Being Counted..the Value of the Individual

When I was in Jerusalem, we hosted a group of young mothers from Arkansas that was touring Israel. This group of young Jewish women made a very purposeful statement to us that they were from a small Jewish community. Of course, the question that I asked was, “What do you consider small?” Their answer was, “We only have two thousand Jews in our community!” In my mind, having come from Lincoln, Nebraska, where surprisingly not all Jews are from, the number two thousand did not sound small at all. From my perspective, the number two hundred would have qualified as small! Why am I bringing this up? It is because the idea of counting, taking a census, knowing how many individuals are within your ranks is actually found in this week’s parasha, Bamidbar. The Book of Numbers (called BaMidbar in Hebrew, or in the wilderness) begins with a census of the Israelites by their tribes. We know they had already been counted twice before, so why did they have to be counted again? The explanation of Rashi as to why the census was done a third time, was to show that G-d loved the Israelites. It was to show that they were valued for their contributions to the group. It has even been suggested that when you count individuals you are remembering them. The word for counting, Pakod, also means remember. So one cannot count members of a group too many times if the message being given to the individual is that they indeed do count! There is a phrase used when the Israelites are to be counted during this census. That phrase is se’u et rosh kol adat b’nai yisrael : it is translated as take the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, (by families following their fathers’ houses; a head count of every male according to the number of their names).Se’u et rosh....literally means lift the head. Why is this phrase used? Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,z’l, mentioned that “In any census, count or roll-call there is a tendency to focus on the total: the crowd, the multitude, the mass....Any total tends to value the group or nation as a whole. The larger the total, the stronger is the army, the more popular the team, and the more successful the company.....Counting devalues the individual and tends to make the individual replaceable. If one soldier dies in battle, another will take their place. If one person leaves the organization, someone else can be hired to do their job.” This Hebrew term found in our parasha was used to emphasize that each individual who was counted was indeed important. As Rabbi Sacks wrote, “….if you count a nation the individual may begin to feel insignificant. “What difference do I make? I am just one among millions…” But G-d wants us to know that we each count…se’u et rosh….” Judaism requires that any census taken must be done in a way to signal that each individual is valued. Judaism has a unique way of looking at each of us….you are to remember that you have unique gifts that only you can contribute to the group….Maimonides said it best when he said that each of us should see ourselves as if our next act could change the fate of the world. Personally, I find it frustrating when I belong to organizations that act as if they are in the business of attracting more and more numbers of individuals. I firmly believe that communities and organizations should be in the business of making those who are in their presence feel as if they count. As individuals age or become ill at any age, it may be hard for an individual to feel as if they still count. I remember having a discussion with my mother about 6 months before she died because she felt she was useless as Parkinson’s made her unable to do anything physical for anyone else least wise herself. I understood her frustration but after talking for a while, I also got her to see that by sharing her love and caring for her family she indeed was showing us a part of herself that could never be discounted. Each one of us wants to feel that we count, that we matter, that our existence has meaning. Whether we’re raising children to feel that they have an important place to fill in the world, or we’re reflecting on our own lives, we gain comfort when we can look at ourselves as having absolute worth not only in the eyes of G-d (so to speak) but also in the eyes of the family and community to which we belong.