When we were children, we found any counting of heads to be a cause
for anxiety. When counting for teams at
a contest on the pitch, it could mean that you were on the losing team. When counting for groups to do presentations,
it could mean that you were with the lazy ones and would end up doing the
work. When counting to divide your class
into sub-groups, it could mean that you got the teacher who was a stern
taskmaster, not the pleasant and easy-going one.
But it was not
only in the realm of school, or organised youth activities, where we saw risk
in the counting process. Didn’t every
one of us, at some time in our life, think that being among the less-popular, or
less-attractive, or with the less-prosperous or less-permissive parents was because
of Divine selection? If you don’t admit
to being angry with God at some point in your life for the circumstances of
your birth, then you’re not being honest.
Most of us expend at least some energy and time in our lives shreying
gevalt that we weren’t born someone else.
For some, it is a lifelong obsession.
From the Jewish
perspective we can never win the Numbers Game.
There are about 105,000 Jews in Australia. This, against 24 million Australians, meaning
that we are less than one-half of a percent of the population. And how about in the world as a whole? There are, optimistically, 18 million Jews in
the world against a population of seven billion. That’s about a quarter of a
percent! It’s, as I sometimes say, a
Drop in the Bucket of the Sea of Humanity.
So how are we
supposed to take Rashi’s comment on verse one of the Book of Numbers, Bamidbar,
which we start this morning?
The Book opens with the
taking of a census of the people Israel.
That’s why the world calls it ‘The Book of Numbers.’ In contrast to the Jewish tradition of
calling it Bamidbar, or ‘In the Wilderness.’
Rashi explains the
book’s first verses, which contain the commandment to take the census, or
counting: Because [the People Israel] are dear to Him, God counts them
often.
Say what??! God shows His love for us by counting us
often, an exercise which makes us feel insignificant and overwhelmingly
outnumbered? That’s a love I can definitely
live without!
Think again. Yes, we can look at our numbers and be
depressed. But we can also look and
conclude differently. Some would dismiss
this exercise as ‘spin.’ As in: we can make the numbers say what we want, by
putting the requisite ‘spin’ on them. When
we think of the term ‘spin,’ we of course think ‘dishonest.’ ‘Spinning’ equates to obfuscating people’s
reason by claiming the numbers say something that they do not. But that’s not what I’m talking about
here. What I’m talking about, is more
akin to seeing a glass as ‘half full’ rather than ‘half empty.’ That’s not ‘spin’ or anything like it. That’s optimism, as opposed to pessimism.
It is pessimistic to
look at our numbers and feel depressed. At
the number of Jews in the world. At the
number of Jews in Australia against the total population. At the number of Jews on the Gold Coast
against the number who belong to the churches and mosques and temples of other
religions. Pessimistic…but entirely reasonable.
It is
optimistic to look at the same sets of numbers and feel some sense of
jubilation. Optimistic, but not
dishonest.
It is entirely reasonable
to be pessimistic to look at the Shoah, where six million Jews – half the Jews
of Europe – perished. But the optimistic
view is that half the Jews of Europe survived! This, despite the stated aims of the
Wannsee Conference, to entirely exterminate the Jews of Europe. Half survived! Hitler didn’t even come close!
Okay, so Jews are
only a quarter of one percent of the world.
It is entirely reasonable to hear that and think we’re insignificant. But before you do, know that a third of
humanity practice the various forms of the Christian religion. That means that, for 2.3 billion people, the
Torah is a Divinely-inspired text. It is
true that many Christians harbour contempt for Judaism, based on centuries of
teaching by their clerics. But a
significant number, and their proportion is growing all the time, belong to
sects that recognise God’s Covenant with the Jewish people as eternal and
enduring.
Look at it another
way. Only a quarter of one percent of
the world’s population are Jewish, but fully 20 percent of Nobel
laureates! By this and other indices
Jews, despite our low raw numbers, exert an influence on the world that is
nothing short of incredible. I get e-mail
testimonials all the time – sometimes from you in this room today – attesting to
these optimistic numbers.
One more cause for
optimism, if we’ll only allow ourselves to see it. Our congregation has grown more than 20
percent in the last two years. This,
despite, a significant number of deaths of some of our oldest members. And how about involvement? Many of you have told me that, say 26 months
ago, typical attendance at a Friday evening or Saturday morning service was
sparse. Not having a minyan – ten adult
Jews – for a service was the norm, not just a possibility. In the last two years, the occasions when we
did not have a minyan, either Friday evening, Saturday morning, or a festival
evening or morning? Two, count ‘em,
two. Our typical attendance, and I mean
lately, is in the 30’s: Shabbat evening,
Shabbat morning, week after week after week.
And not only that,
but our ‘class’ of candidates for conversion is over 20 strong right now. If you tend to doubt that, please come to
class on Tuesday evenings. Come to
confirm what I’ve just told you. But
stay to learn something new about your faith!
It is so attractive to others that they gladly jump through the hoops
that we place before them, to join us.
To paraphrase
Mark Twain, reports of our death are greatly exaggerated.
So counting
ourselves need not only be an exercise in shreying gevalt. It can indeed lead to a reflection of God’s
love for us. It can indeed be a cause
for celebration. And that’s not just ‘spin.’ That’s optimism, which is an entirely legitimate
mindset. Not only legitimate, but
desired. More is better. Shabbat shalom.
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