Bemidvar 5772 - English

Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik

Kol Shearith Israel, Panama

“Deliver Your people, bless Your heritage; shepherd them and raise them up forever” (Psalm 28:9).  This verse, which in Hebrew is made up of 10 words, is used to verify the number of people present at the synagogue, to the purpose of seeing whether the minyan needed for praying has been formed.

What is the reason for this strange way of counting, instead of using numbers?

Since ancient times, the idea of counting people has been considered a bad thing.  When King David orders a census of the people, despite Joab’s warnings, he acknowledges that he has done something inappropriate:  “And David's heart smote him after he had counted the people. And David said to the Lord: I have sinned greatly in what I have done; and now, 'O Lord, put aside please, the iniquity of your servant, for I was very foolish!”(2 Samuel 24:10),

As far back as the Talmud (Yoma 22b), Rabbi Eleazar established the prohibition to count the Israelites in a direct manner, based on the verse that begins this week’s Haftarah:  “The number of the people of Israel shall be like that of the sands of the sea, which cannot be measured or counted” (Hosea 2:1).

It is possible that the words of the prophet were placed there to balance the content of Parashat Bemidbar, composed entirely of numbers.  First, the census of the people, just a year after their departure from Egypt, and then, the first part of the Levites’ census.

These censuses were vitally important to organize the logistics of the journey through the wilderness.  Recording the men who were 20-years-old or above constituted an indispensable reference for the structuring of the army, while the count of the Levites, one-month or older, allowed for an accurate estimate of the compensation for the first-borns redemption (Num. 3:11-13) and, even more importantly, for determining the tasks and responsibilities involved with the Mishkan’s (Tabernacle) functioning and management.

Although the Torah (Num. 1:2 and 3:15) establishes that these censuses were ordered by God (unlike the one performed by King David, which according to the author of the first book of Chronicles – 21:1 – was Satan’s idea), it is clear that indirect forms of counting are preferable, such as that of the half Shekel (Ex. 30:11-16), where each person contributed with a coin for that value and, once the total contribution was collected, it was easy to determine the number of people.  Such is the explanation given by Ramban (Nachmanides), on his commentary at the beginning of our parashah (Num. 1:3).

We could wonder about this opposition to the traditional censuses developed by our tradition.  Perhaps its origin could be based on an ancient superstition (counting people brings bad luck).  In fact, if we recall that, in ancient times, censuses were carried out in order to collect taxes or recruit men for the militia, it is clear why people considered a census as bad news.

Nevertheless, we could find a meaningful reason for its being so in our times as well.  Often, by counting people we turn them into a number.  We strip them of their identity and humanity, and transform them into objects.  Statistics, so useful as an analytic tool, can also be used as a means of objectification.

Therefore, in this over-populated world, where large cities alienate us and advertising aims to massify us, recovering the uniqueness of each person is a valuable message which we should brandish, instead of becoming a number, so as to reaffirm our condition as divine creatures.

According to the web page http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html, there are 7,014,866,348 people in the planet, but even so, the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5) teaches us that “each and every one is obliged to say, ‘For my sake the world was created.’"

Shabbat shalom,

Gustavo