The very name of the biblical Book of Numbers, which we begin reading this week, is the tip of a very problematic iceberg. You see, it is called the Book of Numbers because it begins with – well, you guessed it – numbers, and lots of them. Almost the whole first Torah portion is taken up by the census that Moshe conducted of the Israelites in the desert. The numbers of each tribe are recorded, as well of course as the sum total of people. And this is a census taken at the behest of no less than the Almighty.
What’s the problem, you ask. The issue is that there is a significant strand in our tradition that holds that counting people is forbidden. There are verses in the Book of Exodus that seem to hint that one cannot count people, and furthermore, later on in the Bible and in Jewish history, King David is severely punished for conducting a census. We have a seeming contradiction on our hands.
Counting people, according to Rav Mordechai Yosef Leiner, the author of the Mei haShiloach, can be a two edged sword. There is a type of counting that turns people into nothing more than a number. It robs them of their individual identity, treating them as nameless elements of a collective, like animals in a herd. Such counting may be dehumanizing, and indeed the Torah forbids it.
There is however, another type of counting that actually validates the uniqueness of those that are counted. It recognizes and highlights the personality and contribution of each human being.
When does counting smother the individual and when does it exalt him? We are robbed of our individuality when we are nothing more than a number. When the counting is a matter of ‘one size fits all’, when it doesn’t matter who the people are as long as there is a certain number of them - this is the type of counting that creates anonymity. ‘You ten over’ is the type of thing that the Torah frowns upon.
On the other hand, this week’s Torah portion recounts that when God commanded Moshe to count the Israelites in the desert, He told him to count them by name. Each Israelite was recognized as the bearer of a name born by no one else. As each Israelite passed by Moshe and recited his name, he was exalted before God and his uniqueness recognized. At that moment the person experienced the truth that ‘there is no one exactly like me.’ No two people had the same name, just like no two people have the same personality.
And you know what? God may actually want us all to be different. He could have created us all the same, but he didn’t. According to our rabbis in Tractate Sanhedrin, it is a wonderful miracle that God created us all from the same two – Adam and Eve – yet we all are uniquely different. Yes Judaism requires a certain degree of conformity, but according to a central current within our tradition, we are actually asked to resist the temptation to always follow the leader. Each person must find his own voice, his own unique perspective and contribution.
If we could all be so bold for a moment, think of a ‘picture’ of God. Rabbi Mordechai Yosef compares the Jewish People to a giant mosaic that makes up the image of God. Each tile is different. Each one is a different color. And God’s image is complete only when each tile plays its own individual role.
And so if you aren’t authentic to your own name, your own personality, your own way of looking at things, God’s image in the world is lacking.
God needs you to be you, to be a name and not just a number.
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