The book of Bamidbar (“In the Wilderness”) begins with instruction to take a census. Literally, the Hebrew instructs Moses to “Lift up the heads” of the whole community. (Well, sort of: the original instruction was to lift up the heads of men capable of bearing arms. Today we have different understandings of gender and who counts.)

“Lift up the heads” colloquially means to count people numerically, and also implies uplifting heart and spirit so that everyone counts and knows that they count. This twin meaning has profound implications for building the Jewish future.

In a physical building context, a general contractor must know how many people are on the build team. Even more, she needs to know each individual builder’s talents, and how to uplift each person to best deploy the skills most needed for each building task. It’s a simple pair of instructions that asks heart, care, and curiosity.  Who are our potential collaborators? What are their skills and gifts, their passions, the unique contributions to the work that each of these people is uniquely well-suited to make? How can we, in our build teams, “lift up each head?” ...

That's the start of my latest d'var Torah for Builders Blog at Bayit: Building Jewish -- with sketchnotes by Steve Silbert:

The post goes into questions of leadership and service, the story of Reb Zalman z"l and the rotating "rebbe chair" (and how that inspired Bayit's leadership structure), and implications for the Jewish future. Read the whole thing at Builders Blog: Making Everyone Count.