Money... you can't live without it!
Gold, silver, precious metals... the building blocks of the Mishkan, the holy Temple, discussed in the Torah's weekly portion these weeks. There is a deeper message here as well, one that I experienced this morning!
It's about how to take our material and physical gifts that we've been granted by G-d, and use them to make the world a better place, in some form or another...
So, yesterday I stopped off at Starbucks to refill the JFX Starbucks gift card for our weekly Sunday School Travelers, and Tim the carpet guy was replacing the rugs in the store. As he's replacing the rug in front of the counter I notice 3 shiny coins peeking out at the edges of the rug. Ever conscious of not wanting to look like a stereotypical "cheap Jew," I wait until the coast is clear to pick up what ended up being a dime, a nickel and a Polish 5-cent piece (honest!). Well, who owns these coins? Remembering the Talmud's teaching that coins that are found on the shopkeeper's side of the counter are assumed to have fallen from the shopkeeper's pocket and must be returned, whereas coins found on the customer's side are assumed to have fallen from a previous customer who has given up hope of ever retrieving them, I pocketed the coins. A few hours later, I used the Polish nickel as an incentive for my son Avromi to master a challenging piece of Torah study that he'd been struggling with in his homework over the past few days. He loves collecting exotic coins, so he took the bait and aced his homework in no time!
This morning at synagogue for morning services, I reached into my pocket to look for some loose change. There is a special mitzvah to give Tzedakah during services, as the Kabbalists teach us that by performing an act of kindness for someone else, we activate the Divine attribute of kindness towards ourselves! Now, I love numbers, numerology, numerical values, etc. Especially when giving tzedakah, I always try and calculate numerical values to coincide with a specific need or request in my prayers. An absolute favorite of mine has always been, you guessed it, 15 cents! Why? Because in the Siddur (prayer book) the morning service is broken down into sections, with the number 15 acting as the bridge connecting each section to the next in a seamless way. This corresponds to the 15 steps in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem upon which the choir of Levites would stand and sing during the Service, connecting one section of the Temple to the next! When I put 15 cents into the Tzedakah box accompanied by my own personal prayer (in English!) I always find that it helps to enhance my prayers, allowing me to to connect with the rhythm and structure of the service in a poetic and meaningful way. So, this morning, when I found my 15-cent Starbucks bonus in my pocket and dropped it in the tzedakah box, for a moment I felt truly connected to the inter-connectedness of Torah and daily living, with the timely (and timeless!) Torah message about using the material world to enhance our own personal spiritual journey. It was very empowering and really jump-started my day in an invigorating way!
Looking forward to a great Shabbos...!