How much are you worth? – B’chukkotai
It was possible in ancient Israel to donate to the sanctuary the amount of money which represented the valuation a person placed upon himself or any of his family. The amount of the valuation ranged from five to fifty shekels depending upon whether you were male or female, old or young. The criterion was social usefulness – what you were worth to the community.
Had the question been, “What is the value of a person’s body?”, the answer would have been quite unimpressive. FE Lawson estimated that a man weighing 140 pounds contains enough fat for seven cakes of soap, carbon for 9,000 pencils, phosphorus for 2,200 match heads, magnesium for one dose of salts, iron to make one medium-sized nail, lime to whitewash a chicken coop, sulphur to rid one dog of fleas, and water to fill a ten-gallon barrel.
Shakespeare, on the other hand, said, “What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!” To him, a person’s value is far too high to be estimated in material terms.
But what do we tend to do? We judge a person by where they live, what car they drive, whey have – even how they dress. (The president of a congregation I once knew used to say, “Yes, we’ll give that fellow a call-up; he looks tidy enough!”)
Real worth is measured by character, integrity, humanity, personality, and the spark of the Divine in one’s being. These are beyond measure. There is now way one person can be measured against another, because each is unique, and none is a carbon copy of any other.
One of the banes of the rabbi’s life is the question that comes in the wake of the High Holydays, “How many were at your service on yom-tov?”
The rabbi more or less knows the answer, but he is reluctant to tell, because that reduces everyone to a mere number, a cog in a wheel. When the rabbi speaks, he is addressing not a crowd of indistinguishable grey faces but separate individuals, with their own personal mix of talents, capacities and blessings.
True, the individuals make up a crowd, and the crowds develop a personality of their own because of the shared ideals, experiences and commitments of the members. But the moment you lose sight of the infinite specialness of each one, you have what has been called a population stamped out on cookie cutters and you drain the value out of each one.
What are you worth? The answer has nothing to do with your bank account or investments. It has everything to do with your recognition of your own distinctive make-up and the way you use your potential and do what only you can do for society – whether you aim at a give- or a fifty-shekel contribution to civilisation.
