Counting Lives, Not Numbers

I was listening to Call Me Back with Dan Senor on December 8. Rachel Goldberg-Polin was speaking. I was half-listening at first. Then she said something that stopped me.

“There’s something about counting that makes it so you cannot be blind.”

I froze.

Today is day 799 since October 7. Rachel is still wearing a piece of tape on her shirt. 799, written by hand. One number. One Israeli hostage — Master Sgt. Ran Gvili — still not home. We are waiting for his body to be returned.

No slogans. No graphics. Just a number written on masking tape.

Rachel talks about counting as a Jewish act. Not magical. Not transactional. Not “if I do this, God will do that.” She speaks about doing acts in merit of what we hope for. Not guarantees. Not bargaining chips. Statements of faith. Statements of intention. This is where her activism lives.

Not in spectacle. In showing up again. And again. And again.

So people don’t disappearInto time. Into politics. Into silence.

She counts with her body. With her voice. With tape on her shirt.

I count with paint.

Six million rectangles. Colored one by one. Slowly. By hand. By many hands.

Same impulse. Different medium.

Counting forces visibility. It takes away the escape hatch. You can’t say, “It’s complicated.” You can’t say, “It’s too big to grasp.” You’re standing there, rectangle after rectangle, feeling the weight of repetition.

This is what numbers do when you don’t let them float. They land.

Rachel’s counting says: these people will not disappear into time. My counting says: this number is staggering, but each person is a universe you trace with your hand and hold in your gaze.

Neither of us is claiming to change government policy. Let’s be honest. That’s not the point.

The point is resistance to numbness. The point is choosing who we are while history presses down. Did it work? That’s the wrong question.

The real question is: Did we refuse to look away? Did we insist that these lives were seen? Did we act in a way that didn’t shrink us?

Counting does that.

It keeps our eyes open. And our hands moving.