Rabbi's Writings

Chavurat Lamdeinu

Prayer - Study - Community

I Lift Up My Eyes Unto the Mountains

Rabbi Ruth Gais
Chavurat Lamdeinu
Madison, NJ
Oct. 8, 2008
10 Tishrei 5769

What Are We Worth? (l’zecher Itzhak Yaakov b. Ze’ev v’Naamah)

Early morning of March 17, 2008, a young man named Isaac, a Harvard graduate student, was
about to cross Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. As he stepped off the curb, he was hit by a
speeding truck and dragged about 150 feet. He died of his mortal injuries a few hours later in
Massachusetts General Hospital. He was 28 years old. Isaac was a friend of my son and friend to
hundreds of others who turned out, sobbing and distraught, for his funeral two days later. Isaac
had been on his way that morning to fulfill one of our most important commandments, to comfort
the bereaved; he was going to be part of a shiva minyan.
One of the ways that Judaism has to console us when we mourn is to encourage us to learn.
When someone has died, we learn on that person’s behalf because that person can no longer do
what we Jews are commanded to do all of our earthly days: to study.. When we study for
someone who cannot, we become, in effect, that person’s surrogate scholar. So when Isaac died,
a virtual learning community sprung up; all who wanted were encouraged to study some portion
of the Mishnah, the teachings of the early rabbis, which Isaac himself had been studying. On Isaac’
s behalf, I signed up, a little late, and got one of the last tractates of the Mishnah left, a fairly
obscure one called “Arachin, or Vows of Worth.” This tractate examines some Torah verses that
appear at the very end of the book of Leviticus. These verses deal with the funding necessary to
maintain the mishkan, the sanctuary in the desert that the Israelite finished building at the end of
the book of Exodus. When the Temple was built in Jerusalem, centuries later, these laws of
funding were applied to its upkeep. These verses don’t deal with the annual half-shekel tax owed
by all adult males. They are concerned with consequences of making a vow.as well as how much
a person should give to the temple, if he or she makes a vow. Here is the passage from Leviticus:

When anyone explicitly vows to the Lord the equivalent of a human being, the following scale shall
apply: If it is a male from 20-60 years, the equivalent is 50 shekels of silver by the sanctuary
weight; if it is a female, the equivalent is 30 shekels. If the age is from 5 years to 20 years, the
equivalent is 20 shekels for a male and 10 shekels for a female. If the age is from one month to 5
years, the equivalent for a male is 5 shekels of silver, and the equivalent for a female is 3 shekels
of silver. If the age is 60 or over, the equivalent is 15 shekels for a male and 10 shekels for a
female. But if one cannot afford a the equivalent, he shall be presented before the priest, and the
priest shall assess him; the priest shall assess him according to what the vower can afford. (Lev.
27: 2-8)

What we read here is a substitution of money for a life dedicated to God. We may remember the
haftarah reading on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. We read about Hannah who pleaded to God for
a son and vowed that after the child was weaned, she would dedicate that son to God’s service, i.
e. to be a priest in God’s temple. The Leviticus verses work on the same principle. Let’s say a man
prayed very hard for his wife, age 72, to be cured from a disease and made a vow on her behalf. If
his wife recovered, he didn’t have to give his wife to the Temple as Hannah gave her son. He could
vow her equivalent, that is, her value, in shekels, in this case 10 shekels, which he would give to
the Temple.
Tractate Arachin, as is typical of the rabbinic way, explores the nuances of what seems to be a
fairly straightforward set of guidelines in the Torah. But, if we think about these verses, it’s not so
simple. Why do we need so many different rates? Why didn’t the Torah just give one flat rate for
everyone, let’s say 30 shekels, no matter what his or her age? But the Torah verses state clearly
that there are different amounts based on a person’s age or gender. 50 shekels for a man, 20 -60
years old, 30 for a woman in the same age bracket and on down. Since nothing in the Torah is
there without a purpose, there must be a reason for the Torah’s prescribing these different
values. Tractate Arachin decides that these differences are set forward to make a distinction
between a person’s theoretical value, as set forward in Leviticus, 50 shekels, 20 shekels, 10, etc.
and a person’s actual worth, essentially the free-market price of a person at a slave auction. And
this is what the tractate Arachin is about.
For example, a man of 30, according to the Leviticus verses should have an equivalent value of 50
shekels. But we certainly couldn’t say that every 30 year man is like every other 30 year old man.
Line them up on an auction block and try to sell them for the same price. One man will be stronger
than another. One will be more intelligent. One will be better-looking, one will be a great cook.
These differences lead the rabbis in Tractate Arachin to ask these kind of questions. What about
a man of 30 who is disfigured or missing a leg? How much should he be worth? What is the worth
of a blind man, a deaf woman, a pregnant girl, a little child? What is the worth of a hermaphrodite?
Suppose someone has a broken hand and vows its equivalent, if the hand gets better. How do we
reckon the worth of his hand? Is it by its weight, or is it by the amount of work he could do with or
without that hand?
Tractate Arachin gives cold eyed look at one way of determining what makes a human being
worth anything. Applying the market price standards, it’s clear why a new born is worthless, a
toddler only slightly less so. Before you can get work out of them and your money back, you have
to invest a lot of time, food, energy. As for the over 60 crowd, maybe domestic work but not much
more. And what should happen if they fall ill?
We might find the rabbis’ absorption on cost benefit repellent but their discussion hinges on two
assumptions: the requirement of perfect, unblemished sacrificial animals required for the Temple
cult, as well as an honest understanding in an agricultural and artisan society of the need for
healthy, productive workers. And, truth be told, our own society’s values are not much different.
We favor the young, strong, beautiful. We shun the handicapped, deformed, and old.
There’s a whole other sermon on that topic, but not today. Because, as I read this tractate, while
mourning the loss of a young man, grieving for his parents and sister, and, it must be said, seeing
in his parents’ loss my own worst fears come true, I found myself thinking about the deeper
question of what is a human being worth.
Surely young Isaac, about a year ago at this time, prayed that he be inscribed in the Book of Life
for another year, and actuarily speaking, it should have been so, but it was not to be. What was the
worth of that young life, taken too soon? Would it have better, easier, less painful, for him never to
have existed? Do we succumb to the doubt and despair that can easily insinuate their way into our
being at these times? As Robert Frost asked, “Are all the soul and body scars too much to pay for
birth?” Yom Kippur, a day that mimics death, is a day to ask these questions. To ponder our
mortality – we are flowers that fade, the grass that withers, why are we here? Does it matter?
The rabbis of old would answer, yes, yes, each of us matters. They couldn’t tell you and I can’t tell
you why Isaac was put on this earth or why you are or I am; it is the task of each of us to discover
that for ourselves. But they emphatically affirmed, and I do too, that each and every life is sacred
and of great worth.The rabbis taught us two lessons. The first is that all human life is precious and
beloved. How can it not be? We are created in God’s image. And, we are taught: Whoever saves
one human life, it is as if that person saved the whole world. The converse is true too. Whoever
destroys one human life, it is as if that person destroyed the whole world. (b. San.74a)We are all
connected and every last one of us matters.
But, the rabbis also teach, we are unique beings. And that’s what Tractate Arachin is all about. It is
not really asking about the value of a leg or an arm. It’s asking us to consider the individual and
decide on his or her merit. The rabbis ask the question: Is your blood redder than mine? In other
words, if I have to make a choice of saving another’s life or my own, my own life is as valuable as
another’s. That acknowledgment means that if, chas v’shalom, we should ever be put in such a
terrible situation, our choice must depend on many other variables but not on prioritizing another’s
worth above our own.
We matter. We are all unique but we are all connected. This is why we matter: because we are all
of us distinct, absolutely unique individuals, each put here for a special purpose, and, blessedly,
we are all inecstricably bound up, connected to each other. The events of recent days have taught
us that the decisions we make as individuals and communities and nations have repercussions
that reach across the sea and around the world. We are all connected. The virtual learning
community that brought me to Tractate Arachin is another, happier example. We cannot escape
these invisible connections, nor should we want to, for these connections are most sacred. The
final verse of the great prayer, El Male Rachamim, that Bruce just sang for us, begs God to bind up
the souls of all those we love who have left us “b’tzror hahayim, in the bonds of life.” To be bound
up in the bonds of life, means to be bound up in God who is living and eternal. Our life on this earth
is also bound up in the bonds of life but the bonds are the connections that we, who carry that
spark of divine life within us, make with each other. We may not know how or with whom, when, or
why, we are connected with another, but it is these connections that define our purpose in life.
I’m going to leave you with a story to think about. I overheard this story and have never forgotten it.
It is about tzedakah, the word often translated as charity, but I would translate it as the just
redistribution of God’s wealth. This story has helped me come nearer to an answer to the mystery
of the worth of every life. I’ll be interested to hear how you understand it.
Once upon a time there was a family of Jews, father, mother, and son. The father was a pious man
and always went out his way before every Shabbat to find a beggar or someone in need and invite
him or her to dinner. The guest was treated with honor and before he or she left, the father would
give that person food for the next day and, if he could, some money or maybe some clothes. After
the beggar left, the father would turn to his son and say, “Remember, as it says in our Holy
Scriptures, tzedakah tatzil mimavet, tzedakah, the just redistribution of God’s wealth, saves from
death.” (Prov. 11.4)
One year, the mother grew very, very ill. It was clear that she was close to death and the father
went away as quickly as he could to a nearby town to find a doctor. It was erev Shabbat and the
father still had not returned so the young son prepared the house for Shabbat, then went out and
found a ragged, hungry beggar. He invited him home and the two of them had the finest Shabbat
dinner the young son could manage. The son treated the beggar with honor, gave him food for the
next day and a few coins.
When his father returned after Shabbat, the boy ran up to him and shouted joyfully, “Mother will
get well and live.” Sadly the father shook his head, but said, “My son, I pray that you are right. But
what makes you think so?”
The boy told his father about his inviting the beggar to their house and said, “And so, father, you
see that mother will live. Because you always say, “Tzedakah tatzil mi mavet, tzedakah saves
from death!”
Tears came to the father’s eyes and he said, “Not her death, my son, not hers.”