Counting the Numbers
I can’t imagine why, but this year I’ve been particularly struck by all the plague related content sprinkled throughout the Torah. In past years, plagues have always seemed like metaphors for greater threats or external burdens we place on ourselves. This year plagues feel very real.
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I can’t imagine why, but this year I’ve been particularly struck by all the plague related content sprinkled throughout the Torah. In past years, plagues have always seemed like metaphors for greater threats or external burdens we place on ourselves. This year plagues feel very real.
This week’s portion, Ki Tisa, is the longest in the book of Exodus, and contains a dramatic description of G-d inscribing two tablets with the 10 Commandments. Before all of that, though, in the opening lines of portion, G-d commands Moses to take a census of the Israelite people, and includes a curious instruction about the plague related consequences of improperly counting the people.
Exodus 30:11
The LORD spoke to Moses, saying:
When you take a census of the Israelite people according to their enrollment, each shall pay the LORD a ransom for himself on being enrolled, that no plague may come upon them through their being enrolled.
Numbers are as tricky in Jewish life as they are in science. The rabbis of the Talmud says that blessings never accompany matters which are subject to counting, measuring or weighing.
The medieval French rabbi Rashi comments that:
“numbers are subject to the influence of the evil eye and therefore if you count them by their polls pestilence may befall them, as we find happened in the days of David.”
The evil eye, the “ayin hara” in Hebrew, is a superstitious belief embedded in the heart of Judaism. Sarah casts the evil eye on Hagar, as she throws her out of Abraham’s tent. Every year, Jews perform Tashlich, the ritual throwing bread into a flowing body of water on Rosh Hashanah, a common Jewish practice for discarding sin leading up to Yom Kippur. Some rabbinic authorities encourage throwing bread into water inhabited by fish, as fish are immune to the effects of the evil eye. But among my favorite ways the connection between counting and negativity manifests itself in Jewish life is the superstitious reluctance of most Jews to count each other, an interpersonal drama that plays out multiple times a day.
Jewish tradition encourages communal prayer, and some prayers can only be said in the presence of a minyan—or group of 10 eligible worshipers, a prayer quorum. There are different eligibility standards in different parts of the Jewish community, some which count women and which don’t, some which count converts and some which don’t, all of them though find creative ways of counting to 10, without resorting to numbers, because we’re superstitious about drawing the evil eye and bringing a plague on our heads. It’s a mistake, as Rashi reminds us, that even the great King David committed when he ordered his clerks to conduct a census of the Israelite kingdom.
II Samuel 24:1
The anger of the LORD again flared up against Israel; and He incited David against them, saying, “Go and number Israel and Judah.”
The king said to Joab, -his army commander, “Make the rounds of all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beer-sheba, and take a census of the people, so that I may know the size of the population.”
Joab answered the king, “May the LORD your God increase the number of the people a hundredfold, while your own eyes see it! But why should my lord king want this?”
However, the king’s command to Joab and to the officers of the army remained firm; and Joab and the officers of the army set out, at the instance of the king, to take a census of the people of Israel.
They crossed the Jordan and encamped at Aroer, on the right side of the town, which is in the middle of the wadi of Gad, and [went on] to Jazer.
They continued to Gilead and to the region of Tahtim-hodshi, and they came to Dan-jaan and around to Sidon.
They went onto the fortress of Tyre and all the towns of the Hivites and Canaanites, and finished at Beer-sheba in southern Judah.
They traversed the whole country, and then they came back to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days.
Joab reported to the king the number of the people that had been recorded: in Israel there were 800,000 soldiers ready to draw the sword, and the men of Judah numbered 500,000.
But afterward David reproached himself for having numbered the people. And David said to the LORD, “I have sinned grievously in what I have done. Please, O LORD, remit the guilt of Your servant, for I have acted foolishly.”
When David rose in the morning, the word of the LORD had come to the prophet Gad, David’s seer:
“Go and tell David, ‘Thus said the LORD: I hold three things over you; choose one of them, and I will bring it upon you.’”
Gad came to David and told him; he asked, “Shall a seven-year famine come upon you in the land, or shall you be in flight from your adversaries for three months while they pursue you, or shall there be three days of pestilence in your land? Now consider carefully what reply I shall take back to Him who sent me.”
David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hands of the LORD, for His compassion is great; and let me not fall into the hands of men.”
The LORD sent a pestilence upon Israel from morning until the set time; and 70,000 of the people died, from Dan to Beer-sheba.
We’re counting lots of numbers these days—tracking cases locally, nationally and even internationally. We’ve counted degrees of exposure and levels of risk. We’ve counted hospitalizations, recoveries, and deaths. We’ve counted votes and yes in 2020 the United States even conducted the census our constitution requires every ten years.
At different times over the past year all of this counting has left each of us feeling lost, overwhelmed, and even hopeless to varying degrees. It’s introduced a degree of negativity into our lives, in addition to the actual plague we’re all facing right now. We’ll continue to count vaccinations, the number of people allowed in a coffee shop, and days until we see family again, probably for a few months. What the Torah reminds us this week, though, is how overwhelmingly negative that practice can be, and how much it can poison our lives.
We’ll be returning to more normal spaces in the coming months, slowly at first, and then more rapidly, at least that’s the plan. When we are finally able to set down the burden of counting the toll this plague has taken on our lives, and step back into our physical communities, we’ll face new challenges of counting.
How many people equals a successful program? How many children should Jewish young adults be having? How many members are joining the synagogue?
The pandemic has forced us to learn new lessons, about the importance of community, even as redefined what community looks like, and discovered new ways to be in meaningful community together, like this podcast. I hope one of the lessons we internalize, especially in the Jewish community, is the negative impact so much emphasis on counting and numbers can have on our honest efforts to build a stronger, more vibrant Jewish community.
At the very least our focus on numbers of new babies and new members can be distracting, and while in the end it might not attract the ayin hara, and bring a literal plague down on our heads it certainly leads to an outbreak of dwindling vibrancy and empty Jewish spaces by alienating the very people we are trying to engage with.
As we approach the one year anniversary of this nightmare, yet another thing to count, and look forward to being in physical community again, my hope is that our obsession with metrics in the Jewish world will wane, just a bit, so our obsession with vibrancy for vibrancy’s sake can grow, no matter how many people are there to see it.
Shabbat Shalom
