Bamidbar: Why a Census?
Why does G-d count the Israelites and how come there are so few Levites?

by Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple

The numbers of the Israelite people were carefully tallied. Rashi wants to know why. He says that G-d needed to know. In a modern context we would say that such information is important for the government, to assist them to calculate how many soldiers they can raise in time of war, and to allow them to work out what health, education and other facilities the population might require.

Because of G-d’s love for the Israelites, Rashi explains, He counts them on a regular basis. Every individual is precious. Every individual counts. Nobody is a nobody. If a person feels depressed, alienated and insignificant, G-d says, “But in My eyes you are a jewel. To Me you matter. My world cannot continue without you.”

Somebody once said, “Idiots must be important to G-d – otherwise why did He create so many of them?” The Torah point of view is that no-one is without virtues and value. No-one is written off as far as G-d is concerned. The Mishnah makes it quite clear: “Man is duty-bound to say, ‘For my sake was the world created” (Sanh. 37a). G-d decided that there was a task which only I, or only you, or only anyone, can carry out. He needs us in His world to carry out that task. When we feel down in the dumps, we have to remember that.

It would do us all good to read Chapter 3 of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book, “Who is Man?” (1965). Note that Heschel does not ask, “What is man?” That would imply that man is a thing, a pawn, a conglomerate. His question is “Who is Man?” Man is unique, precious, sacred. G-d numbers His creatures and savours every one.

SHORT OF LEVITES
The statistics don’t seem logical: “All the male Levites... were 22,000” (Num. 3:39). In a people numbering 600,000 – and that may be without women and children, who would have brought the total up to two million or more – how could there be so few Levites? We can ignore for the moment the fact that elsewhere in the chapter the Levites add up to a further three hundred; in our verse the Torah may simply be giving us a round figure.

Nachmanides links this verse with the opening chapter of Sh’mot which says that the more the Egyptians oppressed the Israelites, the more the Israelites increased. The Levites, however, were not enslaved, and their numbers increased much more slowly.

This is of course a chapter in the long history of Jewish demography which inevitably has to take account of the influence of outside factors on the growth and decline of Jewish population figures. Looked at from the point of view of today’s Jewish world the effect of internal factors must also be considered. There is the major – external – problem of the losses caused by the Holocaust. There is the – external – problem of the effect of urban living, which tends to reduce the number of children born to a family. There are the internal influences of assimilation and outmarriage, and the positive response of orthodox Jewish couples who believe so passionately in Judaism that they are determined to build up the Jewish population.

Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple AO RFD is Emeritus Rabbi of the Great Synagogue, Sydney. He is now retired and lives in Jerusalem, where he spends his time writing, delivering shiurim, and editing books for Targum Press. He also writes articles for various publications, including Hamodia.

Rabbi Apple's new book, a lavishly-illustrated history of the Great Synagogue, Sydney, is a lively story that links up with Jewish and Australian history. Don't miss out on your copy!