Parshat Trumah Drash 5786

So there I was, playing Monopoly with my kids. The turn passed to my youngest, who was about eight years old at the time, was down to her last few bucks (and no, I don’t play cutthroat with little kids – don’t even go there). She asked me, “Abba, what should I do? I’m almost out of money.” I responded, “Give Tzedakah [charity].” 

She thought about that for a minute. Her situation was truly dire. The tension around the board was TV game-show level. All eyes were upon her – what was she going to do? Finally, she took her last two dollars and pitched them on top of the bulging pot in the middle of the board. She rolled the dice, and lo and behold! – doubles, and the massive pot became hers. The crowd goes wild…true story.

I’m not dispensing financial advice here, but Number Four Daughter learned a very valuable lesson that day: the more you give, the more you get. In other words, the way to grow your stash is not to hoard it, but to give some of it away, and that is a seriously important life-lesson: to give tzedakah freely and with an open heart.

This week’s parashah deals with the contributions collected by Moses for the construction of the Mishkan, the tabernacle in the wilderness. Among the items collected were gold, silver, copper and “red skins,” pelts of a reddish goat. The quip goes that these donations to build the Mishkan were the first and only time rabbi solicited donations – and was oversubscribed!

The Midrash Tanchumah sees a deeper meaning in these items. It brings verses to suggest that these items foretell the rise of the four Great Empires. The gold is a hint to the rise of Babylon, the silver to Persia, the copper to Greece, and the red skins to Rome, (and by extension) to Western Civilization.

OK, very clever…but what does predicting the future have to do with building the Tabernacle in the wilderness? What is the sub-text of the midrash and how are we to understand it? 

The Kli Yakar, the Chief Rabbi of Prague in the early 17th century, helps us out. He suggests that the gold that was donated by the Jews in the wilderness was able to preempt –  or at least mitigate – the destruction that Babylonia would later wreak. The silver was a palliative against Persia [remember Haman’s 10,000 talents of silver], the copper contributions against the chaos brought by Hellenism, and the red (adom) skins against the depredations of Edom/Rome, the Church, and ultimately, Hitler. We didn’t survive unscathed, but we nevertheless survived, and the Kli Yakar wants us to know that our very survival can be attributed in some measure to the tzedakah given so freely in the wilderness all those millennia ago.

There are a lot of good reasons to give tzedakah – first and foremost, it is a Biblical commandment to provide for the poor, so much so that if one doesn’t give tzedakah, he or she is reckoned as an idol worshipper. (harsh!)

Secondly, by giving tzedakah we act as responsible stewards of Gcd’s abundance that flows through our hands. As we said last week: we don’t really own anything, in the sense that the A-lmighty is the Koneh HaKol, as we say in the amidah; He apportions His largesse as He sees fit, to whom He sees fit. We are, at most, stewards of G-d’s munificence. 

That’s why tzedakah is not charity in the way it is commonly understood; we are not parting with that which is ours, we are merely passing forward that which is Gcd’s.

Thirdly, we are taught that it is a powerful atonement for our sins, our past failings. As the verse in Proverbs states, Tzedaka Tatzil Mimavet, ‘giving Tzedaka saves from death.’ There are many highly successful people of my acquaintance (and you probably know the type as well) who are not terribly punctilious in their mitzvah observance, but are extraordinarily generous with their money, and we see that Heaven has granted them amazing business success and other blessings.

Woe unto those notable billionaires like Elon Musk and others who contribute virtually nothing to tzedakah.

But the insight that the Kli Yakar brings is truly remarkable: that the giving of tzedakah today can help mitigate future unforeseen disasters. Think of it as a form of spiritual disaster insurance. Or to carry the Monopoly metaphor a step further, it’s kind of like a spiritual “Get Out of Jail Free” card. And who couldn’t use one of those in their back pocket?

So give tzedakah! Be pro-active, don’t wait for some needy person to knock on your door. Better to give a penny every day with an open and loving heart than a million dollars with resentment. It is said that if we donated the amount of money we spend on coffee everyday in America we could cure a major disease. 

Create opportunities to give. Find excuses to give. If you don’t have one, buy (or better yet make) a tzedakah box for your house. It’s a great project to do with your kids or grandkids. Get in the habit of throwing a coin in there every single day (except Shabbat, derp.) 

[Pitch for Matanot L’Evyonim and Maot Chitim]

Me? I had an Uncle Leo. He was a truck driver, and then later, he retired, he became a school bus driver. In between the morning and afternoon runs, he would hang out at my father’s garage, lending a hand where he could, running for car parts, things like that. 

But when he had nothing to do, Uncle Leo would stand around for hours at the shop and just run his fingers through the change in his bulging polyester pants pockets. To the ear of a kid like me it sounded like there were four or five thousand dollars in nickels in there. And, as a kid, the sound of him doing that drove me crazy. So ever since then, accumulating lots of pocket change reminds me of Uncle Leo, the old-man sound of jingling-jangling pocket change. It still drives me nuts, so into the tzedakah box it goes.

In the grand and unpredictable Game Of Monopoly, I may be the shoe and you the top hat, but my advice for winning is still the same: give tzedakah. You always get back way more than you give.

Shabbat Shalom.