Bamidbar: Each of Us Has a Name

Each of us has a name given by God and given by our parents
Each of us has a name given by our smile…
Each of us has a name given by our celebrations and given by our work
Each of us has a name …given by our death.

Zelda (translation from Hebrew)

Zelda’s poem reminds most Israelis of national Memorial Day ceremonies. A discourse that revolves around the number of fallen can erode the individuality of the victims. Their uniqueness is what the poem seeks to enshrine – the fact that everyone has a name. Every year, before the siren pierces the air, signaling the beginning of Memorial Day, I choose one of the too-many people about whom, sadly, I would like to think during the siren, and devote all of my attention to their life and death. I am unable to contemplate more than one person at a time.

Counting members of the nation is considered a grave sin in Jewish tradition, as we learn from the following story about King David: “And the king said to Joab the captain of the host that was with him, ‘Go now to and fro through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, and number ye the people, that I may know the sum of the people’” (II Sam. 24:2). Joab, the commander of David’s army, fails to dissuade him from conducting the census. Ultimately, David himself comes to rue his sin: “And David said unto the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done; but now, O Lord, put away, I beseech Thee, the iniquity of Thy servant; for I have done very foolishly’” (ibid. 24:10). Elsewhere, the Bible writes that it is “abominable” to count the people and that it causes God to be “displeased” (I Chr. 21:6–7).

A census turns a human being into a number, a statistic; one loses one’s intrinsic value. David counts the people, it seems, in order to ascertain his own might, casting every individual person as no more than an extension of their monarch. There is a story about a doctor who was preparing to operate on a boy. Before the procedure, he asked the father if the boy was his only child. The father said he was, but added that he had four other children at home.

The quantification of humanity led to the shocking atrocities of the previous century. In his book Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler argues that such an approach underpinned the twisted outlook of Bolshevism, according to which the killing of millions was just – if it meant that billions could have a better future life. Treating people as numbers entails a certain dehumanization. During the Holocaust, for example, the Nazis would tattoo numbers on the arms of Jewish camp inmates. In a far less egregious example of this phenomenon, the film Patch Adams portrays a doctor who rails at his colleagues for treating patients like numbers (“bed six needs blood work”) and demands that they call them by name (“Mrs. O’Bannon needs blood work”). Even if numbers are more efficient than names, economy is not the measure of everything in life.

From Human Census to Divine Census

Parashat Bemidbar tells of a census conducted by Moses. The question is, why is David’s census considered a sin, while here God Himself commands Moses to count the people? One difference, according to Rashi, is in the intention. In his commentary on our parasha, he writes: “Because they were dear to Him, He counted them often” (Rashi on Numbers 1:1). It emerges that Moses’ census is motivated by God’s love for Israel, while David’s census has an administrative purpose: to establish the size of the population.

There is another key difference in our parasha’s census: “Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, every male, by their polls” (Num. 1:2). The key word here is “names,” which recurs in the descriptions of each of the twelve tribes: “According to the number of names.” The Torah emphasizes that the census is not only numerical, anonymous, but rather based on the name and affiliation of every individual. It is a vehicle for expressing uniqueness and value, along with tribal and familial bonds.

There are other indications that the purpose of the census was to empower, rather than devalue, the individual. For example, in commanding Moses to conduct the census, God tells him to “raise the heads” of the people of Israel. The words “raise” and “heads” indicate that the census is designed to elevate the individual. Also noteworthy is the Torah’s use of the root pe-kuf-dalet because, in addition to counting, it connotes memory: “And the Lord remembered (pakad et) Sarah” (Gen. 21:1); “neither shall it come to mind; neither shall they make mention of it; neither shall they miss it (yifkodu)” (Jer. 3:16).

When people conduct a census, their purpose is only the final tally; human beings cannot retain so many names in their memory. Not so when God orders the census. The number of the children of Israel is likened to the stars in the night sky (Gen. 15:5), about which it is said, “He counteth the number of the stars; He giveth them all their names” (Ps. 147:4). God is capable not only of counting the stars, but also of naming each and every one. In God’s census, the individual is not subsumed but rather set in relief; everyone is given attention, and each has a name. It emerges that the English title for the Book of Bemidbar, “Numbers,” misses the point.

Nonlinear Narrative

Our understanding of the meaning of the census, and of the manner in which the tribes of Israel are arranged around the Tabernacle, can resolve a conundrum posed by the parasha. The Torah notes that the commandment to conduct the census is given on the first day of Iyar (Num. 1:2). The Book of Leviticus ends on the first of Nisan, the eighth day of the dedication of the Tabernacle. The description of the dedication resumes in the second parasha of Numbers, Naso, which details the offerings brought by the twelve tribal princes. That ceremony, the Torah says, begins on the same day as the completion of the consecration of the Tabernacle and its accoutrements (Num. 7:1), meaning it lasts from the first through the twelfth of Nisan – more than two weeks before the first of Iyar, when, in the previous parasha, Moses is instructed to conduct the census.

Why does the Torah interrupt the chronology of the story? It seems that the break in the order is due to a desire to begin the new book, Numbers, with its main theme – the people of Israel. That is why the census and the arrangement of the tribes around the Tabernacle preface a book that will deal extensively with the people. By placing the tribal princes after the census, the Torah also conveys a democratic message, more relevant now than ever,  the leaders’ importance is not intrinsic but rather stems from their role as public representatives.