At my job, I’m trying to work on KPIs—Key Performance Indicators. It’s a way to define how well my team is doing their work.

For this kind of things, numbers are very appealing. They are so easy to manipulate and analyze. Truly, numbers are hypnotic with all they can do. Children learn very young to tell others how old they are. It’s part of who they are to other people.

There are other times when numbers are like the gaze of the sphinx. I cannot look away. Election nights can keep many people up to see the tallies.

I will never forget spring of 2020 and how the numbers of covid deaths were so compelling. I couldn’t stop checking the websites that reported them all over the world. Then my city. Then my state. Then the world.

I could not look away. The sphinx’s gaze was turning me to stone.

For work my KPI numbers are meant to be a way to support decisions. Are we spending our time and money they way we want to? Can we track it and make sure we are being wise?

Numbers help. And they can also stop us.

On a podcast, I learned something about Jewish prayer practice. I already knew that a Jewish prayer group requires a certain number of men, about 10. Which is a strange way to put it—is it ten or not?

On the podcast I learned that they are not supposed to count the number of men. Yes, there are supposed to be ten, but they are not supposed to be counted. The lecturer, an Orthodox Jew, said he used a verse from the Torah that had ten words and ticked off the number of people against the words in his selected verse.

I am staggered. How could it be required to count people without counting people?

And yet, the wisdom seems so profound I have to check myself.

People are not numbers. That data being collected and aggregated and put in a scroll on the news is not people. I don’t ever want to forget that.

They numbers have to be subjected to care and courage. Those little kids showing their fingers to show how old they are? They know their number is only part of who they are. The numbers have no soul. When it comes to the story of people, numbers cannot be the main point.