Based on all of the above, the Alter Rebbe will explain the first verse of the Parsha (Ki Sisa):
This is the deeper meaning of what it says (Shemos 30:12-13): “When you will pick up the number of the heads of the Children of Yisroel according to their counting, you should do so by having them give...a half of a Shekel.”
The deeper meaning of “כִּּי תִּש ָּּא אֶׁת ר אש -when you will pick up the heads,” is that the “heads” here are a reference to the lofty souls of the righteous, which are referred to as “heads.”
The Alter Rebbe is explaining the first and second verses of the Parsha. The first verse says that when you count the Jewish People, you should do so with a coin instead of counting them directly, and the second verse says that the coin they should give is a half shekel.
In the first verse, the term for counting is כִּּי תִּשָּא אֶׁת רא ש, which literally means “when you will lift up the head,” which we are explaining to mean that Hashem lifts up, spiritually, the souls that are called “heads.” They are called “heads” for two reasons:
- First, these are lofty souls that are higher than other souls, just like the head is spiritually higher than the rest of the body.
- Second, these are souls that contain in themselves an aspect of many other lower souls and those souls receive their life from them, just like the body receives its life from the brain, which is in the head.
These souls are lifted up by Hashem, giving them this love from Above, which is referred to in the second verse as the Holy Shekel. It is specifically these souls that will be able to have both halves of the Shekel, which means both types of love for Hashem. So, when the verse specifies “the Shekel is twenty Geira,” it is referring to these types of souls that can have both types of love, which comprises twenty aspects in total.
The deeper meaning of “םֶהיֵד וקְּפִּל-according their counting,” is that it could also be translated as “according to their reward,” like in the expression ((Bereishis 21:1) “וַה' פָּּקַד-and Hashem rewarded Sarah” by giving her a son; so too this love, which lifts up the heads of the Jewish People, is given from Above as a reward.
The word לִּפְקוּדֵיהֶׁם means to remember and note (here it means to remember and know the count of the People) and is also used when Hashem remembered Sarah and rewarded her with a son. In this verse, we are interpreting it to mean that Hashem remembers and rewards the heads of the Jewish People by giving them this love as a gift from Above.
The verse ends off by saying: “And each person will give the half Shekel as “כּ פֶׁר-an atonement” for his soul to Hashem.”
The word "כּ פֶׁר" which here means atonement, also means “to clean,” since the atonement cleans the soul of the sinner from the blemish that was made through the sin.
This word, which denotes cleaning, is also referring to the love that comes from Above, which cleans the soul of the person who experiences it from all the filthy garments of the animal soul, i.e., the unholy desires of the animal soul which are called “filthy garments,” since, when the animal soul experiences this love, he is completely aware that Hashem is the only desirable thing and no longer has any desire for physical pleasure.
