The Numbers:13 Project
 
But if her husband does annul them on the day he finds out, then nothing that has crossed her lips shall stand, whether vows or self-imposed obligations. Her husband has annulled them, and the LORD will forgive her.      Numbers 30:13 
 
Over the years, I have had conversations with people who have described their marriages in terms unfamiliar to me.  Specifically, one spouse or another had the power of veto over decisions made by the other.  I just don’t get it. 
 
An acquaintance of mine, many years ago, told me that his wife had decided to get a business degree.  They had two children in elementary school, and she took classes around their schedule, studying at night after their bedtime and in any spare moment she could find.  One day, as she and her husband were on their way to a social occasion on a local highway, he said to her, “I think you should just throw those books out the window and give up this business thing.”  She did.  He was very proud of that story. 
 
Yes, it was most often the husband who had this authority over his wife.  But there have also been circumstances in which a husband has made a commitment and later called me to say that his wife had reversed his decision.  (I simply do not have enough experience with two men or two women to know if that kind of power is ever vested in one person or the other.) 
 
I’m not talking about a deliberated compromise.  I hope every couple has discussions about priorities and commitments.  I mean exactly the kind of situation described in the verse above: one person made an autonomous decision, and the other person reversed it. 
 
This is the stuff of sitcoms, I have to say.  George Jefferson ordering ‘Weezy, Ralph Kramden commanding Alice, Maude instructing Walter.  Except at the end of 26 minutes, comeuppance is a guarantee.  Even when we laugh, nobody puts up with that malarkey in the end. 
 
Except. 
 
This kind of presumed authority is thinly-disguised spousal abuse.  The removal of personal autonomy in decision-making by one partner is a denigration of the humanity of the other.  Surrendering the ability to make “vows and self-imposed obligations” – especially after the fact – invalidates personal competence and judgment.  It creates a hierarchy of basic human dignity which, by all measures, violates the equality of all people. 
 
In my work I encounter any number of faith traditions that affirm that a wife must submit to the authority of her husband.  (These traditions have less experience than I with single-sex couples.)  While there are any number of places in the Bible that they cite justification, none is more explicit than this one.  The usual explanation, perhaps better described as a rationalization, is that men are better suited to decision-making than women.   
 
In communities governed by rules like these, the prophecy is self-fulfilling.  Wives (and women in general) second-guess their own judgment, having been taught it is inferior to their husbands’.  In turn, they teach their daughters and granddaughters to defer to the men in their lives. 
 
Even in “enlightened” traditions, the vestiges of this hierarchy remain.  Women’s teachings may be overruled by men’s.  Female devotees serve the male clergy who are the only conduits to the divine.  Women do not serve as judges or as members of a quorum.  No matter how it is justified or explained away, the female partner is less-than.  And when the male partner becomes less-than, he is depicted as female, to add insult to injury. 
 
I know that it is easy to be critical, especially since we live in a time when pushing back on these teachings is considered the moral and righteous thing to do.  But the attitudes and practices we are correcting are deeply embedded in our cultures, our traditions and, according to the tenets of faith, our sacred and inviolable literature.  What do we do with them? 
 
It is not enough, I am afraid, to assert our presumed authority over such a text.  The result of a flat rejection may be satisfying for the person who feels righteously above the text, but it will do little to persuade the woman or man who feels bound by sacred instruction. It is also insufficient to suggest that people being disadvantaged by these teachings – most of them women – to ”give it time.”  
 
Instead, men and women alike need to model and instruct the right kind of behavior and accompanying attitudes.  It is especially true for opinion leaders – public figures, clergy, people in charge. Just as we no longer hang a transgressor, stone a stubbornly rebellious son or allow for revenge killings, we must say unequivocally that these windows into past conduct are sacred because of their origin, not because of their relevance.  
 
That’s an attitude that probably dissatisfies everyone a little bit.  But its my story, and I am sticking to it. 

​The Numbers:13 Project
 
You shall present a burnt offering, an offering by fire of pleasing odor to the LORD: Thirteen bulls of the herd, two rams, fourteen yearling lambs; they shall be without blemish.     Numbers 29:13
 
Human societies have a long and complicated relationship with numbers.  We like to count things and then assign significance to the totals and the way we can divvy them up.  Perhaps numbers are the last vestige of the human family (as depicted in the Bible) before it fractured into different languages and tribe.  Mathematical patterns are a universal means of expression.  Though they are essentially without nuance, they can be used to express music, color and physical relativity that can capture profound insights.
 
Though I am not much of a whiz at math, nonetheless I have a fascination with numbers, too.  Like my friend Don, I take delight in gematria (with a hard “g”), the “science” that finds relationships between words in Hebrew with the same numerical value.  (Every letter in Hebrew has an assigned value, so if you add up the numbers in, say, ­chokhmah – 8+20+40+5 = 73 – you will find it to be the same as hachayyim – 5+8+10+10+20.  Chokhma means “wisdom,” hachayyim means “the life.”  Therefore, there must be a link between wisdom and life.)  Gematria can get pretty complicated and has implications for students of the Jewish mystical tradition. I find it a useful excuse to find connections among ideas, such as “wisdom” and “life.”
 
We assign significance to numbers that are not inherent, rather that recognize our values.  To be #1 in any field of endeavor means dominance or, at least, arriving earliest.  Seven is both prime and complete.  Ten is comprehensive.  Name almost any number and it will have significance for someone – a batting streak, a weight goal, an hourly wage, the roster of Biblical commandments.
 
But sometimes a number is just a number.  I had a conversation with a friend of mine about our ages.  “You are only as old as you feel,” he said to me (an observation that he was quick to acknowledge was not original).  “That’s irrelevant,” I replied.  “Some days I feel like a teenager and some days I feel like an old man.  But my age is my age, a neutral fact.”  The nuance of that number is not carried by the digits; it is meaning imputed (in this case) by an attitude about age.
 
When I look at the number of offerings and sacrifices designated by the Bible for various occasions, I am frequently mystified. The descending totals for the seven days of Tabernacles (which the verse above begins) has a meaning as self-evident as the last verse of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”  And the time necessary to slaughter and roast 29 animals in the Temple precincts would probably take up the whole of the day for the priestly personnel. But the numbers mean something, even if that meaning has been lost to time and speculation.
 
There is one type of significance to numbers that is assigned by Jewish tradition that strikes me as a recognition of the neutral value of those numbers.  There is a strong opposition to counting people – that is, reducing their uniqueness to a number.  Even in determining the number of people present for a minyan (quorum), it is not permissible to assign each one a number.  Instead, a ten-word phrase is used, or the counting is preceded by “not” (not-one, not-two, etc.).  Only when the purpose of counting is for a divinely-mandated purpose – building the Temple, entering the Promised Land – may a census be conducted, but even then within the tribal memberships rather than a general counting.
 
It is therefore not without irony that the English name of this book is “Numbers.”  (In Hebrew it carries the traditional name, taken from the first word of significance, “Bemidbar,” “In the wilderness.”)  The numbers in Numbers are abundant and call out for interpretation, perhaps because they seem somehow random. 
 
But the numbers themselves are neutral, digits that represent quantity or order or something that bears meaning assigned rather than inherent.  That open-ended fact makes it somehow wonderful that numbers exist without limit.

The Numbers:13 Project
 
As meal offering for each lamb: a tenth of a measure of fine flour with oil mixed in. Such shall be the burnt offering of pleasing odor, an offering by fire to the LORD.    Numbers 28:13 
 
Like most men I know, I believe I can look at a something labeled “some assembly required” and succeed in that “some assembly” with little or no guidance.  When I get a new piece of electronic wizardry, I am always glad to find that there are two sets of instructions – the comprehensive user’s manual and the quick-start guide; I don’t need either of them.  And when tasked with following a recipe, I need only two measuring devices – a tablespoon and a 1-cup measure – because I have a good eye for how much to fill each if the recipe calls for a teaspoon or a quarter-cup of something. 
 
I am confident in my abilities because, though I have no formal training in these skills, both of my grandfathers were very good with their hands.  Plus, I can visualize things in my head. 
 
At the core of the assumptions about all of these various assembling activities is the cavalier attitude of “how hard can it be?”  Hammers and nails, Allen wrenches and wood screws, flour and salt, these are ingredients that anyone with a modicum of common sense can figure out how to put together. 
 
Similarly, what prevents me from being a good actor, an admired singer, a talented dancer?  Sure, not everyone is DeNiro, Dion or Hough, but how hard can it be to recite your lines, carry a tune or tap your feet? 
 
And if you can ride a bike, you can drive a car.  If you can drive a car, you can skipper a boat.  If you can skipper a boat (and play a video game), you can pilot a plane.  How hard can it be? 
 
I am, of course, wrong about all those things.  Be glad I did not become a surgeon. 
 
Some few people in any discipline have natural talent.  My late friend Fred could pick up almost any musical instrument and play it well.  He took clarinet lessons – his first love – but played the banjo and the piano without any instruction.  My cousin Ben can build anything you describe to him like some combination of MIT and MacGyver.  My wife can make a technical report read like a Steven King novel.   
 
But mostly, to be good at something, you have to follow directions and learn from a few mistakes (like skipping the instructions).  Even the people with exceptional natural talent (in fact, especially those people) will warn you off pretending that you know more than you do.  Anyone who has baked a cake without follow the recipe carefully will tell you how unhappy the results are with just a little too much of this or a little too little of that. 
 
It may wind up being a burnt offering, but it is not of pleasing odor. 
 
When the founders of our country wrenched the government from the hands of kings and despots, they wrote out the recipe for the plain old citizens who entered public service to follow.  To be sure, government has gotten considerably more complicated since Alexander Hamilton decided not to throw away his shot, but there are no ingredients that can be left out of the Constitution.  Lots of people have held office so successfully that they make it look easy.  Of course, if we could ask Washington or Lincoln, Shirley Chisholm or Barbara Jordan, Oliver Wendell Homes or Thurgood Marshall if their leadership was as effortless in providing as it appeared in the result, they would laugh.  Anyone who came to that conclusion by observing only the result of careful preparation and methodical effort would likely be as superficial as that perception. 
 
And yet, there remain people who look at positions of great responsibility for the nation and its citizens and ask, “How hard can it be?”  Willfully ignorant of the Constitution and stubbornly uninformed, they believe the quick-start guide is for incompetents and the user’s manual is for morons.  
 
I don’t want to sit on the chair assembled by the guy who skipped the directions.  I don’t want to suffer through a concert by the person whose vocal training is a morning shower.  I don’t want to ski behind a boat navigated by someone who learned on a Schwinn.  Maybe they have the natural talent of my cousin Ben, but if it turns out they don’t, and they are endangering us all, someone should take away  
the hammer, the mic or the keys. 
 
In the process, we just might restore the Constitution.