“The Eternal spoke to Moses saying, count each person…”
Numbers 4:21
Judaism demands that people’s lives never be reduced to a number. We do mental gymnastics not to count people as a number. In counting a minyan (group of ten) we say
“
not-one, not-two....
”
This week has seen The NY Times bring life and names to some of the 100,000 who have died from Covid-19. This week has seen the heart-wrenching murder of George Floyd whose death reveals once again the truth that not all lives count in our society and the counter-truth that they matter very much as so many want to say George’s name and not add his number to a statistic.
-Rabbi Adam Stock Spilker
