, one mother or father or sibling in a family; one worker in a corporation, on senator among 100. Contributions are made by individuals; individuals make the difference, but they make a difference in community.

So we are uncomfortable counting Jews but we do so all the time. We do so every time our tradition encourages us as individuals, to, as the saying goes, “stand up and be counted;” to go out into the world and do some good. So my father-in -law would say every morning in front of the mirror: "Nu, Chayim, how can you make a difference today in touching other human beings?" We should all ask ourselves the same question every day.