Holiness Has No Coordinates
On Bamidbar and Shavuot
The Levites, however, were not recorded among them by their ancestral tribe. For God had spoken to Moses, saying: Do not on any account enroll the tribe of Levi or take a census of them with the Israelites. (Numbers 1:47-49)
What’s wrong with counting the Levites, or counting them along with the other tribes? This is one of the first questions we encounter as we open the Book of Bamidbar (“In the Wilderness”). It seems that census taking is associated with militarism—you want to know how many people can fight; and the power of the Levites is not determined by their military capacity, but rather by their “soulcraft.” Another possibility is that census taking is connected to property ownership and land claims—but Levites are not land owners. Finally, there is a simple point: Levites must stand apart. Therefore, don’t count them in the same account as everyone else, to match this sense that the priests are different or other.
But perhaps the point is deeper than the above suggestions. Maybe, there’s something about counting and accounting itself that is antithetical or at least in tension with the task of the priests. Those who concern themselves with holiness may have to sacrifice their concern for “the business model.” It’s not about how many priests there are; 10 or 10,000, the holy goes on. The holy is not a numbers game, even if worldliness requires that we concern ourselves with counting and accounting.
This is not to say priests are or should be aloof, or that they must renounce the tangible world—the Temple has specific rules that certainly require attention to detail. It’s just to say that we must distinguish between “the thing itself” and the “plausibility structure” that enables it. Sociology is important, it’s step one. But it can’t be the final word on religion, unless you think religion is only about human life and not also about connecting with something transcendent. So to teach us this point, the priests are not counted.
Accounting matters—to enter the land of Israel, attain power, and run an administrative state, do justice and protect oneself from enemies requires good book-keeping. But why are we doing this whole conquest thing to begin with? The mission statement is not a matter of quantitative reasoning. It’s the negative space around which everything else is organized.
Consider that Bamidbar, which means “In the Wilderness,” as the foil to the land of Israel. In Israel, everything is codified; groups have their place. Tribes have their territory. But in the desert, although labor is divided, the place is no place, and everything is makeshift.
It is worth emphasizing: The Torah was not given in the land of Israel, but in the desert. Even though many of the laws of the Torah only apply in the land. This creates a kind of tension or dialectic between Book and Land, between a wisdom which sojourns and a wisdom that lands, between a law that is portable and a law that requires settlement. The priests maintain this dialectic within themselves—they are people who belong to the most important place and institution, positioned at the very center of the land. But they also do not own and do not count. They exist apart, almost like an imaginary number.
The holy cannot be measured—this is its greatness and its humility, its delight and its frustration. Measureless things are the most dear, but they are also the most capable of distortion—because they cannot be neatly fit within a framework of “accountability.” If we are speaking of ROI and holiness in the same breath, we have lost it. If we are speaking of political inclusion, in the same breath, we have lost it. Does it matter whether the priests are competent or incompetent, corrupt or uncorrupt? Yes. Does it matter whether they are good representatives of the people or not? Yes. The holy is, in the fist instance, a desert. A place without coordinates.
We don’t live and shouldn’t live in the desert; just society requires coordinates. But if we can’t travel to the ownerless place, suspend ourselves and our various worldly attachments, from the desire for social justice to the desire for self-gain, we miss it and we miss out.
Bamidbar announces Shavuot to highlight the connection between Torah and wandering, Torah and non-belonging, Torah and ownerlessness. We all bring our identities and our attachments and our biases to every room and encounter and it would be naive to think otherwise. But to find the holy, and to receive the gift of Torah, we must make ourselves like priests, if just a little bit: we must find in ourselves an ownerless place where the word might strike us and fill us with a presence beyond accounting. Then, when we have returned to ourselves and gathered back our senses, we can ask after Shavuot, “Now what?”
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins @ Etz Hasadeh
For more thoughts on Revelation and Shavuot, check out my conversation with Yehuda Kurtzer. And for thoughts on poetry and its connection to Jewish life and theology, here’s my conversation with poet Rae Armantrout.