Exodus Cycle Three Pekudy (38:21 to 40:38) and Shabbat Shekalim

This week we study the parasha Pekudy. It’s also a special Shabbat…Shabbat Shekelim, the Shabbat of Shekels. Modern interpreters might twist it to the Shabbat of Pennies. The Shabbat of Quarters. The Shabbat of One Hundred Dollar Bills. After all, we can’t forget inflation. In any case, yes, it’s our most sacred holy day, and today it’s named after our legal tender.

Hallellujah, we all might be thinking. We can finally (this holy day) shop at Macys, take that walk through Saks Fifth Avenue, go to the street fair and buy that funky hat. But not so fast. Before we grab our wallets and go racing out the door let’s look at the parsha, at the word pekudy. The root refers to counting.

Hey, what’s going on here, we could now be thinking. Does this mean we are supposed to count our dollars this Saturday after services? We can’t count our money on Shabbat! It’s work and (as we read in Exodus 35:2) anyone who works on Shabbat shall be put to death. But then, look at the words… count and shekel. It seems pretty obvious.

Ah, we then think. This is about more than the simple shekel or the surface designer jacket, much more. We want to zoom-in on the symbolic shekel. This way we can also zoom- in on the symbolic shopping spree and raise up such a world of abundance in our immediate setting that the managers of Macys would sigh in dismay.

But let’s back up a bit. Why a special Shabbat now? Well Mishnah says this: On the first of Adar a Public Announcement is made concerning the payment of the Shekels…..On the fifteenth the scroll of Esther is read in walled cities and the roads and the Broadways and the mikvahs are replaced and all public duties are performed and the graves are marked….

So no doubt, this special Shabbat is a preparation for Purim. One interesting fact about Purim (besides that it’s fun and we all wear costumes and dance around) is that in the Megillah of Esther the name of God is not written once. Mystics claim that the sacred name is concealed within the writing. We can even look at the name of the scroll. Megillah literally refers to a revealing. Esther, if we add a hay literally means the hiding. Therefore, Megillah (H)Esther means the revealing of that which is hidden.

Now let’s return to the shekels. The special Torah reading for Shabbat Shekalim (Exodus 30:12-15) instructs Moses to raise the heads of the Israelites and count them. Then, each man must give a half shekel as an atonement offering for his life. This brings us to a wonderful piece in Talmud (Bava Batra 10b). According to Rabbi Abbahu, Moses addressed himself to the Holy One and asked how the horn of Israel could be exalted. God replied through their ransom…in other words when you raise them up.

So what we are getting here is that raising oneself up is equated to the offering of the half shekel. The half shekel becomes that which we must give to be raised. The half-shekel therefore symbolizes our light, our inner sparks, our radiance. Rabbi Kook expresses this when he says the spiritual waves stirring the individual and the world…conform to the inflow of the light of Ein Sof. So, this is what we’ve been looking for. And I can’t say this too much. The shekel is the symbol of our divine spark! And perhaps we really need to raise them up now so that when it becomes time to read the Megillah we will be in an exalted place ready to see the Holy One beyond the words of the Purim story itself, and even beyond the white space. We will be ready to delve into a revelation beyond that which is hidden, the true purpose of the sacred holiday.

Ah, we now think, but why the half shekel? Rabbi Mel Gottlieb explains that an analysis of the Hebrew word half (mem, chet,tzaddick, yud, tov) points to the possibility that, as humans, that’s what we can give. At the center we have the tzaddick. This is the place of pure righteousness, the core of the divine. The tzaddick is surrounded on both sides by a chet (on the left) and a yud (on the right). This spells chai the word for life, the breath of God, the essence. And then, enveloping the tzaddick and life is mem tov, the root word for death. This is what we are. We are beings who shine what we can, whether it’s the radiant-core (the tzaddick) or the essence (our life) through the relative darkness and death that pervade our earthly existence. This is our construct. So as humans we can only give what we are, and who we are. We can give the piece of light within us that remains, that remnant, while we concurrently hold the other half as a lantern to guide as we rebuild our paths and move through the pain (and mark the graves) of our human existence.

And what we raise up comes back to us ten-fold. We get every designer sweater in the whole world. Every funky hat at every street fair. Every kiss. Every kind word. We get to say them. We get to be them. We move beyond light and darkness as we know them because all dichotomies fade in the womb of divine will.

The parsha Pekudy validates the successful counting of the half-shekel census. We are asked to do it and we do. The instruction is acted upon as we move on from the book of Exodus and prepare ourselves to enter the Holy Land.

So, may we be grateful that we are so amazingly close to being there. May we one day be able to move beyond our humanity and stay in that womb of divine will and give a whole shekel. May we raise so much of ourselves up that the concealed is revealed. May we prepare to enter the holy makom of God during these two weeks of Adar through our personal offering. May we be thankful and honor God as we become more and more capable of our ultimate transformation. May we have the humility to know where we fit and may the expanse beyond good and evil, that silent kiss of God Himself, be for us all one fine fit…the Holy Land for eternity.