March 2020, Dvar Torah from Graham Goldsmith

Dear Friends,

The following is the Dvar Torah that Graham gave in shule last week. He has given his permission for us to print it here.

Today’s parsha has many events and stories: there is the golden calf, Mount Sinai, sacrifices and so it goes on. However, I have chosen to focus on the first few sentences, about a census.

The first subject discussed in this week’s Torah portion is the collection of the half-shekel coin from every member of the people of Israel. The coins are counted and that forms the basis for a census and people ‘buying’ atonement for their sins.

Included in the instruction to elicit this donation is the injunction that every person give the same amount — a half-shekel.

A rich person is not to give more and a poor person may not give less than this specified and defined sum.
Doesn’t this demand seem more than slightly peculiar?

Nowhere else in the Torah do we find such a command to reject the larger offer of a generous benefactor.
Why then does the Torah here insist that a charitable individual only contribute the minimum requirement?

The children of Israel had assumed that Moses was intrinsically greater than all the other Jews, and had failed to realize that they too could achieve the same level of prominence. Thus, Hashem was trying to teach that each and every Jew, including Moses, in contributing the exact same amount, demonstrated the equality of each.

I believe every person starts out on exactly the same level: no one is inherently ‘better’ than anyone else. Each and every person has the potential to rise to spiritual heights – in this case of Moses or (in an effort to link the parsha to the recently celebrated Purim) Mordechai – or to sink to the depths of a Pharaoh or Haman.

I like to think that this message can serve as an invaluable lesson to us today. No one has the right to feel superior or should feel inferior towards any other Jew. Although, of course, each person is born with different talents and faults, nonetheless, I believe we all start out on ‘a level playing field’. We should have the same potential for achievement and eminence. The only question is how we utilize our tools, whether they be virtues or shortcomings.
Each one of us has within ourselves the capability to soar to the spiritual heights of the children of Israel at Mt. Sinai, while at the same time we possess the faculties to sink to the level of the Jewish people just forty days later at the sin of the Golden Calf. Either possibility is there — the choice is ours.

Sir Moses Montefiore was one of the great figures of Victorian Britain. In the course of his long life, he became Sheriff of the City of London, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and an international spokesman in defence of human rights. Yes, and he had an aged care facility in Melbourne named after him, such was his profile.
His philanthropy extended to Jews and non-Jews alike, and on his ninety-ninth and hundredth birthdays, The Times devoted editorials to his praise. He had shown, said The Times, “that fervent Judaism and patriotic citizenship are absolutely consistent with one another.”

Someone once asked him “Sir Moses, what are you worth?” He thought for a while and named a figure. “But surely,” said his questioner, “your wealth must be much more than that.” Sir Moses replied, “You didn’t ask me how much I own. You asked me how much I am worth. So I calculated how much I have given to charity thus far this year – because we are worth what we are willing to share with others.”

For too long, politics in this and other western countries has revolved around two poles: the private sector and the state. The private sector makes private choices. Government action represents the collective response of the state.
For more than fifty years the question has been framed in terms of an either/or: either we leave a problem to the workings of the market, or the government should intervene.

But this discussion omits a third alternative: the philanthropic sector, the work done every day by thousands of organisations and individuals to bring help to those in need, and comfort and support to people struggling.
The philanthropic sector differs from the state and the market in one vital respect. The state is about the production and distribution of power. The market is about the production and distribution of wealth. Politics and economics are both about competition.

But there are other goods – among them philanthropy, friendship, and trust – which are different. The more one shares them, the more one has. Indeed they only exist if shared. That is why communities, neighbourhood groups and philanthropic organisations are vital to the health of society.

They are not arenas of conflict, but rather seeds of co-operation, the places where we learn to give.
Not everything can be solved by voluntary and philanthropic action. We will always need the market and the state. But so too we will always need acts and organisations built on altruism or selflessness. Active citizenship begins with the insight that ‘we are worth what we are willing to share with others’.

So, I talked about everyone starting out equal in their abilities to rise or fall.

And about the lessons of Montefiore – your value is what you give.

My message today is consider volunteering or giving of your time, or making a charitable donation – of more than half a shekel if you are able! You are worth what you give, said Moses Montefiore. If we all give according to our means, whether in time, effort or money to help others, society will be a much richer place.

Shabbat shalom.

Sourced from various places plus my own thoughts. Bibliography available on request.