Devar/5769/Ki Tisa
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עברית
גדול וקטן -- אלא כל איש שוויו בנפשו ולא בגופו, וכל נפש ונפש מישראל יקרה
באותה המידה.
English
The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than the half shekel, when they give the offering of the LORD, to make atonement for your souls. (Ex 30:15)
When the Torah commands us how to count the Children of Israel -- the "census" -- it tells us that there is a head tax, for "atonement for your souls". The reason is that we count the coins and not the people, because one may not relate to a free person as one would to some object. Therefore we count the coins, and we do not count the people -- and thereby we indirectly count the number of people.
It would be natural to say that any coin should serve this purpose -- whether a prutah or a dinar -- even a blank! Since if its only purpose is to stand in place of the person, just in order to count him, what difference does it make? The Torah tells us that it is not so -- rather each and every man must specifically bring the "half-shekel": This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary--the shekel is twenty gerahs--half a shekel for an offering to the LORD (ibid 13)
And the reason for that is, that there is no difference between Jews in the eyes of their Father in Heaven. There is no "rich" and "poor", "great" and "small" -- rather each person's worth is in his soul and not in his body; and each Jewish soul is equally precious.
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