Taking account of the Jewish character

Pekudei has sometimes been called the accountant’s parsha, because it begins with audits of the money and materials donated to the Sanctuary. But beneath the dry surface lie two extraordinary stories, one told in last week’s parsha, the other the week before, teaching us something deep about Jewish nature.

The first has to do with the Sanctuary itself. G-d told Moshe to ask people to make contributions. Some brought gold, silver, copper. Some gave wool, linen or animal-skins. Others contributed acacia wood, oil, or incense. Some gave gems for the breastplate. What was remarkable was the willingness with which they gave:

“The people continued to bring donations morning after morning. So all the skilled workers who were doing all the work on the Sanctuary left what they were doing and said to Moshe, ‘The people are bringing more than enough for doing the work the Lord commanded to be done.’

“So Moshe gave an order and they sent word throughout the camp: ‘No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the Sanctuary.’ And so the people were restrained from bringing more, because what they already had was more than enough” (Ex. 36:3-7).

That is not the Israelites we are accustomed to seeing: argumentative, ungrateful. This is a people that longs to give.

One parsha earlier, we read a very different story. The people were anxious. Moshe had been up the mountain for a long time. Was he still alive? If not, how would they receive the Divine word telling them what to do and where to go? Hence their demand for a calf — essentially an oracle, an object through which Divine instruction could be heard.

Aaron, according to the favored explanation, realized that he could not stop the people directly, so he stalled. He did something with the intention of slowing them down, trusting that if the work could be delayed, Moshe would reappear. He said: “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me” (Ex. 32:2).

According to the Midrash, he thought this would create arguments within families and the project would be delayed. But immediately thereafter, without a pause, “all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.”

Again the same generosity.

These two projects could not be less alike. The Tabernacle was holy. The calf was close to being an idol. Building the Tabernacle was a supreme mitzvah; making the calf was a terrible sin. Yet their response was the same. Hence this comment of the sages: “One cannot understand the nature of this people. If they are appealed to for a calf, they give. If appealed to for the Tabernacle, they give” (Yerushalmi Shekalim 1, 45).

The common factor is generosity. Jews may make the wrong choice in giving, but they give.

In the twelfth century, Maimonides twice interrupts his customary calm legal prose in his law code, the Mishneh Torah, to make the same point. Speaking about charity, he says:  “We have never seen or heard about a Jewish community which does not have a charity fund” (Laws of Gifts to the poor, 9:3). The idea that a Jewish community could exist without a network of charitable provisions was almost inconceivable. Later in the same book, Maimonides says:

“We are obligated to be more scrupulous in tzedakah than any other positive commandment because tzedakah is the sign of the righteous person, a descendant of Abraham our father, as it is said, “For I know him, that he will command his children … to do tzedakah” … If someone is cruel and does not show mercy, there are sufficient grounds to suspect his lineage, since cruelty is found only among the other nations” (Laws of Gifts to the poor, 10:1-3).

Maimonides is here saying more than that Jews give charity. He is saying that a charitable disposition is written into our DNA. It is one of the signs of being a child of Abraham, so much so that if someone does not give charity there are “grounds to suspect his lineage.” Whether this is nature or nurture or both, to be Jewish is to give.

The land of Israel contains two seas: the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee is full of life. The Dead Sea is not. Yet they are fed by the same river, the Jordan. The difference is that the Sea of Galilee receives water and gives water. The Dead Sea receives but does not give.

To receive but not to give is, in Jewish geography as well as Jewish psychology, simply not life.

So it was in the time of Moshe. So it is today. In virtually every country in which Jews live, their charitable giving is out of all proportion to their numbers. In Judaism, to live is to give.