The Value of a Life (Mishpatim 5785)

A sliver of texts leads us to
a discussion we can trace back for 
millennia
What is the value of a life?
And yet, surely this is not something we can
     debate!

Created in the image of God
isn’t each of us valued above the price of rubies
Aren’t we all priceless?
Isn’t every human life a universe unto itself?
“Save a life and you have saved the world,”
     the songstress sung

And yet

Today’s powerful men 
treat human life like garbage
Unless it looks and sounds and believes
like them, of course
Some lives are clearly valued more than others
Some lives seem not to be valued at all

And elsewhere
we release hoards of terrorists
to secure one child, woman or soldier
Even the bodies of those who have died
we will endanger ourselves to bring home
     Although not everyone agrees

For some of us
two red-headed children 
became a symbol
Reminded us of what we are willing to pay
Reminded us of what we have already lost

And elsewhere
those same children 
are ignored
even villainized  
as if babies could be tried and punished
for something done (or imagined to have happened)
long before they took their first 
     Sacred breath

We have come a long way from debating
the life of a foetus
the value of a clump of cells
We have even come far from prioritisation of the mother
Now we wonder if any of us have value
If any of us will be spared

If this is humanity,
it’s becoming harder to advocate 
for our own value

Perhaps I must find a small child to cuddle
to remind me of what we still have
and why we must fight
for our own
     humanity
And our precarious future.