Shmuel Beis Perek 24
We are not allowed to count Jews directly by assigning a number to each individual, but instead we have to use an alternative method, such as ‘hoshiya es amecha…’, or we count via objects - for example, the half-shekel donations given to the Mishkan by each male Jew between 20 and 60 years old. Indeed, it seems that in perek 24 Dovid fell foul of this prohibition. The Gemara [1] tells us that the source for this prohibition on counting is a passuk in Hoshea,[2] which tells us “The [population] number of the Bnei Yisrael will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured nor counted.” How can the Gemara use this passuk as a source for the prohibition to count Jews - surely it is simply a forecast of the great numbers of Bnei Yisrael’s population, implying that it is impossible to count Jews, but not that it is forbidden to count Jews!
One could answer that the underlying concept behind the prohibition is that the Jewish People are a supernatural people and they are not limited in what they can achieve. Putting a number on someone or something is the ultimate form of limiting them; one is saying that this person or object is limited to a certain number or measurement, and cannot stretch to more than this figure. In contrast, the Jewish People are by nature supernatural and expand beyond any limits - so counting us (putting a number on us directly) would be defying our very existence as a supernatural people. Therefore, the Gemara is learning from the passuk in Hoshea that since we are a people without limitations, and this is reflected by the fact that our population numbers will increase supernaturally, it is forbidden to count us because doing so denies this supernatural character in attempting to bring us down to the finite expression of numbers and figures.
In fact, perhaps Haman was attempting to make the Jews a ‘natural commodity’ by offering a sum of money[3] to Achashveirosh in exchange for the ‘privilege’ of exterminating the Jewish People. Haman was trying to declare the Jewish People a ‘sellable item’ whose value could be expressed in finite monetary terms, thus denying their supernatural limitless (and valueless) nature. Thus, Haman’s wife tried to convince him that this plan would not work. When he returned home despondent at the fact that he had led Mordechai through the city on horseback, she told him that “if Mordechai is a Jew…you will not be able to conquer him.”[4] Rashi reveals the full-length version of her warning: “This nation is compared to stars and dust. When they descend they become as low as the dust, but when they are on the ascendancy they rise up to the Heavens and to the stars.” She was telling her husband that it is impossible to fit the Jewish People into natural rules, because they are ‘naturally’ a supernatural people.
The Jews are the only nation in the history of the world to have returned to its homeland three times. Similarly, although we occupy a mere 0.22% of the world’s population, there is no nation who has influenced world history to such an extent - monotheism, mass education, and even the basic premise of equal rights are some of the things which the world owes to the Jewish People.[5] Further, we have survived miraculously as a nation despite widespread, irrational, obsessive, and almost constant persecution. The Sefas Emes puts this across beautifully, noting the irony in the fact that the night on which we recount the supernatural miracles that were performed for us during the Exodus is called ‘seder night’ (meaning ‘night of order’). The ‘natural order’ of the Jewish People, he remarked, is the supernatural order.
May we live up to our ‘natural’ abilities to break out of our limitations in achieving what we to have the potential to achieve.
[1] Gemarra Yoma 22b [2] Hoshea 2:1 [3] Megillas Esther 3:9 [4] Megillas Esther 6:13 [5] Rabbi Ken Spiro of Aish Hatorah has a wonderful shiur, called ‘World Perfect’, about the central concepts Judaism has given to the world.