Parashat B'midbar
Numbers 1:1-4:20
This week's Torah portion, the first in Sefer B'midbar, the Book of Numbers, focuses on two topics: a census of male Israelites (excluding Levites) between the ages of 20 and 50 (and thus eligible for military service) and a summary of some duties of the priests.
By coincidence, the last drash I wrote for this series, for Parashat Shmot, also begins with a census, though that one resulted in a count of 70 while this one yielded a count of 603,550. "Be fruitful and multiply" indeed!
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In that drash, I wrote about several reasons why Jews tend to be concerned with our numbers: there is strength in numbers; there is protection in numbers; concentrating our numbers produces the critical mass necessary to support Jewish cultural and religious goods and services, educational programs, synagogues and other Jewish institutions; and so on. Now I'd like to add another wrinkle to the Jew-counting game.
In B'midbar Rabbah, Rabbi Eliezer teaches in the name of Rabbi Jose ben Zimra that when Jews are counted for a proper purpose, no ill befalls them; however, when Jews are counted for an improper purpose, they suffer. And the Tanach gives us examples of both: for instance, the counts recounted in both Shmot and B'midbar are considered appropriate because they were conducted for the welfare of the community. The count conducted by King David at the end of Shmuel Bet (i.e., II Samuel), by contrast, was considered improper because it was not conducted for the welfare of the community; it was followed by a plague that caused terrible suffering among the Israelites. (It's not actually clear why King David's count was conducted, but some sources suggest it was for David's self-aggrandizement. That, obviously, is not a good reason for a census.)
So our tradition is clear. When you count Jews for good reasons, the count is its own reward -- it will provide something that benefits the community. And indeed, traditional Jews see this on a several-times-a-day basis when they count to ensure they have a minyan for services. And when you count Jews for not-so-good reasons, as antisemitic organizations and individuals of all sorts in the US like to do to "prove" that Jews are taking over the world, we Jews tend to suffer.
What constitutes a "good" reason to the authors of the Bible may be a higher bar to vault than we consider necessary these days, but Jews engage in counting ourselves in a wide array of circumstances beyond ensuring a minyan. We like to conduct demographic surveys of our communities, both national and local, in order to inform communal policy and make decisions about programming. We point with pride to the number of Jews who have reached the pinnacle of their professions, particularly in politics, where so many of our number are progressive champions like Bernie Sanders, Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, Anthony Weiner, Barney Frank, and Jared Polis. Three of our number currently sit on the Supreme Court of the United States, and Justice Ginsburg in particular has elaborated on how her Jewish background informed her development as a scholar and practitioner of the law. We are proud when Sandy Koufax or Hank Greenberg refuses to play in the World Series on Yom Kippur, and nearly as ebullient at the more contemporary exploits of Ryan Braun, Kevin Youkilis, Ian Kinsler, Omri Casspi, Jordan Farmar, Sue Bird, Jon Scheyer, Yuri Foreman, Gabe Carimi, Taylor Mays, Jeff Halpern, Lenny Krayzelberg, Jason Lezak, Dara Torres, Ben Wildman-Tobriner, Deena Kastor, and roughly half the US national figure skating team of the past 15 years or so. (Who knew that Jews can skate?) We claim Iron Chef Michael Symon and half a dozen Top Chef contestants; many of the best movies are produced, directed, written, and/or starred in by Members of the Tribe; and many of the day's leading philanthropists and social activists come from good, hearty, "chicken soup with matzah balls as penicillin" stock. We point to these folks as the best of us, as high achievers among a people with an ethos of high achievement. And while that ethos is typically confined to pursuits of the mind -- where perhaps 25% of Americans go to college, the figure is closer to 80% for American Jews, with roughly 25% earning graduate degrees according to the 2000 National Jewish Population Survey -- we also enjoy our Jewish athletes, who break the nerdy/weak/bookish stereotype of Jews so well.
We "count" these folks as ours as a matter of ethnic pride, just as other minority groups "count" members of their groups who have done well for themselves, but we are all aware that they are not representatives of the Jewish community -- indeed, most aren't especially public about their Jewish identity -- nor are they representative of Jews as a group. We may be very successful as a group, but these folks are anomalies even for our relatively prosperous chevre, and only a fool would pretend otherwise.
And like any other group, we have some rotten apples of our own. None of us is happy to claim Bernie Madoff or Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Most of us are not too thrilled with Paul Wolfowitz, Joe Lieberman, Avigdor Lieberman, Eric Cantor, or Sheldon Adelson. And for those of you old enough to remember or who spent enough time in the New York area, I'm betting you've never been a fan of David Berkowitz (though I understand he converted out). But these folks are no more representatives of the Jewish community nor more representative of Jews as a group than the heroes. They are also anomalies, and yet there are still people who would be foolish enough to pretend that they do somehow reflect something essential about Jews. It matters not at all that the vast majority of people responsible for neoconservatism, the near-destruction of our economy, the Iraq war, and really just about anything else they don't like aren't Jewish -- they're counting Jews (and ignoring the others) for the sake of attacking Jews. And they get away with it more often than not because as a small minority group, we're easy to scapegoat, especially if you have an axe to grind against us in the first place and are smart enough to twist the facts in a way that can con others into believing you. Yes, we have disproportionate influence given our proportion of the overall population. But it's hardly disproportionate given our greater rates of achievement in pursuits that yield political influence, and it's still not enough to give us control. We do not, no matter what some folks might claim, control the government. Or the economy. Or Hollywood. Or anything else for that matter. (And if we did... If any group that voted 78% for Obama in 2008, that pretty consistently votes in the 75-80% range for Democratic candidates for president and is more often than not around that range for other elections as well, that overwhelmingly self-identifies as liberal and overwhelmingly supports liberal positions, if such a group did control things, we'd have the most progressive and educated country on earth, we'd have single-payer universal healthcare, poverty would be a fraction of what it is now thanks to compassionate and sensitive social welfare and educational policies, we'd never have gone to war in Iraq... The list goes on and on and on...)
Counting the Jews for not-so-good reasons has a way of harming Jews. (And it doesn't actually do anyone else any real good either.)
And yet, those who obsess over the count -- whether with pure motivation or out of malice -- are missing the essence. One of my good friends from graduate school is an expert in Jewish demography and has published scholarly work on the subject. He says (and I agree) that the number doesn't really matter. Got that? We've been obsessing about our numbers for 4,000 years and they don't really matter.
Of course, it's not that the numbers don't matter at all. They do. But it's the quality of Jewish life, not the quantity, that matters most. For the most part, the quality of Jewish life in the US today is wonderful. As I wrote for Parashat Shmot, we see:
...the explosion of interest in advanced Jewish studies at the collegiate, post-graduate, and adult education levels; the record attendance at Jewish book fairs and film festivals in recent years; the emergence of independent minyanim; the continued strength of the Birthright Israel program; the surging interest in Jewish summer camps; and the growth of Jewish day schools among non-Orthodox Jews. All this despite the facts that the majority of Jews aren't involved in Jewish communal life and that the expense of participating in Jewish life -- whether organizationally or simply personally -- can be prohibitive (and we surely need to do something about that).
American Jews flock to these these programs not because the number of Jews there is so great but because the content inspires them. And add to all of the above another item I missed when I wrote about Shmot that is, in my estimation, perhaps more important than any of the others: a growing movement among young Jews to identify social justice, volunteering, and service as essential to their Jewish identity, regardless of who they are helping -- we need look no farther than organizations such as Avodah, Repair the World, Jewish Funds for Social Justice, and American Jewish World Service, among many others, for evidence of this. For we progressive Jews, this is the essence of Judaism, as we read in the Talmud (Shabbat 31a):
A man wanted to embarrass the two leading rabbis of the era, Shammai and Hillel. He decided that he would feign interest in converting to Judaism, but would only do so if the rabbi could teach him the entire Torah while he stood on one foot.
He approached Shammai first. Shammai was so incensed at the ridiculous request -- how could he dare mock the importance of Torah study and the discipline required to do it well? -- that he kicked the man out of his academy.
The man then approached Hillel and repeated his request. Hillel's response?
"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it."
When we count our high achievers, we're celebrating that it has become possible for Jews to do anything in this country, and we progressive Jews remind ourselves how important it is to make sure that what we do makes a positive difference in the world around us. When certain others count our lowest common denominators, they're trying to return us to a world in which we had no agency over our lives. They're trying to deny us our achievements, blot out the hard work our community has done over the generations to attain such heights, and relegate us to second-class citizenship -- at best -- out of their own bigotry.
So no, the numbers don't matter all that much. What matters is what we do with the numbers.
In about a month, my wife and I will be welcoming our own little Member of the Tribe to our family. It is traditional to bless new parents with the wish that they will raise their children to chupah, Torah, and ma'asim tovim (marriage, Torah, and good deeds). This is the essence of our tradition -- ma'asim tovim are the entire Torah, and we pass it on to our children and our children's children. This is what we should aspire to as Jews. And so this is where our focus must be. And because it is so much more inspirational to focus on what we do -- on the quality rather than the quantity of Jewish life -- this is what ultimately lets our tradition endure.
Shabbat shalom.
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