Ki Tisa begins with the commandment to take a census of all the men of Israel twenty years of age and over. There are two unusual things about this census. Firstly, God does not actually use the verb “to count” in ordering the census, instead He uses the expression “when you lift up the heads of the children of Israel according to their numbers” (Exodus 30:12). Secondly, the men are not to be counted directly; rather, the half shekels they each contribute to the maintenance of the Tabernacle are to be counted in order to establish the number of contributors. The particular way the Torah describes and conducts this census has much to teach us about contemporary reality and the human psyche.
The sense of alienation, of being a nameless entity in a cold and impersonal world, has perhaps never been stronger than today. With the bonds of family and community increasingly weakened and the proliferation of a computer driven, consumer society, almost everyone experiences at some point the sinking feeling that he or she is just a faceless number trapped in an ever increasingly complex web of bureaucracy. It was no accident that the Nazi death machine branded numbers on peoples’ arms as a way of degrading them and as a way of robbing them of their humanity, freedom, and true identity.
Therefore the Torah instructs us not to count people as we would count other objects. A human being can never be thought of as a number devoid of a unique personality and infinite worth. The Torah’s method for conducting the census teaches us how to properly relate to others: not only must we relate to each individual as unique, we must also lift each and every one up and make him or her feel special and worthy of attention and love. This is the true meaning of the words, “when you lift up the heads.”
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach once visited a prison in the United States of America in order to give the prisoners hope and encouragement. As was his way, he hugged and kissed all the prisoners, Jews and non-Jews alike. As he was leaving, one of the inmates, a large and muscular man came running after him, startling him and the guards. He then shyly asked for another hug which Reb Shlomo gladly gave him. He then confided that had someone only given him a hug like that when he was younger he would not be in prison today.
To lift up another’s “head” entails looking beyond superficial appearances and revealing the Divine spark within each individual. The realization that we are all “half shekels” (no one was permitted to give more or less to the Tabernacle, no matter how rich or how poor he was) reigns in our egos, reducing our tendency to delude ourselves into thinking that we are somehow whole, while others are but halves. It is the Divine spark within each of us that imbues us with a sense of true completeness, enabling us to see so much deeper and providing us with the strength to lift up those we meet. (For further insight into this concept, see a “Whole and a Half” in the portion of Terumah.)
