June 5, 2024
D’var by member Emily Harris
Parshat Bamidbar is the first Parsha in the book of “numbers”, which gets its name because of the census in this opening chapter. But according to the commentary in the Etz Hayim Torah, “its proper Hebrew designation, from its first significant word, is B’midbar”(In the Wilderness), and it describes a people wandering through a spiritual as well as a geographic wilderness.”
B’midbar deals mainly with two subjects: the census of men eligible to bear arms; and the physical arrangement of the various tribes as they march and camp.
It strikes me that these two acts – counting the people; and organizing them physically – are two attempts to create order out of chaos.
The impulse to organize our chaos by counting hasn’t changed in thousands of years. Whether it’s counting the Omer, or counting our steps, or demanding that the board write SMART – in other words measurable – goals, we love to count. And as a board, our fiduciary responsibility for the sustainability of the synagogue requires us to count. Whether it’s a dashboard, or a member list, or the results of the gala,we are driven to focus on counting members and money.
The Census in this parsha is a thing of the past. It counted only those men over the age of 20, leaving out women and children. And it divided the Jewish people into ancestral groups based on the tribes, carefully counting each. There is much to consider in this parsha – both in who is counted and who is not, most notably women. But tonight, at my final board meeting, I’m driven to reflect on the counting we’ve done over the past four years. I joined the board just as the Covid 19 pandemic was taking hold. I leave it as we are continuing to reel from the aftermath of October 7. Numbers are at the heart of both tragedies, and yet we have become numb to statistics. It feels as if we have forgotten that more than 1 million Americans died, and that 7 million people died worldwide. Our minds similarly become numb when we hear of the 1200 who died on October 7, and the 35,0000 who have died in the ongoing war in Gaza.
Yet when these numbers become personal, they have meaning. Yesterday, my sister texted me that one of the four hostages just reported dead was a friend’s cousin, “the human personalized face of a mass horror….” And she said “And I feel guilty or perplexed about why the knowledge of 35,000+ deaths haven’t landed in the same way for me in terms of hitting home so viscerally.” We agreed that for whatever anger we have at the Israeli government, on a visceral level we are tied to the Jewish people. It feels parallel to how Covid became real for our family when my father in law died as he was approaching his 96th birthday from Covid caught from his caregiver. His death at that age was not a tragedy, but it demonstrated the tragedy of isolation that the pandemic caused in a way that statistics could not.
What are the lessons in numbers? In business terms, we often say “what gets measured gets counted;” and imply that those not measured do not matter. But just as the women who were left uncounted in B’midbar mattered deeply to the survival of the Jewish people, all parts of the community matter. And knowing the specific stories of the people hiding behind those numbers is what we must seek out if we are going to bring these numbers to life and use them to guide us in ways that are consistent with our values.
From a board point of view, that’s why I’m glad JRC is committed to listening. From our wide tent of opinions on Israel and Palestine, to our support of immigrant, racial, gender and disability rights, reparations and justice, to our commitment to making it possible for everyone to join JRC regardless of financial constraints, our values are that everyone counts.
As the board moves forward this year, I know you’ll be continuing to keep an eye on the numbers. At the same time, you’ll be balancing them with stories, gleaned through a variety of “listening tours” on our covenant, on safety, on Israel-Palestine, and undoubtedly on other things. To me, that’s what good governance must be – ensuring a balance between counting and listening, moving back and forth between the big picture that numbers represent and the stories that connect us to the values that really matter.