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The Individual and the Community - Parashat Vayakhel 5779 - March 1, 2019

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This Shabbat we read the first of four special parshiyot that are read over the next five weeks – Parashat Shekalim. 

Parashat Shekalim describes the one-half shekel contribution that each member of b’nei yisrael was commanded to give to the operation of the mishkan. For the purposes of this contribution, individuals were not permitted to contribute more or less – irrelevant of their financial capability or desire. Each member of b’nei yisrael gave exactly one-half shekel. By taking the sum of the total contribution and dividing by two, this half-shekel was used to calculate the population of b’nei yisrael – it served as the mechanism of conducting a census.

The Torah warns that the consequence of transgressing this method of census is a plague – a negef – on b’nei yisrael. Our commentators struggle to explain the reason for this drastic consequence. The medieval scholar and author of Akedat Yitzchak, Rabbi Yitzchak Arama, suggests that there is a danger in conducting a census. Counting people, one, two, three, etc., conveys the sense that a person has no identity besides the number ascribed to him or her – a person’s identity is wholly subsumed within the whole. This implication, explains Rabbi Arama, is erroneous and is the source of the plague described by the Torah. Rabbi Arama explains that this concern is the reason the Torah commands that a one-half shekel is used to conduct the census. Because the census counts half coins, at no point is the individual robbed of his or her identity.

While a community is made up of individuals, there is often a tension between the needs of the community and the individual. How should resources be allocated? How much individual expression should be condoned in the public space? Should we focus on the needs of an individual or of the many? These types of tensions exist all around us – in our families, classrooms, synagogues and in the larger community. Out of expediency, there can be a tendency to ignore the needs of the individual when considering public policy. While the Torah does not instruct us as how to exactly operate when this tension arises, the mitzvah of the shekalim teaches us not to ignore the individual when considering the community.


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