Thesis: Judaism focuses on the power of the
individual instead of the power of the masses
Question: Why is it so dangerous to count the Jews?
Answer: By counting Jews we symbolize that we only
have power in numbers, when in truth we have power in the individual.
If you’ve watched Sesame Street, then
you know the Count – he is the purple character dressed as “Count” Dracula. You
probably also know his signature line, “they call me the Count because I
love to count”. If the Count was in shul today, he would be both extremely happy
and very disappointed. He would be happy because we start the Parsha by
counting the Jews – very fun and lots to count. But he would have also been
very sad since in the same section we are told that we are forbidden to count
the Jews.
The parsha starts:
כִּי תִשָּׂא אֶת־רֹאשׁ בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל
לִפְקֻדֵיהֶם וְנָתְנוּ אִישׁ כֹּפֶר נַפְשׁוֹ לַיהֹוָה בִּפְקֹד אֹתָם
וְלֹא־יִהְיֶה בָהֶם נֶגֶף בִּפְקֹד אֹתָם׃
When you take a
census of the Israelite men according to their army enrollment, each shall pay
a ransom for himself on being enrolled, that no plague may come upon them
through their being enrolled.
Hashem tells Moshe that counting the
Jews can lead to a plague and therefore you should not count the Jews directly.
Instead of counting the Jews directly, Hashem directs the Jews to give a machatzis
Ha’Shekel – a half a shekel – which would be counted and from there they
could deduce the number of Jews. Just take the amount of money and double it
and it will give the number of Jews who donated. However, Hashem gives a very
clear warning that counting the Jews can bring a plague. This does happen later
in Jewish History. Dovid Ha’Melech wanted to count the Jews directly to see how
many troops he had but was warned against doing so by his advisor Yoav.
However, he decides to count the Jews anyway and there is a large plague that
killed 70,000 Jews.
Additionally, this halacha is brought
down in Shulchan Aruch and if you see many people who are careful about
this halacha, they will count the men for a minyan using a
backhanded method. Often this is a passuk with 10 words or counting
kippot instead of people.
The question that we need to ask is
why is Hashem so against counting us directly? What is the problem with
counting Jews, and if you are required to count, why does it need to be in a
backhanded manner? Why is it so terrible to count Jews directly that it can
lead to national catastrophe?
Many commentaries give suggestions to
why we cannot count the Jews. Most are related to the idea that by counting
people you are singling them out and taking them out of the group. The with the
larger message that it is important for us to be a unified group instead of
many individuals. While this is a beautiful idea, I would like to explore a
different avenue of interpretation suggested by Rabbi Johnathan Sacks.
When we think of counting people, we
think of strength. Think of Risk – the board game – the strength of each player
is determined by the total number of people he has on the board. The more
people, the stronger the position. There is no way a player with only 5
soldiers is going to attack a bordering county with 10 soldiers and 5 cannons.
The problem with defining strength in
this way is that the Jews are a very small group of people. When the Hashem
describes our size at the end of Devarim he says:
לֹא מֵרֻבְּכֶם מִכׇּל־הָעַמִּים חָשַׁק יְהֹוָה
בָּכֶם וַיִּבְחַר בָּכֶם כִּי־אַתֶּם הַמְעַט מִכׇּל־הָעַמִּים׃
It is not because
you are the most numerous of peoples that יהוה
grew attached to you and chose you—indeed, you are the smallest of peoples.
There are barely 15 million Jews on
Earth, making up 0.2% of the world population – a completely insignificant
group. We are smaller than a statistical error in the Chinese census!
The danger in
counting the Jews is that if we believe for even a moment our strength lies in
our numbers, we will become obliterated. In
terms of strength in numbers we can barely make a dent. Numbers is not our
strength.
This parsha, however, does tells us
our strength – in order to count the Jews, you need to count their
contributions. We may not have many people, but we can leave a major impression
from the contributions we give. The Torah is telling us not to count the
Jews by their number, but by the contributions that they can give.
There is an incredible episode in
Tanach where Hashem takes the time to deliberately drive this point home. The
story Gidon. Hashem tells him to take an army to fight the Midyanim, so Gidon,
as any military officer would do, assembles the largest army he can – 32,000
men. Hashem tells him “You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into
their hands”. Gidon announces that anyone who wants to go home can do so, and 22,000
men leave, leaving him with 10,000 men. Hashem tells Gidon again, there are too
many men. This time Hashem tells him to observe how the men drink from the
river. The majority drink directly from the stream and are sent home, however, 300
men put the water in their hands before drinking it and Hashem chooses them to
fight the battle.
It is at this point that Hashem
approves of the mission and tells Gidon “With the three hundred men that
lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands.”
Hashem is proving a message to Gidon
and the Jewish people that our strength does not lie in numbers but in our
individual abilities to contribute. It is not about war, but the ability of
each individual to make an impact. Gidon may have only had 300 soldiers, but
they each fought with much more dedication and force than those of an army that
relied on numbers.
As Jews, we are known for being large
contributors to society. This is true in classical culture from great thinkers
like Sigmond Freud, Einstein, and Milton Friedman to basic staples such as Levi
Strauss and American Eagle. Jews have won over 900 Nobel Prizes –
slightly over 20% – more than 100x our population representation. Within
our own group we have created incredible works from the vastness of the Talmud
to the creativity of the Medrish. If there is one thing we can do in society it
is making a large contribution.
As we reflect on how we think of our
role in the community, is it that we are just one of many or are we able to
make an impact on our own? There are so many opportunities to go beyond being
just another person and making a massive impact. This can be helping community
members during lifecycle events when they need some more help, or being the
person, the shul can count on when a task needs to be done.
Unlike the Count in Sesame Street, we
don’t count the people in the room, we count the contributions the individuals give.