Moving on – Ki Tissa
The first verse of the sidra is, “When you count the heads of the Children of Israel…”
Whatever the count was, it changed from day to day.
Population statistics never remain static, which is why the only way to measure numbers is as of a particular date and a particular hour, and even then there is no guarantee of accuracy.
Metaphorically the changing numbers of the people of Israel is a symbol of everything in life. Nothing ever stays as it was.
This certainly applies to the individual human being. One is never the same today as yesterday, never the same tomorrow as today.
A Chassidic rabbi said, “If I still thought at the end of a day that I was the same as at the beginning I would not want to live any more.”
Faust could say to a moment, “Stay a while since you are so pleasant”. Judaism says, “Work on yourself every moment; never freeze your personality in any one mould.”
Life has to be dynamic, not static, if it is to have meaning.
