Monday, June 6, 2016

B'midbar - Reform

Numbers 1:1−4:20

D'var Torah By Rabbi Joseph A. Skloot for ReformJudaism.org

Reduced to Numbers . . . Do We Count?


    Were they people? Not to the Principal. Not even employees? They were more like digits, widgets, sprockets, more cogs on the command chain. (Joshua Cohen, The Book of Numbers, Oxford, 2014, p. 1.87)

Incredulous. That's how I felt, after requesting and then learning my Uber passenger rating. You see, drivers get to rate and rank you too.

"4.8! That's it?" I thought. "I've never been impolite or unfriendly. I never cancel a request after submitting one. What reason could there be for denying me a full five stars?"

Once again, here was one small example of the many ways each of us is reduced to numbers as we go about our post-modern lives.

"Please enter your account number, followed by the pound sign."

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