Posted on June 4, 2025
“The Census in the Wilderness: Making People Count”
May 31, 2025 ~ 4 Sivan 5785
Parashat Bamidbar
Rabbi Lisa Eiduson ~ Temple Shir Tikva ~ Wayland MA
Brittany Hunter writes: “On a warm day in June 1892, Homer Plessy, a 30-year-old shoemaker from New Orleans, walked up to the ticket counter and bought a first-class seat on the 4:15 p.m. East Louisiana Local train. It was a mundane transaction.”
But Plessy’s train ticket purchase influenced the way that Americans have defined and interpreted the 14th Amendment until today. The 14th Amendment was supposed to secure every American’s right to equal treatment under the law. But because of that day in June, Americans soon grew to understand that racial discrimination could not be legislated away, and that blacks would continue to be denied equality under the law.
Hunter continues: “While African Americans did have legal access to public goods and services, segregation served as a barrier to equality and a represented a new form of psychological slavery.” As a result, racist and abhorrent beliefs that social status was connected to skin color permeated the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.
And it was against this backdrop that Plessy, a black man, sat down in the “whites only” train car.
The train conductor J.J. Dowling approached Plessy and asked:
“Are you a colored man?”
“Yes,” Plessy responded without hesitation.
As the law required, Dowling told Plessy to get up out of his seat and move to the “colored car.”
He could have complied. But in an act of civil disobedience, he refused.
Plessy was physically removed from the train was booked at a nearby jail and charged with violating the Louisiana Separate Car Act, which required separate train sections for white and “colored” people.
Plessy fought back, causing a long and historic set of trials and appeals.
While Plessy lost in the lower courts, his case eventually reached the Supreme Court in May of 1896, four years after his arrest. The Supreme Court ultimately decided that under the 14th Amendment it was constitutional to have separate schools, train cars, public bathrooms for African Americans and whites — as long as these facilities were comparable in quality.
From the legal perspective, Plessy v. Ferguson dismantled progress brought by the Civil War and Reconstruction, legitimized the notorious “Jim Crow laws,” and impeded civil rights advances in the United States well into the 1960s.
From the psychological and sociological standpoint, Plessy v Ferguson came as an enormous blow to African Americans who wondered if they would ever count in America.
What does it feel like to be left out? Cast aside? Not counted?
This week’s parashah, Bamidbar, the first portion in the Book of Numbers, opens in a curious way:
God instructs Moses and Aaron to count the Jewish people through a census. The census was carried out so that the leaders would know how many people would be eligible to fight in battle, if necessary, and later, would be used to apportion the Land of Israel. What is fascinating is that people were not just assigned a number. Rather, Moses and Aaron counted the people tribe by tribe, family by family — by name.
The Rabbis teach that the true meaning of the census was to emphasize that each person mattered. Under the enslavement in Egypt, the Children of Israel were nameless and faceless, but with freedom, each member of the community had a name and a role to play in the story of the people. Moreover, in calling out each person by name, it was understood that it was not just one’s existence that counted; rather, what mattered was one’s essence. With the census, the Children of Israel would recognize the worth and value of each human being and would learn the importance of taking responsibility for the entire community and not just their households. These messages would be especially important when the people became frustrated in the wilderness and questioned their worth.
Freedom is only meaningful when everyone counts and when each person is also counted upon.
African Americans persisted in the post-Plessy v. Ferguson America in the face of growing persecution and bitter racism. They rejected their status as “separate but equal” and throughout America, doubled down in the fight for true equality. They founded organizations like the NAACP, which challenged segregation through legal means, engaged in political activism, lobbied for changes in legislation and voting rights, expressed their resistance through cultural expressions like the Harlem Renaissance, and refused to accept the racial status quo. At a time when African Americans were excluded and counted out, they found allies – including those in the Jewish community — and held on to the belief that each person does matter and that skin color is inconsequential.
Everyone deserves to be seen; each person’s soul matters.
The African American community ultimately prevailed in a second court case, 58 years almost to the day following Plessy v Ferguson. Linda Brown of Topeka, Kansas, had been denied admission to an all-white school just five blocks from home and was forced to have a long commute to school every day. Oliver Brown, Linda’s father, would not accept the decision reached by the school district and appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court. On May 17, 1954, the case Brown v The Board of Education reached the Supreme Court, and, through a unanimous vote of the 9 Justices, finally overturned Plessy v Ferguson in one of the most celebrated advances for African Americans in our country’s history. Plessy v Ferguson decision that blacks were separate but equal ended once and for all. Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court justice, was one of the lead attorneys with the NAACP. With Brown v The Board of Education in 1954, the black communities of the United States edged a little closer to gaining the full measure of justice afforded to every American under the law.
We are not there yet. We still have work to do. And we Jews need to continue the fight against prejudice. Just last week, looking back on the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, we know that it will take continual work, advocacy and legislation to guarantee rights for African Americans and all marginalized minorities in America. Like the Torah this week, we believe in the dignity of each person.
We also learn this week that “counting people” is also known in the Torah by another phrase – which translates to “raising heads.” Counting people is actually raising people’s heads – meaning lifting them up, inspiring others, validating their worth. When we count people, we offer them hope and encourage them to take pride in their unique and sacred soulprints.
This week, in a beautiful analogy, Rashi uses the Midrash to liken the counting of the Jewish people in the census to the way in which God “counts” the stars (Exodus Rabbah 1:3; Tanchuma Yashan 1:1:2.) God knows each star and pays attention to each of them. Astronomers teach no two stars are the same. So it is with people. In the context of the world, a person might feel lost or insignificant. Yet, each of us has a unique soul and spirit that we can share with others to help make the world a better place.
And it is through the combination of the light from millions of stars each shining in its own way that we can look up at the sky and see patterns of light and darkness that change with each second. Without one of those stars, the entire astrological landscape looks different. Without one person, we are diminished. Maimonides taught, “Each of us should see ourselves as if our next act could change the fate of the world” (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 3:4.