A census is a boring thing and many people skip over the biblical tallies of the members of one tribe after another. Thousands of years later, who cares and why does it matter? And yet, as demographers and statisticians will tell you, there are important stories buried in population numbers. There's a disturbing and fascinating one buried in the Jewish census. After going through the counts of the various tribes, which range from the fifty and sixty thousands to the low thirties. The Levites, which are the least of the tribes, are counted separately. Unlike the Israelite census, which counted only men from twenty to sixty, the Levites were counted from a month of age. And they still only numbered 22,000. Then the ritual of the redemption of the First Born was performed. The Levites were exchanged for the First Born, who had been sanctified by G-d, for the Levites. There are slightly more First Born Israelites than there are Levites and they are redeemed separately. What...