The people of Israel are told to each contribute exactly half a shekel of silver to the Sanctuary. There are many deep insights we can gain from this; I’d like to relay a couple thoughts. Why do we have to use a half-shekel to count Jews? Why is it only a half shekel?
One reason why we can’t count Jews as numbers is because only physical things are counted with numbers (one person, two people, three people). But Jews are not physical beings. Jews are spiritual beings who are meant to see past the physical and can see something deeper. For this reason, we can’t be counted by whole numbers.
Why a half shekel? Wealthy and poor alike contributed this half-shekel in equal measure. A poor man couldn’t contribute less, a rich man couldn’t contribute more. This shows that we Jews are all working together towards the same higher purpose. Additionally, no one Jew is complete by himself. He needs his fellow Jews in order to be complete and to be completely accounted for.
The second major teaching in these Parshas is related to the golden calves. While the King James Bible’s mis-translation might lead you to believe there was only one golden calf, there were in fact 12 golden calves made for each tribe of the Israelites.
When Moses did not return when expected from Mount Sinai, the people felt lost and said to Aaron (the brother of Moses):
“Rise up, make for us judges/gods who will go before us, for this Moses (…) we do not know what became of him!” {Shemos/Exodus 32:1}While the sin of the golden calves was certainly a grave sin that would haunt us for generations, it did not come from malicious intent. How could the Jews drop so quickly from the intense spirituality and devotion of Mount Sinai to idol worship?
Great Torah scholars hold that’s not what happened. The sage Maimonides wrote that the Jews were just looking for a way to concretize G-d. G-d was such an imminently spiritual being and it was too hard for Man to grasp.
As we can all admit, it is much easier to believe something when it is concrete. It’s difficult to put our minds in a position to accept something on a spiritual level. And thus, the Jews made the golden calves.
There are four faces of G-d, the “neshar” (eagle), “ari” (lion), “adam” (man), and “par” (cow). Each face is an expression of G-d’s imminence, and at the same time, each one reflects a trait that Man carries. Naturally, people are more inclined to one trait—it is Torah that balances them out. That’s why we see when Moses was absent from the people, and they were not learning Torah, they resorted to a meaningless physical expression with the intention of “doing the right thing.”
But why did the people resort to making a calf?
Adam/man represents growing and reaching one’s potential. Eagle/neshar represents keballah, having a birds-eye-view of the world, being omnipotent, spiritual, and above everything. Ari/lion is king of the jungle and represents building society, building civilization; taking charge and bringing G-d out into the world. The word for Cow/par comes from fruit and being fruitful. Cow is the gift that keeps on giving, you can eat its meat, have its milk, use its leather, use it to plow the ground. A cow represents satisfaction and good times.
After being enslaved for 400 years, after wandering through the desert, after being attacked by the Amaleks, all the Jews wanted was to have a good time and have something physical to relate their praise to—they didn’t want to try to connect with some spiritual being that they couldn’t touch.
I find it interesting that while every generation since the generation at Sinai we have known the “sin of the golden calf” to be the worst sin committed by the Jewish people, the Jewish people, at the time of the sin thought they were doing the right thing and for the most part had “good intentions.”
It’s clear how even with good intentions we can be completely lost in life. Whether it’s with work, relationships, family, or whatever we spend our time and energy doing; if we can’t relate it to a higher purpose, there is no deep, lasting meaning behind it. And if it’s not for the sake of a higher purpose, we might put all our efforts into something, while having good intentions and thinking we’re doing the “right thing” or we’re being a “good person” but in reality what we are doing could be completely damaging spiritually and bring us farther and farther from our true higher purpose in life.
The Jews made the golden calves while Moses was on Mount Sinai preparing to receive the stone tablets from G-d. It was G-d who related to Moses what the people had done. And though Moses was on a higher spiritual level than any other human in history, G-d told Moses to “descend” from Mount Sinai, and therefore descend from that high spiritual level. Why should Moses descend because of the sin of his People?
Just like we learned with the half-shekel redemption, us Jews have a combined purpose. When one person descends, we all descend. When one Jew around the world (such as the Bernie Madoff scandal) acts immorally, we feel it in Jewish communities all over the world. On a spiritual level, when one Jew leaves the community, we also descend as a people as it means there is one less Jewish home to help rebuild the Jewish people.
Similarly, when one Jew succeeds, we feel their success around the world as well—even more so with learning Torah, when one Jew learns Torah he elevates the entire Jewish people.
May we all explore the deep, rich birthright of our People. May we find deep, lasting meaning in everything we do. May we look past just the physical and try to connect with the spiritual. May we permit ourselves to search for that higher purpose. And may we all see the true merit in the depths and beauty of the Torah, as we elevate our entire people with each verse we learn.
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