Lots and lots of Jews
Bamidbar
Numbers 1:1 - 4:20
In 2000-01, the Jewish population of the United States stood at 5.2 million. Others now revise the estimate upward to 6.4 million. We worry about how many we are.
We are not the first to do so. Israelites are counted in this week's sedra, again with an accompanying debate – not over accuracy, but propriety, since Exodus 30:12 warns that counting Jews can bring about disaster. When King David deploys a census later on in the Bible, 70,000 people perish.
Could the warning of Exodus apply to us too?
We should take comfort, perhaps, in the midrash that permits a census, if taken for good reason – taxation, for example, and recruiting an army. But what is our rationale? Why, exactly, did we spend $6 million to count our numbers at the turn of the millennium?
I sometimes worry that we wanted only to make sure we still have lots and lots of Jews – as if lots and lots of Jews automatically means more "lots and lots of Jews" – and "lots and lots and lots and lots of Jews" is itself sufficient reason to take a census. The rabbis, however, who valued Jewish continuity at least as much as we do, say it isn't. David's sin, they explain, was precisely that he loved the idea of ruling over lots and lots of Jews, for no other reason than having lots and lots of Jews.
But let's give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. Lots and lots of Jews may not be a sufficient goal in and of itself, but whatever the proper end of Jewish peoplehood is, it will fail if we have no Jews to accomplish it. To be sure, Ralbag thinks we should trust in God to raise our numbers – so as to fulfill the promise that Abraham would father a multitude – but we also have the principle not to depend on miracles, so if we really suspect Jews are disappearing, I guess we might countenance a population survey.
But now we run into the warning of the great hasidic master Elimelech of Lyszensk (call it the Elimelech principle): never count Jews while we are not doing God's will, since such a count would be purely quantitative; what we need instead is a qualitative measure of the extent to which Jews who do God's will affect God's world.
There's the rub. Jewish numbers as an end in itself is idolatrous. Suppose for the sake of argument, Jews became sufficiently wise, wealthy, and powerful to design a system to guarantee more Jews, who then add their own wisdom, wealth, and power to guarantee yet more Jews, who…. Well, you get the idea. By itself, would constantly growing numbers lead to success? Not according to the Elimelech principle, which cautions us to assess the Jewish contribution to the world, not the Jewish population in it.
Here's a place where classical Reform and hasidic Jews agree. Following the prophets, Reform Jews called it the "Jewish mission." Like Elimelech himself, we prefer nowadays to cite the kabalistic ideal: tikun olam. Either way, it surpasses the principle of "numbers for numbers' sake."
Our current strategy is bankrupt. Obsessing over Jewish numbers was an obvious reaction to those of us (like myself) who were raised with Hitler in the background and a virgin State of Israel under siege. Jewish numbers are of less concern to the next generation, who want to know why more numbers matter. So I invoke the Elimelech principle, which insists that we measure how much Jews do, not how many Jews there are.
Take one simple case: Darfur. Surely we can agree on the Jewish imperative to save lives in what everyone knows is a case of racial extermination. As a benchmark, take the American Jewish World Service, which leads the way in this cause and which has collected $4.5 million in three years, an average of $1.5 million a year. What if every year we quadrupled it, by matching the $6 million of our population study? Suppose we actually tripled it – $18 million is a nice round number, and eminently achievable – UJA-Federation in New York alone raised $144 million last year. Suppose that we also took as our model the incredible success we have in garnering American support for Israel and launched a similarly single-minded and sophisticated political campaign to prevent a Darfurian holocaust.
What if only then we count Jews – specifically those who rallied behind this Jewish moral cause?
I suspect with such a demonstration of Jewish purpose, our numbers would grow – not just with Jews but non-Jews, too, who would have good reason to sign on to such a people.
As things stand, we are throwing, not showing: throwing more money into counting without showing why we should count. That does amount to a certain kind of counting – counting on a miracle. And that, it will be recalled, is forbidden by Jewish law.
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