In this week’s Torah portion, we read about the greatest sin in Jewish history. Moses has gone up to Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, and the people become afraid. “Who is this man Moses?” they ask. “What if he abandons us in the desert?” And in their desperation, they build the Golden Calf.
But the Torah portion also tells us how communities can heal, how communities can come together in times of trouble.
The Torah tells us that every year, in the beginning of the month of Adar, the people should pay a tax of half a shekel. “The rich should not give more,” the Torah says, “and the poor should not give less.”
On the surface, it seems like a trivial verse. But for the Chassidic masters, it revealed one of the deepest secrets of the Torah. Why a half shekel, they asked. Why not a whole one. And Nachman of Breslov answered it this way:
Why a half shekel? To teach us that none of us are complete. All of us rely on someone else to give the other half shekel. We need a community filled with love and connection. And this is why the Torah says, “The rich shall not give more, and the poor should not give less”. If the poor did not participate, then the community would not be whole.
And Netivot Shalom, the last of the Chassidic masters, put it this way:
Maimonides taught that every Jew is obligated to give a half-shekel donation in every year of his life. The poor who survive on Tzedakah must borrow from a friend or sell their coat. And the rich are not allowed to give more. Every Jew was required to look at his half shekel and to realize that his donation was incomplete. The other half of the shekel had to come from someone else. As long as we have community, the other half shekel will be there.
This, said the Chassidic masters, is how we recover from the sin of the Golden Calf. And this is how we recover from the brokenness in our lives: by remembering that none of us are complete. But as long as we have community, the other half shekel will be there.
Rabbi Art Grand