In the last decade, the number of Jews in Redbridge decreased by 37%. Meanwhile, the number of Jews in Epping Forest increased by 18%, and in Havering they increased by 16%.

These are our numbers. And they don’t matter.

According to the last census, the East of England has now overtaken Yorkshire as having one of the largest Jewish populations, with over 42,000 individual Jews living in this area.

These are our numbers. And they don’t matter.

In 2022, SWESRS gained 43 new household members. In the first quarter of 2023, we continued the same trajectory, gaining 15 new household members.

These are our numbers. And they don’t matter.

None of these numbers matter.

But. There is one person sitting in the synagogue this morning, praying. That number matters. There is one person watching on Zoom, feeling connected to the community despite not being able to attend. That number matters. One of us is in hospital; another just had a baby; another is sitting shiva; another is preparing for a wedding. Yes, those numbers matter. Those ones. Those ones are the only numbers that really matter.

In general, our Scripture takes a pretty dim view of counting activities. In the Book of Samuel, when King David takes a census of the Israelites, he instantly feels guilty and repents before God. God is furious that David has done this, and sends instant punishment. A plague falls on the kingdom lasting three days and wipes out 70,000 people. 

At the time of the census, there had been 130,000 possible warriors. Now their numbers are significantly reduced. 

But why? What’s so bad about counting Jews?

Abravanel says it was a proud and haughty thing to do. David was impetuous, believing that he could control his fate by counting his people. God is saying: you like numbers? Tough. Have fewer. You think your strength comes from how many of you there are? Wrong. Have fewer.

Maybe. But that doesn’t explain the attitude to censuses elsewhere in Scripture.

In our Torah portion this week, Moses takes a census of the Israelites. Moses counted up every man of fighting age who might be able to bear arms. They counted them up by tribe: 46,500 for Reuben; 59,300 for Simeon; 45,650 for Gad… and on it went, until the census reached its total. There were 603,550 Israelites in the desert, ready to fight.

And, as it turned out, those numbers didn’t matter. They listed them all, got them into procession, and then… nothing happened. There was no war to be had. They never entered into combat. 

Instead, the entire narrative instantly pivots completely. Now, instead of talking about all the thousands of people that Moses has on command, the story shifts to talking about Aaron’s two sons, Nadav and Abihu, who died while making strange sacrifices to God. All those big numbers and none of them matter. The only ones that do matter, it turns out, are those two young priests, whom Aaron is still mourning many chapters after their deaths.

That’s right, we’re in the Book of Numbers, and the message of the Book of Numbers is… numbers don’t matter that much.

It’s individuals that matter.

The best explanation comes, I think, from the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas had survived a prisoners’ camp in World War Two. He was one of the most eminent philosophers in the world, but was aghast at how educated people had been seduced by the disease of fascism. What was wrong with his intellectual colleagues and teachers, that they could become Nazis?

The problem, he felt, was that they did not understand the value of human life. 

Every human being, he taught, is infinitely valuable. Not in the mathematical sense. In a deeper spiritual sense. Every one of us is immeasurably, inconceivably sacred. 

We cannot be counted because we are already infinite. We are already part of God, who is beyond any number. People, like God, are unique and infinite. They cannot be divided in any way. 

None of us are supposed to be counted. We are not supposed to have a number assigned to us as individuals. 

This was precisely the sin of the Nazis: they thought that they could measure, quantify, and categorise people. They were so committed to this rationalisation that they tattooed the numbers of their prisoners on their arms. 

Counting people, then, is a detestable thing. No number can be put on our lives. We were created by God to serve a purpose so much higher than any number can describe.

This is why the Torah rebukes counting. Any effort is a complete miscalculation. If you think you can work out how many people there are to prepare for war, you are wildly underestimating what you have before you. In each human being is a living, breathing, spark of the Divine, far beyond calculation.

So, let’s go back to the census. I will be honest at my own sin. I have spent ages poring over it, thinking on how many Jews there are in different areas, and working out what they mean for our synagogue’s development. I have tried to keep track of how many members we have, and where they’re coming from, and where they live. And that is, at best, an error. At worst, it is a grave underestimation of who we already are.

Rabbi Jacob Rader Marcus, one of the leaders of the American Reform movement through the 20th Century, warned: “When you survey your congregation on a Friday night, don’t count bodies, count souls. These chosen few, this elect, has a job to do: these Jews are our future; they have to save us; even more they have something to tell the whole world, to distil for all humanity what the Jew has learned after 3,000 years of bitter experience […] They taught us to abhor hatred, violence, brutality, to avoid every aspect of any concept that manifests itself in contempt for fellow human beings.”

We must count souls, not bodies. We must reject the logic of quantifying people. We must love each other as irreducible, wonderful, infinite expressions of the ultimate Creator, our God.