Shekalim: Building a new world one half-shekel at a time
Shemot 30:11-16
Summary: Giving even a little bit helps a lot. But only if that little bit is given with fire.
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Fifty dollars? A hundred? I don’t know. Clearly my donation would be only symbolic at this point, but I wanted Rabbi Yonatan and Elka Markovitch to know that I see them and that I appreciate their work.
The Markovitches run a Chabad in Kiev. Though some people were able to flee before the arrival of Putin’s army, many were not. “Many have nowhere else to go,” the Rabbi said. “Those who left are either wealthy or young. The people who stayed are unable to leave either for financial or health reasons. We decided to stay with them.” He want on to explain that ““there is no bomb shelter but at least we can be together and cheer each other up.”
My fifty dollars - or a hundred - won’t make any practical difference at this point. But I want the Markovitches to know that someone out there sees them and appreciates the work they are doing. I
When we give we are building a new world. We are performing some act of transformation between the world as it is now and the world as we think it should be. Sometimes it’s an individual - I see this person who is in need, and I want them to be well fed and healthy and happy, and I give a few coins with that vision in mind. Sometimes it is bigger - I give to the school’s fundraiser because I want the world to be populated with educated, inspired kids. Sometimes I throw $50 across the ocean because I want scared, vulnerable people to be able to cheer each other up in a warm, dry space.
Even bigger, when I give, I want to heal the world. Sometimes, when people give, they utter a short phrase: “For the sake of the unification of the Holy One Blessed is God and the Divine Presence.” Meaning, I am performing this small act, but it is also infinite. It is addressing this small moment but it is also intended to address the biggest rending, the biggest separations and breaking in the world.
We are builders by nature. We have been dropped into this broken world with a deep (sometimes too deep) desire to mend it, to sew it back together, to make it look as it should look. This need is embedded deeply within us - “there are three traits of this nation - they are compassionate, they have shame, and they are generous.” It actually hurts to see and feel the pain of a broken world. At a time in history when we have access to all the stories in the world - and therefore all the painful realities in the world - almost instantaneously, we are likely to be overwhelmed.
It may be that when we don’t give, and when we don’t reach out to help, it is not because we are stingy or selfish. Rather, it is because we are overwhelmed, and we do not understand how this small act will do any good. We see a big picture, a lot of need, and we want to fix all of it. We want all the bad guys to be stop being bad, for the good guys to win, for broken systems to be fixed; we want healing and goodness and peace. And we want it all, now. We want it to be fixed, now. And when we realize we cannot, we shut down.
In Rebbe Nachman’s articulation, “the hit’la’havut (fire, passion, intensity) of the Jewish heart is infinite. And given this level of fire and passion and intensity, it is impossible to act in a limited way. Thus, a person has to find a way to nudge this passion to the side a little bit in order to do something finite and limited, to still send $50 even though it is not enough to solve all the problems in the world, to smile at this one person even though the next day will also be hard for them and there are millions of others in need just like them. The challenge is to harness the passionate desire to change the entire world while not being overwhelmed by it. “I deeply want to build a new world. Here is the first installment of my donation.”
So, is it automatic that when we give even a little bit that it helps build the world? If I flip the guy a dime, do I get to say “Yup! Pushing my passion to the side. Definitely want to build a new world. First installment. Good luck”? The Kotzker Rebbe had a similar question relating to the half-shekel that the Jews gave in the wilderness. We have a tradition that there were certain objects that Moshe was told to make for the traveling Temple and he didn’t understand what they should look like, so God showed Moshe fire-images of what they would look like. One of those is the half-shekel. The Kotzker Rebbe asks, “What’s so complicated about a half-shekel? Probably there was a coin called ‘half-shekel’ - just give that one. Or maybe it was literally supposed to be a half of the one-shekel coin. OK. So, take a shekel coin, cut it in half, and give it. Why was Moshe confused?” The Kotzker answers his own question: Moshe didn’t understand how giving half can fix any problems. How can this tiny coin, or this tiny half-coin, make any difference? God’s answer was to show Moshe the coin made of fire. It is the fire that makes it work. It is fire that turns a small piece of silver into a piece of the new, perfect world.