Making Sense of the Sedra: Mishpatim

This shabbat heralds the arrival of the month of Adar and the beginning of the four special Shabbatot leading to Pesach. In addition to the weekly portion, Mishaptim, we read an additional segment this week for Shabbat Shekalim, commemorating the counting of the Jewish people via a half-shekel donation.

The opening verse states: “When you count the sum of the children of Israel according to their number…” The first two words,  ki tisa, indicate that this is a directive about the method of counting. It does not explain or pass judgement about when counting is appropriate, necessary or required. Rather, that when it be done, this is the prescribed manner of doing so. Indeed, the following verses explicitly point out that should this procedure be abandoned there is a risk of a plague engulfing the nation, which we know occurred at the end of King David’s reign as a result of one of his counts. Yet we also know that the Jewish people had an annual census during the time of the Beit Hamikdash and that the half-shekel contributions served a crucial role in paying for communal sacrifices. If a census is so integral to the running of the Beit Hamikdash how do we reconcile this with the warning that counting can cause a plague?

Despite the initial word tisa used as the word for ‘count’ at the beginning, the rest of the Shekalim portion describes counting as lifkod. The root of this word, p’kad, harkens back to Genesis 21:1 where God pokad (remembered) Sara and is the key to understanding the real purpose for a census and then how to ensure it is conducted successfully. A plague strikes when people are treated as numbers and a census has the potential to focus on the total being more important than the sum of its parts. This is in contrasted to a census by individual contributions, which gives the indication of the inherent worth of the individual and the value we place on their unique donation.

In the week after more data from the UK National Census is released and we seek to utilise this to teach us even more about our own community, to assist with provision planning for schools and to increase our understanding of demographic movement, we must remember that the underlying data comes from and relates to each of us as individuals and we are all the better for appreciating the worth of the individual as well as valuing the collective data.