Every Vote Counts! Ki Tisa and the World Zionist Elections

(11) יהוה spoke to Moses, saying: (12) When you take a census of the Israelite men according to their army enrollment, each shall pay יהוה a ransom for himself on being enrolled, that no plague may come upon them through their being enrolled. (13) This is what everyone who is entered in the records shall pay: a half-shekel by the sanctuary weight—twenty gerahs to the shekel—a half-shekel as an offering to יהוה. (14) Everyone who is entered in the records, from the age of twenty years up, shall give יהוה’s offering: (15) the rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel when giving יהוה’s offering as expiation for your persons. (16) You shall take the expiation money from the Israelites and assign it to the service of the Tent of Meeting; it shall serve the Israelites as a reminder before יהוה, as expiation for your persons.

(25) The silver of those of the community who were recorded came to 100 talents and 1,775 shekels by the sanctuary weight: (26) a half-shekel*half-shekel Heb. beqa‘. a head, half a shekel by the sanctuary weight, for each one who was entered in the records, from the age of twenty years up, 603,550 men.

(1) On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt, יהוה spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, saying: (2) Take a census of the whole Israelite company [of fighters]*company [of fighters] NJPS “community,” trad. “congregation.” See the Dictionary under ‘edah. by the clans of its ancestral houses,*its ancestral houses I.e., its tribes. listing the names, every male, head by head. (3) You and Aaron shall record them by their groups, from the age of twenty years up, all those in Israel who are able to bear arms. (4) Associated with you shall be a participant from each tribe, each one the head of his ancestral house.

(23) The Jews accordingly assumed as an obligation that which they had begun to practice and which Mordecai prescribed for them. (24) For Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the foe of all the Jews, had plotted to destroy the Jews, and had cast pur—that is, the lot—with intent to crush and exterminate them. (25) But when [Esther] came before the king, he commanded: bMeaning of Heb. uncertain.“With the promulgation of this decree,-b let the evil plot, which he devised against the Jews, recoil on his own head!” So they impaled him and his sons on the stake. (26) For that reason these days were named Purim, after pur.In view, then, of all the instructions in the said letter and of what they had experienced in that matter and what had befallen them,

(1) כי תשא..ונתנו איש כפר נפשו, the need to count human beings stems from the fact that human beings are not the same each time, i.e. ever since death was decreed upon mankind this reflects sin. Prior to sin man, who was meant to live indefinitely, would be the same at each count. The sages have said that no one dies unless he had committed a sin (Shabbat 55). It follows that mention of a head count of people is an oblique reminder of man’s sin, his guilt. This being so, it is most appropriate that at the time of such count he should pay some ransom on behalf of his soul, his life, so that he will qualify for atonement. This also explains why the poor must not give less nor the rich more, as a soul’s ransom is not calculated in terms of the amount of money offered to God.

לכפר על נפשותיכם, “to obtain atonement for yours sins.” The sin being that they had made it necessary for G-d to take a census of them as a result of the sin of the golden calf, [and in order to count the victims as absentees. Moreover, how would we know the total number of shekels that had been raised by these contributions, and how could we have been sure there were enough to construct the sockets of the Tabernacle from them? Ed.] From the wording of the Torah it is clear that atonement was even more important than the actual census.

(1) וידבר… במדבר סיני … באחד לחדש וגו׳ AND [THE LORD] SPOKE [UNTO MOSES] IN THE DESERT OF SINAI … ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE [SECOND] MONTH … [TAKE YE THE SUM OF ALL THE CONGREGATION] etc. — Because they were dear to him, He counts them every now and then: when they went forth from Egypt He counted them (Exodus 12:37), when many of them fell in consequence of their having worshipped the golden calf He counted them to ascertain the number of those left (cf. Rashi Exodus 30:16); when he was about to make His Shechinah dwell amongst them (i. e. when He commanded them to make a Tabernacle), He again took their census; for on the first day of Nisan the Tabernacle was erected (Exodus 40:2) and shortly afterwards, on the first day of Iyar, He counted them.