Parashat Bamidbar פָּרָשַׁת בְּמִדְבַּר

This week's parsha--Bamidbar—begins with instructions to raise up every head, NASO ET ROSH.  

We are told that Aaron and Moses went to every tent in order to ensure that every Jew would be counted.  Now we know that Jews tend to be pretty wary of censuses.  Some of us even count a minyan by saying “not one, not two,” and so forth. If we think back over our long history, we may remember that King Solomon instituted a census in order to assess a tax involving forced labor.  The result was a terrible plague that was visited on the people.  More recently, we think back to the horrors of the Shoah—where people were literally numbered on their flesh, where the census was a way to round people up in order to slaughter them. But Bamidbar gives us an example of a census that LIFTS US UP.   And it tells us that every Jew counts.  Every Jew can make a difference.
 
It was Maimonides who said that every person should imagine that the world is evenly balanced between good and evil. With that in mind, then, every one of us can tilt the balance.  Whether it be toward good or toward evil.  We can ask the following question:  “Who is the most important Jew?” 

You might think Moshe or Avraham or even Albert Einstein.  But the answer is much simpler?  It is YOU.  It is YOU because each of us has the power to tilt the world toward goodness.
         
We embrace the concept of tikkun olam, repairing the world.  Many great enterprises that benefit the world have begun with ONE PERSON, one person who had a dream.  Israelis use the phrase, “Mishoogah la davar”—crazy for an idea, and maybe it's a requirement to make make a difference in this world. You must see a need and dream of ways to fill that need.
 
Israel itself is the product of such a dream.  Theodor Herzl dreamed of a Jewish state.  He was without a doubt “meshoogah la davar.”  He fought his whole life—and used up all of his financial assets and probably shortened his life in that fight—to defend the idea of an independent Jewish state.  Today Herzel’s picture sits above the table at Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, where in 1948 the founders of Israel created that nation. Herzl saw Israel as a way to allow for what he called a “new blossoming of the Jewish spirit.” Even when he was offered land in Uganda, he rejected it; he knew even then that Israel was the Jewish homeland. And I think that any of us who have ever visited that homeland can attest that that small nation has exceed his wildest dreams.
 
May we all be meshoogah la davar.  As long as we have dreams, we are alive. As long as we have dreams, we can tilt the balance toward good. As long as we have dreams, we embody what is noblest and most central to our Jewish faith.  And, in the unforgettable words of Herzl himself, “If you will it, it is no dream.”