Money money money, it's a tabernacle world

I thought of headlining this item tabernacles don't have to be boring, but our advanced analytics department told me it's better to put money in a title. And Abba references? Even more golden.

Just like all the other episodes of TGH, which you can read here. (For the connection between the Tabernacle and Pixar, check out last year’s episode for this portion.)

We are, textually, at a key moment in Israelite history, what with the messy business of leaving Egypt and the glorious moment of Torah revelation both behind us, and the intense wandering and all the adventures to be had along the way still ahead of us.

In-between we have several months — in real time and desert time — of mostly ritual  commandments, in which a blueprint for achieving spiritual connection is laid out. But blueprints don't need to be boring.

Sure, there's Purim and Passover around the bend, always a fun sight on the road trip that is the Hebrew calendar. But as we see in this week's portion, there’s plenty of fun and meaning to be had in the details of Tabernacles and cultic rituals too. So hop along the T'rumah train. It's headed somewhere magical.

--

Few words in the English language cause as many waves of anxiety as "tips strongly encouraged."

See, a mandatory price is easy. A gentle suggestion for a gratuity, at the other end of the spectrum, is breezy. But “tips strongly encouraged?” That's a unique combination of your-call and you-better — enough to send shudders through the most seasoned veteran of the hipster cafe or Boca Beach club where such words are likely to be located.

In what may be the world's first example of said cafe/beach club, our portion of "T'rumah" opens with just such a statement. "V’yikchu li t’rumah me’eit kol ish asher yidvenu leebo,” "and you should take a t’rumah/donation from every person as his heart moves him" God commands Moses in verse 25:2 to tell the people. God basically instructs Moses to say to the people "tips strongly encouraged." And you thought that barista was hard to say no to.

This statement reaches peak passive-aggressive mixed-messagery with the name of the portion (and donation): "T'rumah." The word means extra. OK, so this is a bonus, a luxury, the test question that gets you a 105. Yet there's not much freedom of choice once your hear what the money is going for: to build the Tabernacle, that essential sanctum of desert worship. Sort of undercuts the whateverness.

But if the fact of a donation is kind of mandatory, everything else is flexible. The text never dictates the value of the donation — the tip can come in any amount, “asher yidvenu leebo,” “as his heart moves him.” It could even come in any form. The text lists the many items that could be accepted — gold, silver, bronze, fine linens, oils, spices. It never specifies neither what the donor has to give or how much. There is no easy table to refer to; Morty Seinfeld and his tip calculator are nowhere to be found. You just give what moves you.

In other words, the "t'rumah" donation is, at heart, an expression of self. You give what and how you are moved to give. Nothing uniform. All individuality.

A very different picture is painted in another timely portion. As we just read in the special Maftir of "S'hkalim" last week and will read the same verses as part of the regular portion of Ki Tisah in two weeks, all of the Israelites are required to give a "machtzit ha'shekel" — half a weight of silver. Here, there is no option given — every adult over 20 must to do so. This is not an invitation — in fact the text tells us several times that this amount is "le'chaper al nafshoteichem," to atone for your lives. (It is a census, which requires some atoning; a ditty for another commercial.) There is no "encouraged," whether strongly or otherwise — it is mandatory. And there is no sliding scale of value, no "drop in the jar what the jar makes you want to drop." You live, you pay a half-shekel. End of story.

In fact, the Torah goes out of its way to emphasize the flatness/flat-tax-ness of it. "The rich shall not give more and the poor shall not give less,” it says in verse 30:15. This is as constricted as it gets. It's the anti-T'rumah.

What we have here, it is increasingly clear from this juxtaposition, is not just two very different acts but two strikingly different views of how money should be used. On one hand, a magical floating target that sways and moves based on its owner's whim, its sum and nature varying wildly according to the very particular person in question. (One can even imagine the t’rumah Tabernacle donor proudly marveling at the specific curtain, or archway, or vessel, in the finished structure that came from their donation.) It is a singular reflection of identity. Grab as much as you want, spend it how you want, the more shiny the object the better.

On the other hand we have the half-shekel — a hard-and-fast-amount, its fixed quantity and quality dissolving into a common pot anonymously like all the other fixed amounts. The machtzit has’shekel is no more an expression of identity than the dollar bill you just used to buy that stick of gum. If anything it’s the opposite: something that should be kept hard-capped for everyone, so everyone can feel and be more equal. Here we’re espousing a view of money as a force to be wary of, thanks to its individual-glorifying power, and thus kept in check.

What we’re left with, then, are wildly different ideologies of currency: as expression of individuality or as tool of conformity. As exhilarating capitalism or field-leveling socialism.

So how does the Torah reconcile these two concepts, and invoked so close together at that? What is the proper way to think about money? Because the readings across these few weeks can make your head spin.

Before we get to a possible answer, I think it helps to understand a little better these two distinct ways of thinking about money. And for that, we have pop stars. Because the music canon can always help us understand distinctions, and life itself.

You already know the Abba song circa the mid-’70's that our headline so ear-wormily references.

As writers Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus and lead singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad of our Swedish superhero group cheekily note, money is good. Money solves problems. Money should be amassed in as large a quantity as an individual can manage, because then that individual can do whatever the heck they want with it.

"In my dreams I have a plan/If I got me a wealthy man/I wouldn't have to work at all, I'd fool around and have a ball."

"Money, money, money/Always sunny/In the rich man's world/All the things I could do/If I had a little money..."

(You know these lyrics. Never not fun to cite them though.)

Abba isn't alone, of course; theirs is a popular ideology through pop-music history.  To take a very different genre, a country song came out in 2015 from the artist Chris Janson that offered as much cheekiness about what money could do, all that individualism it could buy. It begins:

"I ain't rich, but I damn sure wanna be.
Workin' like a dog all day ain't workin' for me.
I wish I had a rich uncle that'd kick the bucket.
And I was sittin' on a pile like Warren Buffett."

Its philosophy of currency is uncomplicated:

"I know what they say, money can't buy everything.
Well, maybe so. But it could buy me a boat."

(The song’s title is, also uncomplicatedly, “Buy Me a Boat.”)

This is all peak t'rumah thinking. Our portion says it could be for gold, and silver, and spices, and linens; Janson says it could "buy me a boat, to float, down on the water, with a beer…buy me a brand new rod and reel." (It's sort of like the redneck tabernacle). But the point is the same. We’re talking money as individualism.

Ah, but pop music has had its machtzit ha'shekel moment too — money as a force that needs to be kept in check, a slippery enterprise that can cause problems if not properly constrained.

Among the most famous of these is Biggie's "Mo Money Mo Problems.” Released shortly after the rapper was murdered in 1997, it captures the Brooklyn hip-hop pioneer's skepticism abut wealth, and then some.

As this is a family Substack, we won't cite its lyrics here. Here at TGH we’re never vanilla, we’ll push the envelope of any size, unless it’s manila. Suffice to say this track has money becoming a singular source of trouble for the narrator, given who it has brought out of the woodwork to come after him.

There's also a Cyndi Lauper song, originally written by the indie musician Tom Gray, titled “Money Changes Everything.” The lead track on her breakthrough 1985 record "She's So Unusual," the song takes a cynical view about the corrupting power of money, which can even bring down something as strong and pure as love, as a couple breaks up because one of the partners decides to leave for someone wealthier.

“They say, we'll be your friends/We'll stick with you till the end/Ah, but everybody's only looking out for themselves…Money changes everything” the narrator sings grimly after their spouse has made the fateful decision. Yet again, money is a force to be skeptical about, a mechanism for a hurtful selfishness.

The wary eye cast by these songs is the same as that of the portion of “Sh’kalim” -- the rich shouldn't exceed an amount because then we're on a materialism runaway train. Better to keep money usage contained. And for a clear social good. Or as a certain late rapper might spit, let the game shake you or break you, it will make you a better man, take a better stand, put money in your mom's hand, get your daughter a college grant. (Those lyrics we can quote.)

You prefer a sack?

So what do we have here? On one hand, Chrissy and Abba. On the other, Cyndi and Big Poppa. Clear enough. So why do these two sharply differing points of view manifest in these Torah-reading weeks? How could money be viewed in one moment one way and then advocated for so differently in another? Which is it — were the budding Israelite nation individualists or collectivists? Capitalists or socialists? Gimme gimme gimme some way these two could be reconciled.

Well, think about when each of these instructions were coming. With the Tabernacle situation in this week's portion, the Israelites had just heard a whole list of very specific commandments the whole nation must abide by, first with the Ten Commandments and then the portion of Mishpatim. It might be understandable that they would feel confineed by this, wondering whether there was room for them to be individuals. Where is the place for our humanity, they might ask? Where is the acknowledgement of the natural differences between people?

And so our portion comes along to say yes, there is such space. Even as you are worshipping God, it doesn’t need to be a uniform practice; some can use silver and some could use spices and some could use whatever moves them. There is room for identity and personhood even in this seemingly flattening world of one-size-fits-all commandments.

The machtzit ha'shekel, on the other hand, was being commanded in a scenario in which the Israelites were trying to come together as a nation. They were about to be counted — for the first time since they left Egypt. This was not an easy task, none of it. “The Israelites” as a concept even was a fragile one. These people had yet to really do anything communally; in fact the Egyptians were by design dividing them and breaking their spirit. And we certainly know about the emerging problems they had with Moses as a leader.

So at this tenuous moment, when unity hung in the balance, God commanded a use of money that would bring them together. Currency in this case needed to come with a certain kind of equality, exert a certain bonding force. “You have to make sure,” the commandment said, “that no one is spending more than anyone else and no one spending less; you have to not fragment a group that is barely held together. To the contrary, the idea that everyone is putting in exactly the same amount of exactly the same material can unite you, give you a common stake in the outcome.” And so this more socialist notion of money was expounded.

Or in our terms: Before you had the Abba idea of money money money. But now it’s time for the Biggie one.

(Incidentally, this message at the beginning of Ki Tisa was decidedly not absorbed later in the portion, as the Israelites committed the sin of the Golden Calf precisely by letting this materialistic individualism run amok. They “separated all the golden jewelry from their ears” (32:3) to make the calf, benign self-expressions of wealth transmuting into something horrible and idolatrous. Just the same, Moses at the start of the next portion of Va’Yakhel conveyed verbatim God’s instructions from our portion of “asheed yidvenu libo,” allowing gold and other precious metals of people’s choosing to be donated to the Tabernacle — a signal, it would seem, that for all the ways capitalistic expression can go wrong, it is in the end not fundamentally repudiated).

Now, money has to be used in the right way, of course; it would be a mistake of the highest order to suggest our portion is endorsing empty materialism. The capitalist financial enterprise is here to support individual spiritual endeavors; it is a means to an end and not an end unto itself. But it is, just the same, an individual endeavor. It is Chris Janson buying a boat; it is Abba's Anni saying what she'd like to do with the money. And our portion is saying there is room for that along with the machtzit ha-shekel money-constriction goal.

But I wonder if we could go one step further. Is it possible to say that that these two views of money not only can apply separately in different contexts but can co-exist in the same situation, be held by the same mind simultaneously? After all, we know in the real world both of these philosophies live together all the time. Money is deployed as a beautiful expression of identity, and money is kept in check to prevent the corruption of its owner. Money is capitalistically amassed for individualistic pursuits and money is socialistically collected to benefit a larger community, all in the same day. Most of us live in the two worlds simultaneously untroubled.

Alas, Biggie and Abba never collaborated. But is there any suggestion in our portions of such co-existence?

Several suggestions, in fact.

For one thing, there's the point that we read the portions in succession. More than in succession — these two themes provide a kind of alternating refrain over the course of a few late winter weeks, first the communal shekel then the individualistic t'rumah and then back to the shekel again, almost as though the text is reminding us, even as we embrace one goal, not to forget the other.

Then there's the language in Sh'kalim, which says — wait for it — "machatzit ha'shekel t'rumah l'Hashem. (30:13). "The half a shekel is a t'rumah to God." And goes on to use the word t'rumah two other times in this very non-t'rumah passage! The half a shekel, for all its communal overtones, is linked here to the t'rumaic notion of individualism, on one occasion even in the very same phrase. (The three mentions of the word "t'rumah" alongside the shekel even leads some Jewish legalists to conclude that three half-shekels should be given in a  pre-Purim charity custom.) Far from discrete tracks, the collectivism of the shekel and the individualism of the t'rumah criss-cross each other time and again in the Torah text.

But maybe the sharpest expression of this symbiosis comes by way of the Sfat Emet, the late-19th-century Hasidic leader. Noting reasonably that only half a shekel is called for by the text, he offers the insight that for a person to be complete, another, more soulful currency must be added to this offering — that only through uniting their material half with their more spiritual counterpart does a person realize completion. The half-shekel, on its own, is but a half-finished idea.

This thought imports easily to our own framework. A communal notion of money is great. But it is only half an idea, and without its paired ethos of money as a driving force and expression of identity, it remains incomplete.

Without the individual man is robbed of ambition, but absent the collective such ambition has no purpose. And conversely: Sublimating one's wishes to the community is important, but dissolving them in it entirely means we stop being human. People must at once pursue their own goals and remember the larger direction in which such goals must move.

The shekel contribution and the t'rumah donation, in other words, must both be present.

Or, better, don't just listen to either Abba or Biggie. Put them on the same mixtape.

Thank you, as ever, for reading.