A person's a person, no matter how small!
And you very small persons will not have to die
If you make yourselves heard! So come on, now, and TRY!
- Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who (1954)
Regardless of whether or not we view the Torah as historical truth or a divinely-inspired text, the Torah-text focuses almost exclusively on the lives of the Israelites elites, the people who are directly receiving God’s messages and commands for the people. While we learn a great deal about Moses, Miriam, and Aaron, we learn very little about the everyday lives of ordinary Israelites, which might lead one to conclude that the Torah is simply not concerned about individuals, and sees the Israelites as a single corporate entity. However, in Parashat Bemidbar, where Moses is commanded to take another census of the Israelites, our commentators’ understanding our parasha’s message will teach us, like Dr. Seuss writes, that a person’s a person, and that counts a great deal.
Parashat Bemidbar opens the fourth book of the Torah with God commanding Moses to, “Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head” (Bemidbar 1:1-3). On the one hand, almost all our commentators who take a peshat (contextual) approach to reading our parasha argue that the census in our parasha was given solely for the purpose of identifying those males fit for military conscription. However, the question remains as to why God would command a census at all, for surely God would be able to count the Israelites without the aid of Moses and the Israelite leadership.
In a medieval commentary, the Ramban argues that the taking on census is more a theological statement than a practical one, because God wanted to the Israelites and the world to see how much God’s chosen people grew in size from the time when Jacob and his family went down to Egypt, seventy in number, until the time when the Israelites were ready to journey to Canaan. The Ramban states (emphasis mine):
“It was necessary for the Torah to record the total number after giving the details because Moses and Aaron had been commanded to ascertain the number of the people and the number of each tribe, for this was the manner of kings to number the people. But I have not understood the reason for this commandment, why God ordered it (i.e. to record the general total). It was necessary to know the number of each tribe separately for the purpose of the arrangement of the camp according to standards, but why was it necessary to know the general number? Perhaps the idea was to make known God’s loving kindness unto them, that when their fathers went down to Egypt they numbered only seventy souls and now they were as the sand of the sea. And after every pestilence and plague God numbered them in order to make known that although he wounds, he also makes whole again, in accordance with what our Sages said, “out of an abundance of love for them God numbers them frequently.”” (Ramban on Bemidbar 1:45).
In this commentary, the Ramban points out that commanding Moses to go through a human-driven process of counting the Israelites will allow the Israelites to discover themselves how much they have grown in number. By extension, by allowing the Israelites to realize for themselves how much they’ve grown as a people, they will also come to realize that God’s promise that Abraham’s descendants would be as numerous as the “sands in the sea” had finally come to pass.
While the Ramban that asking Moses to take a census at all reveals an important theological message, the Torah commentary of Rabbi Yosef Karo, known as the Toldot Yitzhak, argues that how Moses and Aaron took the census itself also reveals a message about the connection between God and the Israelites. Karo states:
“The Israelites were not counted by their heads, nor were they counted by giving the half-shekel. Each person wrote down his name on a slip of paper and gave it to Moses our Teacher, Aaron and the heads of the Tribes. Then the slips of paper were counted. This form of census portrayed a great level for the Israelites, since each one was counted separately. In this way God would remember each and everyone for a blessing” (Toldot Yitzhak on Bemidbar 1:2).
For the Toldot Yitzhak, each individual (male) Israelite had the opportunity to be counted as a distinct individual in the census taken in Parashat Bemidbar. By allowing each person to be counted, individual Israelites were transformed from nameless faces in the proverbial crowd to individuals whose existence matters and is known.
Finally, taking a similar theme to the Toldot Yitzhak, but emphasizing the census’ impact on Moses himself, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev writes in his Kedushat Levi that taking the census was intimately connected to Moses learning the Torah. Rabbi Levi Yitzhak states:
“The verse would have made more sense in the reverse order: Moses counted them, as God had commanded him. But this appear to be the meaning: God gave the Torah to Israel, and the souls of Israel form the body of the Torah. There are six hundred thousand Jewish souls, parallel to the number of letters in the Torah. Israel, in others, are the Torah. Each one of us constitutes one of the Torah’s letters. By counting Israel, therefore, Moses was learning the Torah” (Kedushat Levi on Bemidbar 1:19).
In this final commentary, the taking of a census is akin to learning Torah, the rabbinic ideal of how we engage with God’s message for humanity in our daily lives. If God created human beings in his image, then counting each human being in a census is a reminder that everything we do for humanity imbues our life with God’s worldview for how human beings should treat one another, a world where every person counts.
In each commentary, the ability to recognize and identify the presence of each individual in a community makes an important statement about the spiritual aspirations for the community itself. When a community ensures that no individual is lost in the crowd, and no one’s presence is considered expendable, the community makes a statement about what it means to emphasize dignity, justice and fairness. At Schechter, we pride ourselves on making sure that each child is taught in a way that meets their unique needs, a vision echoed in our parasha, one that we must ensure continues to thrive in our school community and the entire Jewish world.
Shabbat Shalom!
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