SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH
What Happens When We Give? G
iving is transformative — and not just to the recipient. In a 2012 survey of studies linking altruistic behaviors to improved health, researchers from the University of Michigan concluded that giving time and money to organizations, providing Chief Rabbi social support to Warren friends, family Goldstein and community, caring for the elderly or the handicapped, and cultivating compassionate attitudes and traits is associated with higher psychological well-being, including increased happiness and self-esteem, and decreased loneliness and depression. Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, in a famous essay, wrote that there are two forces in this world, giving and taking, and correspondingly, two kinds of people, givers and takers. (He also explained how some people actually give by taking, and others take by giving — so the dynamic is obviously not so simple.) Furthermore, he said one of the great transformative
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FEBRUARY 24 • 2022
goals of the Torah is to nurture us into being givers rather than takers. He also explained that giving is the foundation of all relationships — the more you give to a person, the more you love them. This is quite a paradigm shift. The conventional wisdom is that we give to those we love. Rabbi Dessler says it is exactly the reverse: we love those to whom we give. On this Shabbos, apart from the weekly portion, we read a special section of the Torah dealing with an archetypal act of giving — the mitzvah of the half-shekel coin. In the wake of receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, the Jewish people were called on to each donate a half-shekel silver coin. The collection of these coins had a dual purpose: they functioned as a census of the people (each coin corresponded to an individual) and also as a contribution to the Mishkan, the sanctuary in the desert where the Jewish people gathered to connect to the Shechinah, the Divine Presence. It is significant that both these functions were joined in one act. The message seems to be that, through the process of
giving and contributing to a worthy initiative, people earn the right to be counted as part of society. And that’s exactly what a society is: a group of individuals, who, through their specific contributions, create a community, a collective that is greater than the sum of its parts. Also significant is that the mitzvah of the half-shekel coin was given at this formative moment in the history of the Jewish people — in the midst of a series of momentous events: the Exodus from Egypt and all of the miracles that accompanied that, and the revelation at Mount Sinai, which is regarded as the central event in the formation of the Jewish people. The giving of the half-shekel — and the concept of giving in general — is foundational to who we are. THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTINUALLY GIVING The mitzvah continued during Temple times: each year, from the beginning of the month of Adar, and in the lead-up to Pesach, a national campaign was launched whereby half-shekel coins were collected
from people across the land of Israel, which went toward the running costs of the Temple. Crucially, the offerings brought to the Temple could only be purchased with the coins collected that year and not with coins from previous years. This signifies the importance of continual giving and also connects the act of giving with the sacred service of the Temple. A remembrance of the half-shekel continues to this day. In addition to commemorating the mitzvah with this special Torah reading, there is a further commemoration on Purim, with each person required to give three coins — half the denomination of one’s national currency, so three 50c pieces, for example — to charity. In Biblical times, the half-shekel went toward the Mishkan and later the Temple. And similarly, the mitzvah symbolizes our responsibility to build the institutions that help us connect to God in today’s times — shuls, schools, yeshivas, houses of Torah learning. And, like the Biblical commandment, the impact is
