08 Mar KI TISA: SEARCHING FOR SELF-ESTEEM?

HOW DO YOU
JUDGE YOUR
WORTH?
Counting the
Jews

The opening verses of this week’s
Torah portion, Ki Sisa, convey G-d’s
instruction to Moses on how to count the
Jewish people. When it is necessary to
conduct a census, Jews are to be counted
not in an ordinary manner, person by
person, but rather, every member of the
community should contribute a coin for
charity, and then the coins should be
counted to determine how many people
contributed.
What is the rationale behind this
instruction? Why the need to count the
community in such a round-about
fashion, rather than simply counting the
people directly?
Two messages, it seems, are being
conveyed here.

What Are You Worth?
First, the Torah is suggesting that you
are counted not based on who you are
but on what you give. Your genuine
value and worth spring forth from your
contribution to another soul, from the
love and kindness you impart to another
heart.
Sir Moses Montefiore, a 19th century
Jewish international diplomat and
philanthropist, was once asked how
much he was worth. The wealthy man
thought for a while and named a figure.
The other replied, “That can’t be right.
By my calculation you must be worth
many times that amount.”
Moses Montefiore’s reply was this:
“You didn’t ask me how much I own.
You asked me how much I’m worth. So I
calculated the amount I have given to
charity this year and that is the figure I
gave you. You see,” he said, “we are
worth what we are willing to share with
others.”

Evaluating a people
Yet, there seems to be a one
more vital message presented in
this instruction, one that would
reverberate throughout history.
To appreciate the value and
greatness of a people, the Torah
is suggesting, you must study not
the number of its bodies, but the
breadth of their contributions.
What matters most is not the
quantity of its adherents, but rather their
commitment towards making a
difference and their inspiration and
readiness to make sacrifices for their
values and ideals. Numbers can be
deceiving. Large groups of people often
barely leave a trace. On the other hand,
there are times that small groups, when
committed heart and soul to their mission
statement, have left an enormous impact,
totally disproportionate to their numbers.
To appreciate the significance of Jewish
existence, the Bible is telling us, you
must study not its numbers: Jews never
constituted more than one percent of
society. Rather, you must examine the
impact this little monotheistic group
has had on the world. Other nations,
cultures and civilizations enjoyed far
greater numbers, larger territories and
mightier armies. But no other person
or nation has left an impression on the
very fabric of civilization as the
relatively few and often hunted and
persecuted descendants of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob.
As the Irish writer Thomas Cahill
wrote in his national bestseller The
Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of
Desert Nomads Changed the Way
Everyone Thinks and Feels:
“Most of our best words in fact –
new, adventure, surprise; unique
individual, person, vocation; time,
history, future; freedom, progress,
spirit; faith, hope and justice—are the
gifts of the Jews … We can hardly get
up in the morning or cross the street
without being Jewish. We dream
Jewish dreams and hope Jewish
hopes.”
Here is a passage by historian Paul
Johnson in his bestseller “History of
the Jews:”
“All the great conceptual discoveries
of the intellect seem obvious and
inescapable once they have been
revealed, but it requires a special

genius to formulate them for the first
time. The Jew has this gift. To them we
owe the idea of equality before the law,
both divine and human; of the sanctity of
life and the dignity of the human person;
of the individual conscience and so of
personal redemption; of the collective
conscience and so of social responsibility;
of peace as an abstract ideal and love as
the foundation of justice, and many other
items which constitute the basic moral
furniture of the human mind. Without
the Jews, it might have been a much
emptier place.”
The Power to Love
Just as this is true concerning our
national identity, it is true concerning
every individual person. At times you
may think to yourself, “I am worthless; I
amount to nothing.”
Comes the Torah and says, that you on
your own, cloistered in your vanity and
egotism, detached from your true core of
absolute dignity and majesty, may indeed
amount to a small, futile creature,
unworthy of counting (“If I am only for
myself, what am I,” Hillel is quoted as
saying in the Ethics of the Fathers).
However, each of us, at our core, is a
“spark of the Divine,” a “fragment” of
His light, a free, wholsome, confident
and happy spirit. As such you have the
power to contribute something to the
world, to reach out to an individual in
need. Each of us has the ability to touch
a heart, to lift a spirit, to kindle a soul, to
look a fellow human being in the eyes
and say “I Love you.”
You may be small indeed, but the love
and light you can bring to another life
through a simple gesture, a sincere “good
morning,” or an act of goodness and
kindness, is immeasurable and cannot be
counted.
And when you reach out to others, you
will discover the depth of the love that
G-d has for you. You are part of His
light, thus you can share His light with
so many others.