If you’ve ever seen someone trying to count by saying, “Not one, not two, not three…not four…” then you know that there is a practice to avoid counting in a direct way even when we are counting the Jewish men in a room to see when there is a minyan. Some get around this by saying “not one, not two, not three” etc. which apparently sounds much more authentic if you do it in Yiddish. Others recite a phrase or verse with ten words in order to count up to ten without actually counting to ten.
“Hoshe’a Et Amekha, UVarekh Et Nachalatecha, U’reim v’Nas’eim Ad Olam.”
“Baruch Atah Hashem, Elokienu Melekh Ha’Olam, HaMotzi Lechem Min Ha’Aretz.”
Some ten-word phrases are less helpful but can still work:
“To be or not to be; that is the question.”
We count because we have to know if we can say Barchu or Kaddish or Kedushah. But we don’t actually count because we are not supposed to count. And we know that we are not supposed to count because of the opening verses of Parashat Ki Tisa:
כִ֣י תִשָ֞א אֶת־ר֥אש בְנֵֽי־יִשְראֵ֘ל לִפְקדיהֶם֒ וְנָ֨תְנ֜ו אִ֣יש כֹ֧פֶר נַפְש֛ו לַה‘ בִפְק֣ד אֹתָ֑ם וְלא־יִהְיֶ֥ה בָהֶ֛ם נֶ֖גֶף בִפְק֥ד אֹתָֽם׃
“When you take a census of the Israelite people according to their number, each shall pay the LORD a ransom for himself on being counted, that no plague may come upon them through their being counted.”
The Torah introduces the mitzvah of collecting a half-shekel from each man of military age. The money was used for the upkeep of the beit hamikdash and the sum of shekalim collected would indicate the size of the army that could be called together from the population.
What is wrong with directly counting individuals? The Torah does not tell us, but does share that avoiding a direct count is a way to avoid a plague.
וְלֹא־יִהְיֶ֥ה בָהֶ֛ם נֶ֖גֶף בִּפְקֹ֥ד אֹתָֽם
Indeed, centuries later, Dovid HaMelekh, King David, forgot this lesson and conducted a census of his kingdom. And, indeed, as recorded in Shemuel Bet, there was a plague.
But the seriousness of the risk of a plague only begs the question: what is so wrong about counting?
We need to look back to Avraham when he and Sarah were promised a child:
וַיוצֵ֨א אֹת֜ו הַח֗וצָה וַיֹ֙אמֶר֙ הַבֶט־נָ֣א הַשָמַ֗יְמָה וסְפֹר֙ הַכ֣וכָבִ֔ים אִם־תוכַ֖ל לִסְפֹ֣ר אֹתָ֑ם וַיֹ֣אמֶר ל֔ו כֹ֥ה יִהְיֶ֖ה זַרעֶָֽ׃
He took him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He added, “So shall your offspring be.”
We cannot count the stars and we cannot count Jews. This promised is echoed by their grandson Yaakov as he prepares, in fear, to confront his brother Esav:
וְאַתָ֣ה אָמַ֔רתָ הֵיטֵ֥ב אֵיטִ֖יב עִמְָ֑ וְשַמְתִ֤י אֶֽת־זַרעֲָ֙ כְח֣ול הַיָ֔ם אֲשֶ֥ר לא־יִסָפֵ֖ר מֵרֽב׃
“Yet You have said, ‘I will deal bountifully with you and make your offspring as the sands of the sea, which are too numerous to count.’”
There is no indication in Bereishit that God is introducing a prohibition against counting the descendants of Avraham and Sarah. Rather, God is sharing a blessing. It will be impossible to count our descendants just as it seems impossible to count grains of sand or stars in the sky.
As an aside, there is an unverified fact floating around the Internet that asserts that there are, in fact, far more stars than grains of sand on the planet. One estimate I saw suggests that there are ten thousand stars for each grain of sand. But the point was never about a number. There are not too many Jews to count from a mathematical perspective. From a mathematical perspective its relatively easy to count Jews because there are not all that many of us. The point of God’s blessing in Sefer Bereishit is that counting is antithetical to what it means to be a Jew.
Our purpose as a people is to cultivate an identity that does not depend on the strength of numbers alone.
We are not too numerous for counting. We are the people whose impact cannot be determined through numbers.
And this is a blessing. Being the people whose impact cannot be determined through numbers gives us the freedom to decide on the impact we wish to have on the world and it gives us the freedom to decide on the meaning of Jewish life and the value of Jewish life without ceding to others the ability to define that for us using numbers alone.
But the tension endures between the utility of numbers and the problematics of reducing human beings to numbers. It is very easy to convert the half-shekel into an accurate census number of the people you are not counting. (Just multiply by two). The eponymous Book of Numbers contains two great censuses conducted in precisely this way. Chapters after Avraham and Sarah were told their children could not be countered, the Torah lists, precisely, the number of Israelites who descend to Egypt.
Numbers are helpful but counting is dehumanizing.
I experience a daily tension between the need to know if there is a minyan in the room and the aversion to counting. This tension is amplified for me by the exclusionary nature of minyan. Only male Jews over the age of 13 comprise a minyan, and yet our community is made up of so many others who grace us with their presence and participation at tefilot throughout the week. Each individual participant in communal prayer enhances the experience of every participant in communal prayer. And each member of this community should feel encouraged to take advantage of the opportunity to stand before God in the presence of the community. I see missed opportunities for connection and transcendence when relatively few of us avail ourselves of the option to take part in an action of such objective dignity and privilege.
Out of this tension, I try to finesse the dilemma. On Shabbat morning, there are usually so many of us here within a few minutes of our start time, that we don’t need to notice who is and who is not counted. On weekdays, when our numbers are smaller, I have chosen “siddurim in use” as the main metric to measure the strength and vigor of our weekday tefilah community. We only say Kaddish and Kedushah with ten male Jews over the age of 13, but I celebrate the chance to pray in a sacred space alongside others whether there are 6 or 60 adults in the room and whether or not we say Kaddish and Kedushah.
I embrace the metric of “siddurim in use” and see beauty in the ways that every worshiper stands equally before God. But I also recognize the weakness of that metric since there are very profound ways that only some of us are able to participate.
One of Judaism’s sources of vitality is the ability to assign new meanings to old words and old actions so that continuity and tradition can be given new life in each new generation and each new circumstance. Tradition gives us a definition of a minyan and how we pray with one and without one. We get to decide how to honor and mark our gatherings and the things we do together.
I do not want my contributions to a community to be defined by a number. And I want to notice individuals whether or not they were needed for a minyan. I realized recently with a lot of regret that if we convene a minyan in the morning, and thankfully we have done so with little interruption for months now, I have not always noticed the absence of erstwhile regular worshippers.
Counting is sometimes necessary and counting is sometimes problematic and individuals always deserve to be noticed as individuals.
You might think that counting is on my mind today because of the drama and excitement on the Ohev minyan WhatsApp group. But there is another setting in which Jews are being counted today and it is altogether more troubling.
Today is day 148 of a war that was launched with the kidnapping of 257 hostages. Today there are 132 hostages still being held in captivity. We do not know how many are still alive. We do not know how many are severely injured. And we do not know how many more victims this war will claim before at long last it comes to an end.
The reports about the ongoing negotiations for additional hostage releases have circled on the question of how many prisoners Israel will release for each hostage that is freed. This too is a perverse sort of count. Is each hostage worth as much as 10 prisoners? As much as 50? We have been forced to weigh lives as though they are numbers in exactly the way we have tried to avoid for centuries.
Unlike in the time of King David, here the plague has preceded the counting. Numbers can indicate something of the magnitude of the loss and suffering but only a focus on individuals, and their names, and their stories, can honor the magnitude of the loss and suffering. This is how God is described, in Sefer Tehilim, (perhaps by King David in the aftermath of the census):
מוֹנֶ֣ה מִ֭סְפָּר לַכּוֹכָבִ֑ים לְ֝כֻלָּ֗ם שֵׁמ֥וֹת יִקְרָֽא
God counts the number of the stars; to each one God gave its name.
We need to count hostages and count the days of the war and we also need to remember each victim and each casualty. God is able to do both. And, maybe, this too was God’s blessing to Avraham and Sarah. They would have descendants whose impact and importance transcends their number. But, just as God calls every star by its own name, so too each one of us is called by name, and so is each victim of this war, and every human being to walk this earth from the dawn of time until the end of days.
As we imitate God, we turn to one another and share our names and our voices and our identities with them, and, in turn, come to learn their names, appreciate their talents, and cherish their unique contributions to the collective.
מוֹנֶ֣ה מִ֭סְפָּר לַכּוֹכָבִ֑ים לְ֝כֻלָּ֗ם שֵׁמ֥וֹת יִקְרָֽא
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 