The Worth of a Human Being

There is a segment in this past week's Torah portion that I always found odd. The Torah places a monetary value on the worth of each and every person; though insightful in its own right, it would seem extraneous, for were a person to seek to pledge the value of his being to the High Temple, certainly the rabbis, or Sanhedrin could have found a mechanism to gauge the "right" value; furthermore, very often in the Torah, the sages seek sources for measurements/amounts, and it would seem that were it to be necessary, the sages could have found sources here as well. For example, the minimal height for a sukkah does not appear in biblical verse, nor does the amount of the ketuvah for a widow, divorce or virgin, all of which - one opinion states - are divinely ordained. 

Let's briefly review the verses: 

Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When any party explicitly vows to Hashem the equivalent for a human being, the following scale shall apply: If it is a male from twenty to sixty years of age, the equivalent is fifty shekels of silver by the sanctuary weight; if it is a female, the equivalent is thirty shekels. If the age is from five years to twenty years, the equivalent is twenty shekels for a male and ten shekels for a female. If the age is from one month to five years, the equivalent for a male is five shekels of silver, and the equivalent for a female is three shekels of silver. If the age is sixty years or over, the equivalent is fifteen shekels in the case of a male and ten shekels for a female.

Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Z"L, as told to me by a student of his, Rabbi Adiel Levi, explained as follows: "This topic appears after the most ghastly of curses. 'I will act against you in wrathful hostility; I, for My part, will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your cult places and cut down your incense stands, and I will heap your carcasses upon your lifeless fetishes. I will spurn you.' The above words, placing a defined and immutable value on each and every person achieved a two-fold purpose: to assert that through it all, every one has value in God's eyes, and secondly, to allow a person who feels indebted to Hashem to offer up what would be deemed his worth." 



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