So I was actually involved recently in an online discussion of when to say ‘fewer’ and when to say ‘less’ (and yes, former high school pals—I am still that geeky). Frankly, after all the flak I’ve gotten over the years from correcting my children on this point it was rather refreshing to stumble upon some like-minded souls who also care about such linguistic difference—even if several of them seem to be Brits with a compulsive need to pun. (The internet is an intriguing place).
Yes, the world can be divided into things that can be counted and things that cannot. And somewhere I learned that when you are describing something you can count, you say fewer, but if it is something uncountable, you say less. You can count calories but not fat, so my egg white omelette will have fewer calories because it has less fat. You can’t count sand, but you can count individual grains of it. So you’ll have less sand when there are fewer grains
Jews are a counting folk. Numbers have such significance it’s a bit of a wonder we aren’t called the people of the math book. Among many other things, we count three stars in the sky to signal that Shabbat has ended, eight days to welcome a baby into the world with a name, we use 18 to signify life and luck, and we count the Omer, the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot, the time between celebrating the freedom of the exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah at Sinai.
We even have a whole Book of Numbers, and as it begins God is telling Moses of the need to count: “Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clan of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head.” (Numbers 1:2)
And yet it is our tradition not to count one another—at least not directly. The Biblical census was conducted using coins. Another was taken by having everyone bring a goat or sheep. Minyans are typically counted by using the first ten words of a Psalm, to avoid directly counting the participants. There are several explanations in our tradition for this, perhaps one of the most evocative comes from Hosea: "Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted.” (Hosea 1:10)
It feels odd that counting can be so important, and yet avoided for something as crucial as determining whether there are enough people present to say kaddish for a loved one. I read recently that the literal Hebrew translation for ‘conduct a census’ is actually ‘lift up a head.’ And what a startling difference that makes. In the first translation, I am the object waiting to be acknowledged by another. In the second, I take action to be included. I lift my head and I join. And so perhaps I can take a lesson from that--for the really important things I cannot sit and wait to be acknowledged or included. I must choose to stand up and count.
How will I stand up and be counted in the coming year?
