It matters who
does the Counting
You may know that I consider myself something of an ‘armchair’
historian. That is to say, I enjoy
reading, and understanding history. But I
am not trained as an historian, and I cannot claim the title of ‘historian’
without the modifier above. But I have
read to the point that I think that I have some appreciation of the great
events and trends that have shaped the world as we know it today. I believe that history is a very important
discipline, perhaps one of the most important of all the humanities. When I first read what George Santayana wrote
about remembering the past, it resonated deeply with me. The Spanish essayist famously stated: “Those
who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.” He is often misquoted in different ways, but even
then his message is usually quite clear:
it is important to know, and therefore to study, history.
So, why didn’t
I become an historian? Who knows? To paraphrase Gene Wilder in the film The
Frisco Kid: “God made me a
rabbi. Maybe God had enough historians.”
The truth is
that the study of history was much maligned by high school students when I was
in school. One would hear horror stories
that the study of history is all about “memorising names and dates” as if they
are all disconnected factoids. “Memorising names and dates” became a trope for the
notion of learning irrelevant information with which one would not otherwise
bother.
Given that I
graduated from high school close to forty years ago – and I never thought I
would be saying that – I have grown and matured and, I hope, wizened
since then. I still have little patience
for memorising disconnected factoids.
I’m not a big fan of trivia games and trivia evenings. But I see the study of history as being far
deeper than the memorisation of irrelevant information.
This Shabbat,
we begin reading the fourth book of the Torah, Sefer Bamidbar, the Book
of Numbers in common designation. As the
book begins, God instructs Moses and Aaron to organise a census of the people
Israel. They are to be counted, all the
males from age 20 and above, all those fit for military service. They are not only to be counted, but organised
into military formations, by tribe, with leaders of various echelons to be
identified and appointed by leaders from each respective tribe. These leaders were appointed to work with
Moses and Aaron to accomplish these tasks.
The first order of business, which we have just read in our public
reading from the first chapter, was to actually name the tribal leaders who
will conduct the census.
This
information may seem extraneous. It may
seem tantamount to the “disconnected factoids” that students often think that
history as an academic discipline entails.
But there’s nothing extraneous about the identities of the officials
involved in the census. They would be
aware of which families had how many sons eligible for service. And they would also be aware of the
capabilities of the men in question, the better to organise them into troops
and echelons.
The use of
tribal officials to determine military draft and organisation has its modern equivalent. The United States, from 1940 until 1973,
relied on local Draft Boards to determine who would serve. Military call-ups, deferments, and exemptions
were decided by boards made up of prominent citizens in each town and
city. This lent authority to the entire
process, since these decisions were being made not by some faceless bureaucrat
in Washington but by boards comprised of local citizens. One can certainly argue that the process,
handled at a local level, had more credibility as long as those administering
it were known to be upstanding citizens, as intended. And of course, its purpose was critical: to staff the army during wartime. The process needed the full cooperation of
the country’s citizens if it was to fulfil its intended function. That the system broke down during the Vietnam
War – as it apparently did here as well – had to do with the extensive scope of
deferments and exemptions available.
This, plus a lack of popular appreciation as to that war’s purpose. In addition to other factors. But then, we’re not here this morning to
study the Vietnam War…
So, to the ones
being mustered and counted and assigned, there was nothing extraneous about the
identities of the tribal elders assigned to serve on the ancient equivalent of
a ‘draft board.’ And there’s nothing extraneous
about the fact that the tribes of Israel functioned as autonomous
entities. True, Moses served as the head
of the confederation, until he died and was replaced by Joshua bin Nun. But as we learned way back in the Parashat
Yitro in the Book of Exodus, the tribes were organised to be mostly
self-governing. All but the most
difficult disputes and issues were dealt with at the lowest possible echelon,
at the tribal level.
That’s how the
Israelite nation functioned for generations.
The tribes were organised into an army, with the army’s divisions
organised along tribal lines with tribal officers leading the troops into
battle. But once the nation entered and
occupied the Land, the people were arrayed geographically according to
tribe. Each tribe’s territory was ruled
autonomously. There was no institutional
central government. The Malbim, Rabbi
Meir Leibush who lived in Russia in the 19th century, asserts that
this tribal geographic division is the very reason that the conquering
army was organised by tribe. The tribes
cooperated in cultic matters, under the leadership of the tribe of Levi, who
were set aside for that purpose. Also
when there were threats to the nation.
There was no king, only judges:
ad hoc leaders who arose to lead at certain key times. That is, until the people demanded a centralised
organisation under a king. Saul was the
first king appointed, followed by David.
The word ‘tribalism’
has a negative connotation today. It
means factionalism; it means allegiance to something other than the state. Tribalism is seen as weakening the state. In the case of an emerging state such as
Iraq, tribalism clearly impedes the creation of a polity that can govern with
any effectiveness. So in the modern
world, the argument that tribalism gets in the way of progress, is probably not
a difficult argument to make. But in the
ancient world, and certainly among the emerging people Israel, tribal loyalty was a strength.
It was the glue that kept the people together. It was the basis for bringing the nation
together for the difficult tasks ahead. It
matters that specific tribal leaders supervised the counting for the census.
But it takes an appreciation of the discipline of history, to enable
one to truly understand this. Otherwise,
we have a tendency to superimpose our contemporary sensibilities and values over
people and events that happened long ago.
And that is not helpful. It impedes
us from learning the lesson of history.
And actualises the pitfall identified by Santayana.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out one other fact – definitely not
an irrelevant factoid – about the list of tribal officials who were to conduct
the census. The name of the first
official listed – Elitzur – means ‘God is my Rock,’ or ‘God is my Protector.’ The name of the last person mentioned is Einan, which means ‘eye.’ The Ba’al Turim, Jacob ben Asher whose life spanned the 13th and 14th
centuries, asserted that this alludes to the verse Deuteronomy 32.10: “(God) protected (Israel) like the pupil of
His eye.” In other words, Rabbi Jacob
saw the names as predicting that God would register His approval of the
enterprise by protecting the Israelite army in its coming campaign.
I know that I’ve asserted on occasion that the Torah is not a history text. That it is a morality text. But it is couched in the form of an epic
narrative that chronicles people and events asserted to be historical. It is therefore important to apply the
principles of history as a discipline when reading, and trying to make sense
of, the Torah. And if it is an important morality text as I’ve
asserted, then it is important to make sense of it. May we succeed in doing so. Shabbat shalom.
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