This d’var Torah is dedicated to those who attend the daily minyan at Beth Am. Thank God, we have a devoted group of individuals who come, day in and day out, morning and evening, to hold a daily prayer service twice a day, so that those who are in mourning and those who have a yorzeit have an opportunity to say Kaddish. Now I should tell you, it isn’t easy; we don’t always get a minyan (the minimum of ten people required for communal prayer). Often times, we come in right around the time prayers are supposed to start, and we see one of the "regulars" looking around the room, and NOT counting: "Not one, not two, not three…" hoping to get up to "not ten" so we can begin the service.
What is this business of "not counting?" After all, most of this week’s parsha, Bamidbar, is occupied with a census. The results of the census are that there are 603,550 men of fighting age, not including the tribe of Levi, among the Children of Israel at the end of their first year after leaving Egypt. Now if that’s not counting, I don’t know what is. But Rashi, ever ready with the answer, tells us that the census wasn’t taken by actual count, but rather by having each man of military-service age contribute ½ shekel, as is spelled out in Exodus 30:12-13: "When you take a census of the Israelite people according to their enrollment, each shall pay the Lord a ransom for himself on being enrolled, that no plague may come upon them through their being enrolled. This is what everyone who is enrolled in the records shall pay: a half-shekel…"
Notice that in Exodus, we are given the reason for not doing an actual count: "that no plague may come upon them through their being enrolled." Would that actually happen? Would God bring a plague on the people simply for being counted? The answer is ‘yes, indeed,’ and this is alluded to in a section of the prayers that those who come to daily minyan will recognize: Tahanun. Tahanun is a set of ‘personal supplications and confessions’ (to quote Siddur Sim Shalom for Weekdays) said both in the morning and afternoon prayers on any day we cannot come up with a good enough excuse not to say it. (‘Good excuses’ include Shabbat, Rosh Hodesh and all holidays—including such biggies as Tu Beshvat, Tu B’Av, Lag Ba’omer, Purim Katan, Pesach Sheni, the whole month surrounding Pesach, and the whole rest of the month after Sukkot. Also included in ‘good excuses’ is the presence of a bride or groom in the congregation, the presence of any celebrant of a brit milah (including the mohel), the presence of a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, and ‘festive days on the civil calendar.’ Finally, sadness also constitutes a ‘good excuse,’ so it is not said on Tisha B’Av or in a house of mourning.)
The main section of Tachanun begins with a quote from 2 Samuel 24:14: "David said to [the prophet] Gad, ‘I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for His compassion is great; and let me not fall into the hands of men.’" What David is talking about in this section is that he gets to choose what his punishment should be for having conducted a census. Earlier in the chapter, it appears that it is God—angry again at Israel—Who incites David to do the census, although the parallel story in 2 Chronicles 21 attributes the incitement to Satan. Be that as it may, David instructs Joab, his military commander, to conduct a complete census of both Israel and Judah. Joab, to his credit, tries to dissuade his king from this ill-advised action, but David insists. After an exhaustive count that takes 9 months and 20 days (evidently ‘people’ wasn’t the only thing they were counting), Joab comes back with the answer: 800,000 men prepared to go to war in the north (Israel), and 500,000 in the south (Judah).
Afterward, however, David realizes that he sinned in conducting the census, and prays to God for forgiveness. The next morning, the prophet Gad comes to David with a message from God: he must choose one of three possible punishments in order to expiate the sin: either a seven year famine in the land, or three months of fleeing from enemies pursuing him, or a three day plague of pestilence. It is at this point that David chooses the three-day pestilence, rather than three months of pursuit by his enemies, saying, "Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for His compassion is great; and let me not fall into the hands of men." (Evidently, the seven year famine was a non-starter for David from the outset.) The Bible records that 70,000 people died during that pestilence, and the angel of death was about to go after Jerusalem when God said, "Enough." The angel of death had worked his way up to the threshing floor of Arauna the Jebusite by this time, and David, upon seeing all the people dying, said to God: "I alone am guilty, I alone have done wrong; but these poor sheep (i.e., the people, at least according to some commentators), what have they done? Let your hand fall upon me and my father’s house!"
That same day, Gad comes again to David and tells him to set up an altar to God on the threshing floor of Arauna the Jebusite. So David goes there in order to purchase the threshing floor, and Arauna comes out to greet him, and to offer him whatever he wants for free. David, however, insists on purchasing it (shades of Abraham and the cave at Machpelah), builds an altar and begins sacrificing oxen. The chapter (indeed, the entire book of Samuel) ends with "The Lord responded to the plea for the land, and the plague against Israel was checked." According to 2 Chronicles 3:1, the Temple of Solomon was later built on this site.
So, this is the reason we don’t count people directly in our tradition—to avoid a pestilence. Another way of avoiding a pestilence, of course, is to pray to God, as David did. And the best way to pray is in a minyan, like the daily minyan at Beth Am. So, if you have nothing to do some morning at around 7:30, or some evening this summer at around 7:00, come to the daily minyan. Then you’ll be doing your part to avoid pestilence in the land. And, as a bonus, you can join in the fun of trying to figure out if Mother’s Day, or Labor Day, or the Bris that’s taking place downstairs, constitutes a ‘good enough excuse’ to omit Tachanun.