Well They Took Away My Name And Gave Me A Number Instead (The Grateful Dead - "Standing on the Corner")

Our 8^th grade daughter participated in a very unique program in which a handful of Jewish Day Schools in North America offer. The program is called “Names Not Numbers”. A small group of 8^th grade students are teamed with Holocaust Survivor. This “team” goes through process of interviewing the survivor. Each team formulates interview questions, conducts the interview tapes the interview, edits the interview and produces a mini documentary about their assigned survivor. The team also has a writing assignment and presentation that is made in front of fellow classmates. The final product is shown before a gathering of parents, family, the survivors and their families, as well as school administration and various members of the community. It is a remarkably moving and inspirational evening and the experience that our daughter had strikes me as transformational on several levels. First, our daughter learned a powerful pedagogical lesson. She learned what is was to be part of team, working together to accomplish a common goal. Everyone had a job, each member of the group had to rely upon each other in order to generate this multimedia presentation. Second our daughter touched history, history spoke to her in the voice of the Holocaust Survivor. Our daughter didn’t just read about something from a third party. She didn’t encounter a primary document. She, along with her team, created the primary document of her assigned Survivor’s life. While it is very easy to get lost in the numbers of the Holocaust and the enormity of it. Our daughter saw a number on the Survivor’s arm and that number was so much more than just a number. That number belongs to a name, a person, a life.

This week, we begin reading the 4th of the 5 books of the Torah, Sefer Bemidbar, the Book of Numbers. This week’s Parsha is the same name Bemidbar. Numbers is aptly named the book begins with counting, the counting of people, a census. God commands Moshe to take a census, MiBen Esrim Shana V’Mala Kol Yotzei Tzava B’Yisroel – of all males over the age of twenty, everyone who goes out in the Legion of Israel (1:3). Once the number of fighting age males has been established by tribe, each tribe is placed in a specific formation around the Ark. This will be the formation in which Bnai Yisroel is to travel from the foot of Sinai to Eretz Canaan. Finally the Tribe of Levi, the Priests are counted. However because Levi’s only responsibility is the Ark, and the Mishkan; they will not be able to hold land in Eretz Canaan, nor do they fight. Rather they are now counted and assigned specific functions in terms of maintaining the Mishkan.

God order’s a census of people. However for whom is the counting?  Certainly God is God and already knows the number of souls that comprise B’nai Yisroel as well as those able to fight. When God wants Moshe and Israel or anyone for that matter to do something for himself the language indicates it. Lech Lecha – Go for yourself God commanded Avraham; and Shelach Lecha send for yourself  God will command Moshe in several Parshiot from now.  Here, God command Moshe Se’u et Rosh Kol Adat Bnai Yisroel count the heads. Since Lecha- for you does not appear; it would seem that the counting is not for B’nai Yisroel nor Moshe, but rather for God. So, why does God need or want a counting? We have already been told that B’nai Yisroel is Am Segula – a treasured nation, meaning B’nai Yisroel possesses some type of value. Each individual has value and from that, each individual has a purpose. Parshah Bemidbar demonstrates that there is an intrinsic value in the individual.  Halachically, we know this because the Legal Principle of Pikuach Nefesh, Saving a Soul exists. This principle appears in the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Shabbat, “the saving of life supersedes the Sabbath (Shabbat 132a).There is a Midrash in Tractate Sanhedrin which expresses the individual’s importance to God, and therefore God’s desire to count us. “If a human being stamps several coins with the same die, they all resemble on another. But the King of kings stamps all human beings from the mold of the first person; and yet not one of them is identical to the other one. Therefore every individual has merit and is obliged to say “for my sake the world was created’”. (San4:5).

We all are given numbers.   Some numbers are ways in which government can monitor the benefits it provides its citizens like Social Insurance Cards and Social Security Cards. Some numbers are given to us in order to make deposits and withdrawals. . Some numbers are assigned us so that we can contact each other. Sadly, we know that some numbers are branded upon us because of hatred. It would seem that it is very easy to lose oneself amid the numbers that are used to identify each of us. As we watched our daughter make her presentation, as we watched the mini documentary, and as we watch her with the Survivor; those who were present understood the valuable lesson that our daughter and all her classmates learned from these incredibly inspiring people. Each Survivor explained that numbers are assigned by another,  Although that is how these survivors and all those who perished were identified by those who assign the numbers, they did not identify themselves that way. Each survivor movingly made the point that everyone in the Holocaust is more than just a number, they were a person, with a personality and a soul.  The development of that name, the Shem Tov, the good name cannot be assigned in the form of a number by another person. Rather a Shem Tov can only be shaped by the person and God. Hopefully the students who participated in the Names Not Numbers program realized that each of them has an opportunity to make a Shem Tov, a good name for themselves and always be more than a number.

Peace,

Rav Yitz