T orah P ortion
Can We Count on You?
BY RABBI BARRY DOV LERNER
PARSHAT BEMIDBAR
HAVE YOU EVER been at a
small weekday service, whether
to remember a Kaddish or
attend a shiva, and you hear
someone ask, “Do we have a
minyan?” Meaning, are there at
least the minimum of 10 present
for communal worship?
But the next moment is
occasionally a bit strange:
Someone — or more than one
— looks around the group,
points toward each of those
present, and says “not one, not
two, not three … and then
ultimately announces, “We have
a minyan!” or that “We don’t
have a minyan.” What is this
not-counting ceremony?
The what is an incredibly old
custom, really a circumlocution,
a way to avoid counting people.

Old meaning thousands of years.

Why? Why would anyone
think we are not permitted to
count people for a mitzvah?
Frankly, we Jews do a lot of
counting. Does this mean that counting
per se in Jewish tradition is a
sin? No! Think about Chanukah
— we count eight nights. A brit
milah is on the eighth day after
birth. A b-mitzvah is counted
for an age, 12 or 13, respectively.

We are now concluding a count
of 49 days of the Omer from
Passover to Shavuot.

Rabbi Continued from Page 22
Religious Zionists of America,
the American Conference
on Soviet Jewry and, most
important, the Conference of
Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations.

Schacter was the first
Orthodox Jew to chair the
Presidents Conference, which,
Medoff shows, represented
a kind of coming-of-age for
Orthodox Judaism in the U.S.

32 MAY 13, 2021
CAN DL E L IGHTIN G
May 14
May 21
7:50 p.m.

7:57 p.m.

Counting days, weeks,
months, even years is not
punished. We Jews have been
counting everything throughout
our history.

Welcome to this week’s Torah
portion, Bemidbar, which begins
with a census — divinely ordered
no less — of all the children of
Israel on their way out of Egypt,
the second, in fact, since the
exodus. We read this Shabbat:
Moses is told “Take a census of
the whole Israelite community by
the clans of its ancestral houses,
listing the names, every male,
head by head.” [Numbers 1:2-4]
So, what is the reason for “not
one, not two, etc.?” Should our
tradition really have any uneasi-
ness or even anxiety, even when
God orders both? “Yes,” said our
rabbinic midrashim based on a
biblical precedent.

We read from the Torah only
several months ago, that Moses
was directed: “When you take
a census of the Israelite people
...” he is then instructed how
to conduct the census in detail.

“... Each shall pay the Lord a
ransom for himself on being
counted in order that no harm
occur to them …” [Ki Tisa,
Exodus 30:12].

What is the difference between
the two census procedures? In
the first mandate, they are told to
collect a half-shekel per person.

Then they are to count the total
half-shekels gathered. In this
indirect method, the number of
Israelites is learned. But specif-
ically, in this way we also are
ransoming our souls; we prevent
any harm to any individual or
the entire group.

One would think that to
count otherwise is to perhaps
tempt fate and somehow sin by
directly counting people. So, we
count “not one, not two, not
three ...” to avoid a plague.

Did it ever happen? Yes!
In fact, the Bible records that
census which resulted in a
plague, interpreted by our sages
as a punishment. After Israel is
established as a nation with a
king who conducted a census at
God’s direction that tally did go
terribly wrong.

King David is ordered
to census of Israel [II Samuel
24], and this same directive is
repeated again later in the Bible
[I Chronicles 21]. Both narra-
tives are described by our sages
as a sin that deservedly resulted
in a plague in which 70,000 died.

Perhaps what made it a sin
was how King David took his
census suggested our sages;
David failed to follow the
protocol of not-counting, of
collecting coins to count and the
subsequent deaths were a divine
punishment. Nonetheless, this returns us to
our Torah portion this Shabbat
and raises new questions: Why
doesn’t our portion this Shabbat
repeat the protocol for taking a
census? Why not also require a
ransom for each soul? Why is
there no parallel warning of a
danger of negef, or plague? What
is the difference between these
instructions for conducting a
census? And a population survey
is needed for, after all, every
administration of a country needs
to know for how many citizens is
the leadership to provide.

What do the scholars inter-
pret those deaths resulting
from King David’s census
that since then to the present
have occasioned “anxiety” or
is it just what many consider a
superstition? Rashi writes that counting
Israelites individually triggers
the “evil eye” and brings a plague,
consistent with the Talmudic
sage Rabbi Eleazar: “Whosoever
counts Israel violates a negative
precept” [Yoma 22b]. Therefore,
they must conduct every census
using objects such as half-shekels
and then count the objects.

His grandson, the Rashbam,
counters with a practical
rationale: This was a military
determination to ascertain the
number of fighting men and
their organization for forth-
coming battles.

Nachmanides (the Ramban)
agrees with this last suggestion
that we cannot just depend upon
divine miraculous victories a
wise balance between trust in
God and human commitment.

And he also cites contempo-
raries that human beings are
not objects or possessions to be
inventoried. Every soldier is a
person who has an importance
and value deserving of God’s
love and our respect.

War is terrible, and inevitably
they will be confronting future
battles. The death or injuries to
any one soldier is a tragedy and
while his military role might be
restored numerically, as a human
being he cannot be replaced.

Every soldier is or could be a
husband, son, father and grand-
father, uncle and cousin — part of
a larger family — and each is vital
to klal Yisrael, the people of Israel.

When we ask aloud “is there
a minyan?” and we count those
present, let’s keep these values
in mind as we count people.

Let’s also be people on whom
the community can count! Keyn
yehi ratzon. l
The old stereotype of Orthodox
Jews as insular and unsophis-
ticated gave way, in the 1960s,
to a generation of young rabbis
such as Schacter — impeccably
tailored, speaking unaccented
English and entirely capable
of leading the entire Jewish
community, not merely its
religiously observant minority.

Deeply researched through
archival documents and
numerous interviews, Medoff’s
well-written narrative explores
Schacter’s involvement in a
slew of Jewish public contro-
versies. Some of those conflicts
will seem familiar to contem-
porary readers, from disputes
over Israel’s Jewish identity to
clashes with U.S. government
officials who were pressuring
Israel to make one-sided terri-
torial concessions.

We read of a rain-drenched
Schacter picketing the Polish
Embassy in Washington (to
protest that government’s scape-
goating of Jews), a magnanimous
Schacter inviting Jewish militant
hecklers to join him on the
podium and a rather chutz-
pahdik Schacter entangled in
a comic incident involving the
president of the United States
and a pair of cuff links — to
mention just a few of the many
episodes in this scholarly but
very readable work.

“The Rabbi of Buchenwald”
is not hagiography. Medoff
presents a full picture of
Herschel Schacter, the leader
and the man, and he was not
flawless. Serious scholarship
shows us history in its full
scope, not just the most
flattering or pleasant parts.

Most of all, what Medoff
shows is that while Schacter
left Buchenwald after two and a
half months, Buchenwald never
left Schacter. “What I saw in
Buchenwald was seared into my
heart and mind,” Schacter often
said. l
JEWISH EXPONENT
Rabbi Barry Dov Lerner is the editor
and president of JewishFreeware.

org and president and rav
hamakhshir of Traditional Kosher
Supervision LLC. The Board of
Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia
is proud to provide diverse
perspectives on Torah commentary
for the Jewish Exponent. The
opinions expressed in this column
are the author’s own and do not
reflect the view of the Board of
Rabbis. Bat-Ami Zucker is a professor
of American history at Bar-Ilan
University. JEWISHEXPONENT.COM