As we approach this time of liberation, the Festival of Pesah, I want us to reflect on the mysteries of numbers. Countless sages and rabbis have weighed in on their thoughts of how many Israelites were liberated from Egypt — was it 600,000 total, or 2 million, or a mythic embellishment wrapped around a history that remains shrouded from accurate counting, or an archetypical tale that stands on it’s own?
We see the dilemma of accurate counting emerge later in the Torah’s telling as well. In the opening verses of the Book of Numbers, God issues a peculiar set of instructions to his servant Moses: Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head (Numbers 1:2). Now, the simple meaning of the verse is rather plain. God is asking for a census of the Israelite population, probably for military purposes, certainly to be able to move a large group of Jews from one place to another. And yet, that simple reading of the verse raises problems because elsewhere in our tradition, elsewhere in the Torah, we were told that counting individuals is itself a violation of Jewish Law. So, our sages ask – why is it that God asks for this counting? Why? Why do we need to know the general number of the Israelites marching through the wilderness? And why would we argue about the number of liberated Israelites (and the mixed multitudes) who marched out of Egypt?
According to the Ramban, the great medieval thinker:
Perhaps the idea was to make known God's lovingkindness to them that when their ancestors had previously gone down to Egypt, they numbered only seventy souls and now, coming out, they were as the sand of the sea in number and that, in accordance with what our Sages said, "out of the abundance of love for them, God counts them frequently.”
God's love pours down on us all the time. We are surrounded by so many miracles: miracles of life, miracles of love, miracles of memory, miracles of care. That we can look to each other and find solace and consolation, that we can heighten each other’s joy and care for each other in tribulation, these are remarkable gifts which highlight for us the sanctity of this and every moment. Our task as Jews is to make that love apparent and visible in a world that is often too busy, too distracted, too oppressive or too hurting to notice. It is our task to stand up for love.
Consider a second possible explanation: This one found in the Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah:
God said to Moses: Se'u et Rosh, Lift up the head. The Holy Blessing One said to Israel, I have never loved any created being more than I have loved you. And therefore, I have conferred upon you exaltation and have likened you unto Me, for as I Myself am exalted so have I done unto you.
Just as God is lifted up, so, it turns out, are we. It is surely a great miracle that the Jewish People has survived and not only survived but remains an unflagging source of spiritual vigor and moral vitality.
Thousands and thousands of years after our people’s origin we persist in the corridors of power, nagging those who would give in to habit, annoying those who would seek to simply do things the way they have always been done. We insist that a better way is possible. And we do that because we hear a higher calling that gives us no rest. Answering to that call has kept our people alive, vibrant, and resilient. The survival of the Jewish people has always been made possible by placing the study and the practice of Torah at our very core. And that miracle of our existence as Jews is precisely what we mean when we say that the Holy One has chosen us.
For all of us as Jews, our task is to assist other Jews to see the shimmering miracle of Jewish life and to awaken others, once again, to the marvel of serving our God through this ancient covenant.
The third possible explanation for the counting: Isaac Arama in the Akedat Yitzhak says that they, the Jews in the wilderness,
Were not just like animals or material things, but each and every one of them had a unique importance just like a monarch, just like a chief priest, and that indeed, God has shown a special love toward each and every one of them. And this is the significance of mentioning each of them by name and status, for they were all equal and individual in status.
We, human beings, find it so easy to trample on the dignity of each other, we find it so easy to allocate relative importance to those people who truly matter, allowing us to ignore those who we think don't, and in so doing we desecrate the divine image implanted in each and every human being. We denigrate our Creator. Our jobs as Jews is to lead humanity to that grand and glorious day when all human beings are invited to the table and in which all people sing together in a symphony of God's glory.
Finally, we are taught that in counting things in this world, such counting is an act of limitation, a form of accounting. But when counting those things in the world of spirit, counting becomes an act of expansion, leading on to ever-greater achievement. As we are taught in the Shnei Luhot Ha-Brit:
When numbers are viewed in the context of the spiritual world, they do not imply limitation. Once something is numbered, it will have an infinite existence, usually on an ascending level, advancing toward ever greater achievements.
The world of material reality is but the tip of the realms in which we live. We are not simply hairless apes, but instead we are spiritual creatures living in a material world. We are visitors here but our true home lies somewhere else.
As Jews, we are God's undercover agents. We are here disguised like flesh-and-blood to enter Creation and to remind the world of its truest self and its highest calling. Our task remains – by the way we live our lives – to organize our communities and care for those people who turn to us for care, to show them that, in truth, we are all of us angels and that ours’ is the task of demonstrating that Olam Ha-Ba is not the name we give to a future rendezvous after we die, but that the coming world exists beyond spacetime, here and now for those who are willing to let paradise break through in the present.
Se’u et rosh literally means to “lift up the head.” When we elevate ourselves and we elevate God's people, it is then that we make known to the world God's great love for all creatures and for all people. When we distinguish and elevate the role of the people of Israel, the Jewish people, we reinvigorate an ancient covenant and a calling the world desperately needs. When we sanctify what makes each person different and special and unlike the people around him or her, it is then that we pay tribute to the Creator who seems to delight in the diversity that embrace us. And finally, when we treat the spiritual as it truly is – as what is uniquely, ultimately real, than we have the courage to break free, and to come home.
To be counted one must rise.
Happy Passover!