2016 is a census year in Canada. Starting in May, Statistics Canada will send census letters and packages to all Canadian households.

There was no small amount of controversy when the Conservative government decided to replace the mandatory long-form census with a voluntary survey. Many leaders – including those in the Jewish community – urged recipients of the voluntary survey to complete them so that we would be properly counted for planning and funding purposes.

The Liberals have restored the mandatory census… but does Jewish tradition have a problem with that? Judaism has its own views on the counting of Jews – some of it positive, some of it not.

Around the time of the census, we (appropriately) will be reading from the Book of Numbers which begins with a census of the Israelites. According to a Midrash, the Jewish people were counted ten times throughout history starting with the 70 souls who went down to Egypt. Why all this counting? Chabad.org explains that “God’s affection is extended towards the Jewish people at all times. And since counting is a direct result of this affection, ‘Because they are precious to him (which is all the time), He counts them all the time.’”

So what’s the problem with counting Jews? Rabbi Meir Goldberg puts it succinctly: “If we isolate each Jew by counting them separately, we lose our merit as part of the Jewish collective. Once that happens, each of us is scrutinized as individuals and our flaws are exposed.”

Rabbi Asher Meir puts a positive spin on it. “A person’s unique qualities can never be reduced to some numerical quantity. So two human beings [are] not in any meaningful sense ‘twice as much’ as one. Reuven plus Shimon do not ‘sum together’ to equal two, rather they remain the same Reuven and Shimon as before.”

Even a personality as great as King David is known to have ordered a census – and was punished for doing so. Rabbi Meir Tamari suggests that David’s sin was one of vanity. David’s commander-in-chief Yoav “pointed out to him that there was neither a war nor a national emergency that would justify a census. Simply to know how many soldiers one has, so that one can feel the satisfaction of being a powerful king or to show off military might, is a not merely a misuse of the census but a sin against the role of kingship.”

The most thorough overview of the topic, The Halachic Controversy Concerning the Israeli Census, was written by Rabbi J. David Bleich, Rosh Yeshiva and Professor of Jewish Law and Ethics at Yeshiva University. In this 25-page article, Rabbi Bleich traces the evolution of thought including contemporary rulings.

The prohibitions against counting are not always clear. Two excellent articles at YoungIsrael.org examine whether the source is Biblical, prophetic or rabbinic – or perhaps a concern about attracting the Evil Eye. They then grapple with practical issues like how to count participants in a minyan. (Often a ten-word verse is recited, each word corresponding to an individual.) But what do you do when you need to give a head count to a caterer?

But the answers are not clear-cut. In May 1972, the Steipler Gaon released a letter in Israel stating, “In the coming days, there will be census takers counting the Jewish people. One should be careful not to answer them at all, and to tell them that it is forbidden to take a census … Furthermore, taking a census involves the possibility of danger.”

Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer presents several reasons for allowing censuses in Israel:

• Economic planning and national security, which require an accurate census, suffice as a legitimate “purpose” (as required by 12th century scholar Maimonides)
• Large-scale counts have a level of inaccuracy (which is cited as one of the grounds to permit a census)
• The tabulation of all demographic information is performed entirely by electronic devices so that no calculations are performed by human beings
• Censuses count the entire population of Israel (and other countries like Canada) and not specifically the Jews. Even though the census includes a breakdown into religious groups, no one is counted by name or family. It is raw data that is collected.

“In conclusion,” adds Rabbi Prof. David Golinkin of the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem, “It is permissible to count or be counted in the Israeli census.” Rabbi Golinkin concludes, “May we soon be privileged to fulfill the verse in Hosea (2:1): ‘The number of the people of Israel shall be like that of the sands of the sea, which cannot be measured or counted.’”

Contact Mark Mietkiewicz via email here.