Parshas Bamidbar: Every Life Counts

The Torah reading this week, Bamidbar: (Numbers) 1:1-4:20, opens as the Israelites prepare to embark on their journey through the desert. Moving approximately 600,000 military age men and their families requires much preparation and planning. If each of these men has a wife and three children and elderly parents, the count could be over 2.4 million men, women and children! They need organized so that along the way and each time they set up camp, they know exactly how to arrange themselves and exactly what duties to assume. 

The Almighty instructs Moses to conduct a census according to His directions and the customs of the day. The census establishes the Nation of Israel's first army and a security perimeter around the Tabernacle. The census also identifies the Levite priests who will transport the Tabernacle from camp to camp and perform their sacred duties each time it is reassembled.

The census in Bamidbar counts only males from the ages of twenty to sixty in eleven of the twelve tribes. The tribe of Levi receives special treatment because they didn’t participate in the Golden Calf incident. God appoints them managers of the Tabernacle and orders the males be counted from the age of one month and older. Numbers 3:15 says, Count the children of Levi according to their fathers' house according to their families. Count all males from the age of one month and upward.

One month is the age of viability at this time. This verse has been twisted beyond belief to mean that babies before viability do not “count’ and therefore, may be legally killed. This text is not a statement of non-personhood for born children under one month of age or unborn children.. It cannot rationally be used as a Torah based argument for killing unborn children or killing children under one month of age, just as it cannot be used as justification for killing people over the age of 60 or killing females at any age.

As the late great Rabbi Ahron Soloveitchik zt”l warns, “the Torah is compared to the sneh, the Burning Bush, because “fire gives heat, light and devours fuel, but the light of Torah must only give warmth and light, love and hope; it must never be used to destroy or kill. This is not Torah; it is a perversion of Torah.”

Viability is now an astonishing 22 weeks gestation. With neonatal care, many of these young babies live outside the womb. Many thrive and go on to live normal healthy lives in families who love them. Yet, abortion past viability is legal in many jurisdictions and much profit is made from the high cost of the procedure and the sale of baby parts. For pregnancies that pose a threat to the mother’s life, preterm delivery is the preferred method. Mothers have better outcomes and many babies survive.

The biblical census is important because it recognizes each individual member of each individual tribe as a unique human being with value, dignity, and worth. HaShem loves each one of us, and creates each one of us to fulfill a specific mission on Earth. Psalm 139:13-16 tells us that HaShem knows the destiny of each one of us from the moment of  conception. "For you created my inmost being: you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made...My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to me.“

In the opening verse of the Haftorah portion this week, Hoshea (Hosea) 2:1-22, the prophet declares a time when God embraces his many children after a period of estrangement. And the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which shall neither be measured nor counted; and it shall come to pass that, instead of saying to them, "You are not My people," it shall be said to them, "The children of the living God.” 

Hosea witnesses the corruption of Judah. He warns that treaties made with foreign cultures and pagan practices and child sacrifice in Judah will cause the downfall of the nation. He likens the children of Israel to a faithless wife seeking fulfillment outside the holy covenant of marriage, much like the kings of Judah seeking power outside the holy covenant with the Almighty. Ultimately, he reassures them that like a loving husband who forgives a penitent wife, God will forgive a penitent Israel.

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Cecily Routman

May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and good life upon us and upon all Israel. Amen. 

Cecily Routman is the founder and president of the Jewish Pro-Life Foundation. She opposes abortion homicide in general and among Jews in particular and laments secular policy making in Israel that results in loss of Jewish life and delays the messianic redemption. She envisions a Torah based holy Land of Israel and a world that respects the life of every human being from conception.