Bemidbar Numbers 1:1-4:20 I Samuel 20:18-42
God makes a stunning promise to Abraham: “I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, then your offspring, too, can be counted (Genesis 13:16).
This pledge is framed in equally grand terms in yet another divine promise: “I will bestow My blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore” (Genesis 22:17).
Centuries after Abraham lived, the prophet Hosea utilized the same image to describe how numerous Israel would become: “The number of the people Israel shall be like that of the sands of the sea, which cannot be measured or counted…”(Hosea 2:1).
With these promises so prominent in the Israelite mind, it comes as no surprise that our ancestors featured descriptions of large Israelite populations in the biblical narrative as proof that such predictions had been fulfilled. The book of Numbers, called Bemidbar in Hebrew, chronicles the 40 years of the Israelites’ wanderings until their entrance into the Promised Land. The book was called Numbers in English because the first three chapters are devoted to a census, including how many able-bodied men were available for a standing army.
That census is, most likely, the same one noted in the Book of Exodus (30:11), which calculates Israelite strength at the highly improbable number of 600,000-plus males. It was not unusual for ancient chroniclers to grossly exaggerate head counts and other vital statistics to make them look more significant. What is fascinating is not that they overstated the numbers, but that the numbers barely changed over the 40-year period of wandering in the midbar, the desert wilderness.
Why does the text record a slight decline in numbers when a typical annual 4 percent increase in the population would have resulted in more than 2 million Israelites? When the desert-wandering Israelites are compared to the 70 souls who originally left Canaan with Jacob and his clan and grew to 600,000 after 400 years of slavery, the contrast is stunning. The Torah suggests why the population mushroomed: “So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor… But the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out, so that the [Egyptians] came to dread the Israelites (Exodus 1:11-12).”
There is no such comment about dor hamidbar — the generation that wandered in the desert — because it barely managed to maintain the population at about the same level. It seems that the more the Israelites were free, the more they stayed the same or even diminished in number.
Is the lack of population growth believable? At first blush, it seems highly improbable, given how rapidly the Israelite population grew while enslaved in Egypt. However, closer examination of the report compared to other historical models reveals that it is quite probable that the population did, indeed, stand still. For example, the Jewish population in Europe before the Enlightenment experienced a steady increase in spite of pogroms and frequent bloodshed. However, once Jews entered the modern age with few limits to their freedom, zero population growth resulted.
Indeed, worldwide, the 20th-century Jewish population stood at 12 million after the devastation of the Shoah during World War II. Just 55 years later, it is still exactly the same, even though the world population has exploded. This lack of population growth also occurs at a time when the Jewish population has experienced unprecedented economic prosperity and strength.
To what should this lack of growth be attributed? There are several identifiable factors, including the trend toward greater assimilation, attrition resulting from marrying out, converting out and an unusually low birthrate. In the 1940s, Jews comprised well over 3 percent of the American population. Today that population is down to around 2 percent or less; if the trend continues, it will shrink to 1 percent in 50 years.
The trend is not encouraging and requires some significant initiatives to reverse it. How such challenges are met will determine whether Jews continue to be a significant minority or whether they will gradually fade from history.