Bamidbar: Each of Us Has a Name |
Each of us has a name given by God and given by our parents Each of us has a name given by our smile… Each of us has a name given by our celebrations and given by our work Each of us has a name …given by our death.
Zelda (translation from Hebrew)
Zelda’s poem reminds most Israelis of national Memorial Day ceremonies. A discourse that revolves around the number of fallen can erode the individuality of the victims. Their uniqueness is what the poem seeks to enshrine – the fact that everyone has a name. Every year, before the siren pierces the air, signaling the beginning of Memorial Day, I choose one of the too-many people about whom, sadly, I would like to think during the siren, and devote all of my attention to their life and death. I am unable to contemplate more than one person at a time.
Counting members of the nation is considered a grave sin in Jewish tradition, as we learn from the following story about King David: “And the king said to Joab the captain of the host that was with him, ‘Go now to and fro through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, and number ye the people, that I may know the sum of the people’” (II Sam. 24:2). Joab, the commander of David’s army, fails to dissuade him from conducting the census. Ultimately, David himself comes to rue his sin: “And David said unto the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done; but now, O Lord, put away, I beseech Thee, the iniquity of Thy servant; for I have done very foolishly’” (ibid. 24:10). Elsewhere, the Bible writes that it is “abominable” to count the people and that it causes God to be “displeased” (I Chr. 21:6–7).
A census turns a human being into a number, a........