Thursday, May 15, 2014

B’chukosai בחקתי – The Value of a Man

Parshas B’chukosai opens with a flowery description of the blessings of observance. The blessing starts material prosperity, continues with peace in the land both from wild animals and foreign enemies, plus the people will be fruitful and numerous. It concludes that the Temple will be built, Hashem will be the power of Israel, and Israel will be His people.

After that there is a litany of horrors if the nation does not accept the Torah into their hearts and keep it in practice. Starting with the emotions, people will be paranoid, manic, depressed failures. If they become defiant they will be plagued by wild animals, war, pestilence, and poverty. If the nation turns to sporadic and superficial observance G-d will not only not pay attention to their good qualities, but will inflict them with starvation, destroy their cults and fetishes and dump their dead bodies on them.

The warning segues into a prophesy that both the good and the bad will indeed occur. In the end Israel will wind up scattered and in the land of their enemies. The final denouement, though, is somewhat optimistic. Israel’s uncircumcised heart will become submissive; G-d will then forgive their insolence, and recall His covenant with the patriarchs.

Cryptically the parsha ends with a description of an unusual type of vow to give charity. In it a person pledges to give the value of his life to Hashem, meaning to the Temple. Fixed values are stated basically depending on the age and gender of the donor. The highest is fifty silver shekels for a man between twenty and sixty (Leviticus 27:3). By comparison the Chumash considers fifty shekels as the value of a “chomer” of barley (ibid 16). A chomer is about ten bushels. In other words the value of a man is same as ten bushels of barley. It is less than the 130 silver shekel bowl that a tribal chief donated to inaugurate the Mishkan (see Numbers 7:13). By today’s values it is around US$ 50.

The Kli Yakar comments that this section is next to the section about the curses because a person makes promises in times of travail. He brings the Ba’al HaTurim who notes that the sum of all of the human values mentioned there totals 143 which is the same as the number of curses that were just enumerated, meaning that the curses cause the oath. He adds that there is a tendency to renege on the pledge once the immediate peril has passed.

With this we can understand why only fifty shekels is considered the worth of a man. When the horrors are at hand a person has a humble recognition of how little his life really is worth. His beginning is dirt and his end is dirt. He risks his life to bring his daily bread. He is like a broken potsherd, withered grass, a passing shadow, a wispy cloud, dust in the wind. He also recognizes that Hashem is the living and existing king. His years and days have no end and it is impossible to reckon His glory. However, our name is bound up in G-d’s name. Therefore there is a reason to repent, pray, and give charity (see Unesaneh Tokef, High Holiday liturgy). Also when the relative smallness of the amount is considered, it’s worth paying.

There is a story of the Ba’al Shem Tov that when his soul mate was proposed to him, he replied to his prospective father in law that he wanted the shidduch to be with him and not his Torah and wisdom. When he first met his wife he behaved like a simpleton, suggesting that this was what he was like without Torah and mitzvahs (see Shivchei HaBesht story 4).


A man is a soul clothed in a body. The soul is a piece of Hashem and the body is the hide of the snake. If a man turns to his body then his life is worth that of ten bushels of barley. If he turns to his soul he is a little less than an angel, crowned with splendor and dignity. He is given dominion over the works of G-d, the animals of the field, the birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea. And he recognizes the mastery of Hashem and how great His name is in the entire world (see Psalm 8:6-10).  



לע"נ, הדוד ,לייב הערש בן אהרון ז"ל נלב"ע י"ז תמוז תשל"ב

Acknowledgements to websites: תורת אמת, וויקיטקסט, http://dictionary.reference.com/, http://hebrewbooks.org/,

וגם בדואר אלקטרוני  ניתן באתר http://dyschreiber.blogspot.co.il






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