Inclusiveness

D’var Torah 5/14/18

שבת שלום

This week, we begin the Book of Numbers, בְּמִדְבַּ֥ר, with a parasha of the same name. We pick up the narrative where we left off in Exodus, with Moses getting instructions on Mount Sinai as to how the Children of Israel are supposed to comport themselves. This section starts with a census of potential fighting men – everybody from age 20 up who is able to bear arms, by tribe and by clan. This is all recorded in careful detail. We note that the Levites are not included in this census, since they are not going to fight; their duties are to the mishkan and the Holy Ark. To conclude our parasha, a specific census of the tribe of Levi is taken, with each branch of the descendants of Levi assigned specific roles.

My focus today will be on inclusiveness as illustrated in this parasha. Jonathan Sacks points out, “The fact that Israel’s formative experience was in the wilderness turns out to be highly significant. For it is there that the people experience one of the Torah’s most revolutionary ideas, namely that an ideal society is one in which everyone has equal dignity under the sovereignty of G-d.” The emphasis is on equality. The tribes eat the same food, manna, and drink the same drink, water. They own no land and thus have no territorial conflicts. Once they reach the Promised Land and divide up the territory, there will quickly be haves and have-nots, and their society will have lost this ideal equality that is possible only in this wilderness period. As Rabbi Sacks continues, “ It is as if God were saying to the Israelites, this is what order looks like. Each person has his or her place within the family, the tribe and the nation. Everyone has been counted and each person counts. Preserve and protect this order, for without it you cannot enter the land, fight its battles and create a just society.”

Shai Held muses about why the Torah goes into such elaborate detail on the counting of each person and then itemizing it carefully as if we were reading a ledger. He concludes that it’s because we are unique as individuals – “For my sake the world was created” - and each of us is special to God. “We are not a nameless faceless mob but a collection of individuals each treasured by God.” We are open to other peoples and their ways and beliefs – the Children of Israel were given 613 Commandments, but the rest of the world is only required to live by the moral precepts that are the Noahide laws. We accept pluralism. We value other nations as people equally created and loved by God who are not expected to worship or believe as we do.

Our Sages have speculated as to why the Torah was given in the wilderness and not in the Promised Land. Numbers Rabbah says that it was given in the wilderness, land belonging to nobody, so that nobody could say, “It is mine, because it was given on my property.” All people have an equal claim on it. Every person matters – every person counts – and every individual - man, woman and child – was present at Mount Sinai. The Torah was not given just to a select group of Elders or representatives of the tribes.

Even the Lubavitcher Rebbe has weighed in on the counting process set forth in this parasha. He notes that everybody in a group of people being counted is equal. Nobody is counted twice and nobody is omitted, whatever his status. Our Jewish identities are what matter, not our characteristics or aptitudes or possessions.

I can’t be talking about inclusiveness in today’s parasha while ignoring the fact that the count, being military in nature, did not include women. I had some concern about stretching the metaphor this far, thinking of Judith Plaskow’s Standing Again at Sinai and the concern that she raises about the patriarchal focus of the Tanach. For me, this is mitigated considerably by the fact that we read the Book of Ruth during the holiday of Shavuot, a book featuring a woman and the choices that she makes, a book that also emphasizes inclusiveness by virtue of the fact that Ruth was not born Jewish.

Shavuot is the festival during which our tradition teaches that the Ten Commandments were given to us – to ALL of us. Tavi Schectman from Friendship Circle of Michigan, a Lubavitch nonprofit whose goal is to provide every individual with special needs the inclusion that they deserve, states that “if one member of the Jewish Nation would not have been present at Sinai the Torah would not have been given.” We all participated then and we all have a share in it now – men, women, and children of all abilities, ages, and levels of understanding. If an individual has special challenges, whether physical, mental, or emotional, that person nevertheless is counted the same as everybody else and has an equal share in the Torah. Nobody is ranked higher or lower than anybody else.

כן ׳ה׳ רצון