Bmidbar and Numbers / במדבר און נומערס

This is a weekly series

of parsha dvarim written by a frum, atheist, transsexual anarchist. It's crucial in these times that we resist the narrative that Zionism owns Judaism. Our texts are rich—sometimes opaque, but absolutely teeming with wisdom and fierce debate. It's the work of each generation to extricate meaning from our cultural and religious inheritance. I aim to offer comment which is true to the source material (i.e. doesn't invert or invent meaning to make us more comfortable) and uses Torah like a light to reflect on our modern times.

An appeal

My friend Kamal needs help to leave Gaza. He is trying to immigrate to Greece to search for his missing son, who in desperation took a small and dangerous lifeboat across the Mediterranean. Please donate what you can.

Content note: Genocide in Palestine, misogyny and transphobia, the Holocaust

Not everyone counts.

We're beginning the fourth book of Torah. The English name is "Numbers" because it begins with a census, but the Hebrew name is "בדמדבר“ or "in the wilderness", which I prefer. We are one year into the exile. Yes, we're counting people—but the context is that we're wandering, we're insecure, and we're preparing for military defense.

Numbers aren't everything.

Misha leyening Bmidbar 1:2

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In this military census, we only count men capable of bearing arms. In total, the 12 houses number 603,550 fighting Jews. This number is repeated twice.

The Levites are excluded. They instead "take the place" of the first-born Jewish sons who belong to Hashem: a relationship consecrated when the first-born sons of Mitsrayim were killed. The Levites are also charged with carrying, tending to, and guarding the Mishkon in support of the Kohanim. Levite boys and men over the age of 1 month are recorded as being owned by Hashem: 22,000.

Torah counts the living fighters. In 2o23, (according to my former employer) there were 169,500 active duty IDF soldiers and 465,000 reserve personnel. Reuters reported that Hamas began the war with 20,000–25,000 fighters, has lost some 10,000 in casualties, and has since recruited an additional 10,000–15,000.

Finding reliable and consistent data is difficult, but the huge disparity in combatant and casualties is clear. If numbers alone mattered, Israel would have won long ago. That the war is protracted despite the asymmetry in military budget and personnel speaks to the impossible mission of "destroying" Hamas—essentially an ideology—and reminds me again of the Vietnam War.

How do we count the dead in Israel?

1,195 died on October 7 across kibbutzim, military bases, and the Nova music festival in the Gaza envelope. Some were combatants: IDF soldiers, Israeli police, and Shin Bet personnel. Most (815) were civilians—though it's difficult to call most Israeli citizens "civilians" when they have military conscription. Among those, 79 were foreign nationals and 36 were children. It is still unclear how many were killed by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters, and how many (at least 14) were killed by friendly fire. Since the war began (including on October 7) 854 IDF soldiers have been killed in Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon.

In addition to the dead, 215 people (some soldiers, some civilians) were taken as hostages, including 39 children. As of this month, 58 hostages remain in Gaza, 24 of whom are maybe still living. Hamas released 5 hostages outwith a ceasefire agreement; 8 were rescued by the IDF. But the single most effective tactic for securing the return of living hostages are the ceasefires in 2023 (105 hostages returned) and 2025 (30 returned). At least 6 hostages—and likely many more—have been directly killed by the IDF. With this information, we can calculate that 43 hostages have died or are unaccounted for.

How do we count the dead in Palestine?

Since October 7, the official death toll says that at least 54,056 Palestinians have been confirmed killed in Gaza and the West Bank, the majority of them children. The Lancet reported that the true number is likely much higher, estimating up to 186,000 "or even more" dead as of June 2024, killed from bombing, shooting, collapsing buildings, injury, hunger, and disease. UNICEF counts 50,000 children dead or injured; 1,309 of those since Israel broke the ceasefire on 18 March. "Hundreds" of families have been entirely wiped off the civil registry, meaning there is no surviving member.

Some people dispute the numbers, claiming that the Gaza health ministry is not reliable and does not distinguish between civilians and combatants (to which I counter: neither do IDF guns and bombs). But no one reasonable argues that there is symmetry between the dead. The estimated numbers of dead, for comparison: about 1,802 Israelis (and others in Israel) and anywhere between 54,056–186,000+ in Palestine.

Dead Jews count more than the living.

6.5 million Jews died in the Holocaust. That number is important to us. It gets invoked today as though we haven't killed enough Palestinians yet—as though we can keep murdering them until we reach this magic number. Palestine is paying for Europe's crimes.

Discursively, the dead Jews of the Holocaust are worth more than the survivors who have a messy plurality of politics: the 6.5 million died not because of human wretchedness, but in order to create the Jewish state. In the Zionist narrative, these deaths are not so much a tragedy as a necessity.

Hashem tells us in this parsha that the "redemption price" of Jewish first-born sons is 5 shekels, to be paid to the Kohanim. The Hannibal Directive dictates that Israeli soldiers and citizens are better dead than captive, worth too much to the opposing side if they're taken alive. IDF soldiers are instructed to kill their own people rather than allow them to be taken hostage. Jews are using Jewish death to justify genocide, and using genocide to justify murdering Jews.

One of the foundational myths of Zionism

is that Jews were meek little lambs before declaring Israeli independence and forming our own army. Jews have always been in armies, like everyone else. Torah is full of military historiography and chronicles what could be either Jewish war crimes or harmless revenge fantasies.

Creating an army is not a way to defeat our enemies (modern or historic) but to become them. There is some trend on the left toward renaming the IDF the "IOF"—the Israeli Occupation Force—which I understand, but don't engage in. Renaming the thing does not change the thing itself. All "defense forces" are violent. There are no moral armies. There is no humane war. There are no benign states. Of course they are not all equally evil, but they are all evil enough that I do not want to rename some of them and thereby suggest that the others are legitimate.

וְהָיָה מִסְפַּר בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל כְּחוֹל הַיָּם אֲשֶׁר לֹא יִמַּד.

The Rabbis in Talmud (Yoma 22b) declare a prohibition on counting Jews directly because, as it says in Hosea, "And the number of the children of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured".

We don't count Jews because to separate ourselves—to individualize—from the collective is dangerous, spiritually and otherwise. Rashi says (Shemoys 30:12) that things which are numbered are vulnerable to the evil eye. It certainly feels as though the evil eye, and the evil inclination, are upon us right now.

We must keep trying to connect, and reconnect, with each other. Right now, we are atomized. The left is not strong—we're vulnerable—but we could be.

Police can manage 1 protest of 10,000 people, but not 10 protests of 1,000.

The dead are not just numbers: they are entire worlds, gone. The scale of loss is enormous and immeasurable. And, the dead were not equal to each other. It does everyone a great disservice to equalize them: they were diverse.

Likewise, the living are not well measured by numbers alone. Torah doesn't even bother to take a census that includes Jewish women. The left may count less people in its political parties and affinity groups, but we are important. It only takes a few people to do great things. You have power.