Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

Last week we began reading the fourth of the Five Books of Moses in our synagogues. In Hebrew we call the book “Ba-midbar” which means “In the Wilderness” because the book opens with the verse, “God spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai”. In English we call the book “The Book of Numbers” because it opens with a census of the People of Israel as they set out from Mount Sinia to the Land of Canaan. God commands Moses to list, by name, every male Israelite age twenty and up. Rashi, the great medieval Bible commentator, notes that this is one of several times in the Torah that God takes a census of the Israelites. Why does God need to keep counting them, asks Rashi. He answers, “Because they are dear to Him, He counts them now and then”. The Ramban, another biblical commentator, tells us that each male over twenty would approach Moses and Aaron and state, “My name is so-and-so, I am from the family of so-and-so, from the tribe of so-and-so. Aaron and Moses would then give him a blessing. In this way, each Israelite male had a personal connection with the leaders of the community, and each was recorded as the unique individual that they were.

Last Sunday Middy and I attended the Nova Music Festival Exhibition in New York City. This is a remembrance, through video testimony and artifacts, of the brutal attack by Hamas on Israel in general and on the Nova Music Festival in particular. One walks through a dark, cavernous space, first learning about this musical gathering dedicated to peace and love which took place in Re’im, Israel, near the Gaza border. One sees footage from the savage assault, recorded by the murderers themselves; one hears from survivors, walks through remains of tents and campsites, of bullet pocked porta-potties and burned-out shells of cars and the personal effects left behind. At the end of the exhibition, we see the names and photographs of the 370 people from the festival that were killed and the 44 that were taken captive.

They are not just numbers. They are unique individuals, with names and loved ones left behind. They are Anita Lisman, daughter of Kira and Michael, of Tel Aviv; Yohai Ben Zecharia, 23, son of Golan and Sigalit of Netanyah; Katya Goldman, 26, daughter of Natalia and Alexei of Holon; …… if you live in Israel, you know their names. Everybody knows their names. It’s personal.