Parashat Ki Tisa

Parashat Ki Tisa

Adar 20, 5773 ~ March 2, 2013
by Steve Astrachan

 

Parsha Ki Sisa begins with the story of a census, a counting of the Jewish People.  The process involves the payment of a half-sheckel by everyone involved.  The Torah here is quite descriptive:

          This shall they give – everyone who passes through the census- a half sheckel of       the sacred sheckel, the sheckel is twenty geras, half a sheckel as a portion to      Hashem.  Everyone who passes through the census, from twenty years of age and     up, shall give the portion of Hashem.  The wealthy shall not increase and the     destitute shall not decrease from half a sheckel – to give the portion of Hashem, to       atone for your souls.  (Ex, 30: 13-15)

The verses speak to two important concepts in Torah and Tanach, equality and atonement.  In this case the equality derives from the atonement.  It is as in Yom Kippur when we desist from wearing leather shoes as a symbol of our equality before Ha Shem. However the concept of equality goes beyond this derivation and appears elsewhere in Tanach as pointed out by Rabbi Ovadia Sforno:

          That respecteth not the persons of the princes,

          Nor regardeth the rich more than the poor.

          For they are all the work of His hands.

          (Job, 34:19)

However the equality of status in giving the half shekel in atonement and membership in the Jewish People does not mean that all are expected to contribute equally regardless of their relative means or abilities. Quite the contrary we are all judged equal when we contribute in accordance with our individual means and abilities.  Rav Hirsh deals with this duality in his commentary on Exodus 30:15 (above):

          Just in this equality, the symbolic nature of the fixed gift of half a shekel is    expressed.  As long as the rich man and the poor man give, each all that he can, does the whole of what he can do, then, as far as G-d and his sanctuary are concerned, the pounds of the rich weigh no more then the pennies and shillings of the poor, and the pennies and shillings of the poor are quite equal to the pounds of the rich.  The rich man can do no more, and the poor shall do no less, that the half a whole shekel, G-d and the Sanctuary weigh not the actual, but the relative size of the contribution, they value what is given and what is done in relation to the fortune and abilities of the givers.  Every one who uses the full powers of the   fortune and the abilities with which he had been graced, in the service of G-d, in furthering the aims of the Sanctuary, lays thereby his “half-shekel” as his “symbolism” on the Altar of G-d.

Finally there is the issue of atonement or more specifically what are we atoning for in giving the half shekel.  Here I have always been moved by the commentary of a more contemporary scholar Rabbi, Dr. J. H. Hertz, who pointed out that the term kfer or ransom applies to the taking of human life when the act is not homicide.  He then concluded that the half shekel was thus for those who have to go to war:

          …The soldier is to be impressed with the fact that, high as the aims for which he goes to battle may be, war remains a necessary evil.  The ransom is, therefore, to be paid at the time of the mustering, long before the actual fighting begins.

The Torah is teaching us that war by necessity has an immoral aspect. It may be justified and necessary, but it can never be fully a moral exercise. 

In this regard the parsha puts us in line with others who have had to grapple with the issue of war.  Benjamin Franklin served the country with distinction both during and after the Revolution.  But it was he who said, “There is no such thing as a good war or a bad peace.”  Moving forward Gary Willis in his “Lincoln at Gettysburg” made the point that while Abraham Lincoln always admired the “generation of 76” he never extolled the Revolution itself because it was a war.  Certainly President Lincoln was no pacifist, leading the nation through the Civil War with its 620,000 dead.  He knew whereof he spoke in the Second Inaugural with “this mighty scourge of war.”  Both of these men were extremely knowledgeable, worldly-wise, and, particularly in the case of Mr. Lincoln, steeped in the Bible.  Whether the Biblical aspect of their backgrounds affected these views, we cannot say. However, they certainly understood the inner meaning of Parsha Ki Thissa as Rabbi Hertz later explained it.