Please Count Me In & Bamidbar

For the past few days, I’ve been visiting a friend who lives on the beach.

(Yes, same one as last year, when I went into the freezing ocean!)

As I walk along the beach in my friend’s neighborhood, I am amazed by the mixture of people from all walks of life, all races and ethnicities, and religions represented.

It’s one of the things she loves most about her beach community—so unique among other, more exclusive beach communities to the south and north of her.

Many beaches, as we know, are reserved for the wealthiest among us, as if money gives them the entitlement to access the ocean.

One of the things the Torah reminded us of last week is that the land does not belong to us or anyone else; it belongs to God, however you wish to define that heavily loaded word.

While here at the beach, I’ve had continued conversations with couples soon getting married (by me as their rabbi).

This week I spoke with a couple who are both Jewish.

It’s obvious that they’re connected to Judaism by only a very thin thread.

They don’t know how they feel about God and, according to them, they don’t “practice” Judaism in any obvious way.

They also don’t know why they feel the need for a rabbi to officiate at their wedding—but they do.

They are so apologetic about their lack of enthusiasm for Judaism, it feels like they wonder if they should even be counted as Jewish.

I keep reassuring them that I understand—because I do.

I was once like them in so many ways: confused about my desire for it, unsure of what or how much of it I wanted, always wondering if the ways I was Jewish “counted,” feeling I wasn’t “Jewish enough” because I didn’t “do” enough Jewish “things.”

It was all so vague.

This brings up big and heavy questions of who gets counted as Jewish.

Who’s in?

Who’s out?

Meanwhile, I continue to receive messages from colleagues who challenge my advocacy for greater inclusivity in the Jewish community.

They think my fences around Judaism are too low.

(You’ll have to read my previous two blogs to get a better picture of why.)

Does anyone question this Jewish couple’s legitimacy as full Jews based on their Jewish practice?

No.

Of greater concern is the fact that they both have parents who converted to Judaism.

Were the converts male or female?

Who converted them? Are they counted as legitimate authorities of Jewish law?

Did the parents convert before or after their children were born?

If after, then were the children officially converted?

The answers to these questions are apparently not sufficient for most rabbis to agree to marry them.

All this makes me very sad.

Because they want to be counted as Jewish.

But it somehow feels too complicated for them to go the extra mile.

The fences feel too high for them to climb over.

For the interfaith couples it’s even more complicated.

The first one I met with felt reassured by my long (interfaith) marriage of 35 years (and counting!); if we could make it work, so could they.

I made a point of saying that couples like them—like us—are the future of the world.

Literally.

Because if we don’t stop fighting over things like religion (and land), we will have no future as a human race (let alone as Jews).

We’re missing the bigger picture.

This week in Torah, as we begin the book of Numbers, which is all about counting, we have a census of the Israelites, with all the names of all the tribes, their most important members, and their numbers.

As we approach the holiday of Shavuot, we also approach the end of a period of 49 days of counting between Passover and Shavuot.

It’s called “Counting the Omer.”

The thing about counting the Omer is that the rabbis came up with a rule; since the Torah commands us to count the days, they decided we should recite a blessing each day before counting.

But!

If you forget one day, then you’re out: you can continue to count the days, but you’re no longer allowed to say the blessing.

I remember getting really upset by this rule.

Why do the rabbis get to decide if I get to say the blessing or not?

And just for missing one day?

Shavuot is the festival of first fruits.

But Shavuot also commemorates the receiving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

It’s also when the rabbis (again, the rabbis) calculated, according to their method of counting, that we received Revelation.

They say Shavuot is when Judaism’s laws and teachings were revealed to us.

These are teachings of how to live a life guided by a desire to create a society of equity and justice.

So I ask, what needs to be revealed today?

Last week I was reminded by a colleague of something the leader of the Jewish Renewal Movement, Rabbi Zalman Shachter-Shalomi, said.

When pondering the question of what needs renewal in Judaism, another question comes up: “How do we know when we’re going too far in loosening the boundaries of Judaism?”

Reb Zalman said, (and I’m paraphrasing), that we base our answers to these questions on the reality of the world we’re living in.

It might be about who gets to look at or walk along the ocean.

Or it might be who gets to judge who is Jewish and who is not.

The Nazis didn’t care what Jewish authority said about who was Jewish; they were happy to count us in when it came to killing us.

I think we should remember this when we jump to count people out.

So who counts?

We all do.

Every single human being counts on this Earth.

This is the Revelation we need today.

Many people are getting it.

Let’s pray that more do.

The future of Judaism, and humanity, depends on it.

And please say Amen if you get it, too.