Scholars often puzzle at why our upcoming book of Torah – known in Hebrew as B’midbar, or 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. This census, or accounting for each contributing member of the community, is unique and instructive to us in this season of regathering and re-imagining how to show up for one another. Gathering to acknowledge each other’s presence is God’s way of reassuring the community that exactly the people who need to be present are present, to navigate the many unknowns ahead.
To read the first lines closely – Adonai doesn’t just say, “Count em!” God speaks to Moses, saying, “S’u et Rosh” – literally, in Hebrew, “Lift up the head” of each one in the Israelite community. The Rabbinic scholar Rambam notes that the word “s’u” is only used when the intention is to indicate an honor, [that is, holding one’s head high] (Rambam on Numbers 1:2). We learn from the particular word choice that to count each contributing member of the community was God’s way of not only conferring protection for the families present, but also appreciation for the particular gifts that each entity brought to the whole.
What else do we learn from the census taken in the wilderness? We learn that when we gather as one people, no matter what shape the space takes, holiness grows between us. The divinely ordained census called for in Numbers makes no mistake that the purpose of coming together as community is to do sacred work – work that will not always be easy. Work whose meaning transcends temple walls, and ripples into a wider world that needs us to elevate organized religion to its highest ideals of peace, love, justice, and learning.
In the trying aftermath of multiple deadly shootings this past month, my deepest prayer for us is that we regather with strength to demand a society where every person counts, and where we take collective action to assure that counting correlates to the respect and protection we hold for innocent human lives.
Rabbi Laura Rumpf