Scholars often puzzle at why our upcoming book of Torah, known in Hebrew as B’midbar, meaning “Wilderness,” is known (rather dryly) in English as “Numbers.” The seemingly odd coupling of “Wilderness” and “Numbers” in this chapter refers to the first action the community takes in the wilderness under God’s directive. Moses organizes the people in a census, counting each family – head by head, tribe by tribe.
The language our parasha uses to describe the census roll call reveals that counting is more than a dry, practical matter. To read the first lines closely, Adonai doesn’t just say, “Number them.” God speaks to Moses, saying, “S’u et Rosh” – literally “lift up the head” of each member of the Israelite community. The Rabbinic scholar Ramban notes that the word “s’u” is only used when the intention is to indicate an honor (as in “holding one’s head high”). We learn from the word choice that to count each contributing member of the community was God’s way of not only conferring protection for the families, but also dignity and respect for the particular contributions that each brought to the whole.
We’ve come a long way since the first census of our ancestors, one that was flawed in conferring “counted” status only to men of the age to bear arms. Notes Rabbi Margaret Moses Wenig of AJWS, about B’midbar:
“Where are the women?…These women also left Egypt and reached this spot in the wilderness. They too collected manna and helped build the Tabernacle. They were there all right, but the omission of their names renders them invisible… All those who are too young or too old to bear arms or serve as active members of the priesthood aren’t worth mentioning by name or number. How can we imagine the wandering Israelites in the desert without thinking about the women carrying children, the teenagers becoming the first generation to enter adulthood in freedom, or the elders who had dreamed about living to see the Land of Israel? Those who are marginalized by the counting are still essential to the story.”
Her critique of the limitations of this dignity-conferring census calls me to attune to the many identities we’re still struggling to fully embrace and “count” in our current world. In what ways might we “lift the heads” of more people around us by communicating that they count in our community? In what ways do our stories of belonging call us to new ways of knowing and naming one another, beyond the numbers?