Parashat Pekudei-Shekalim: How To Be A "Nasi"

The nesi’im, the chieftains, considered themselves above the people. According to the midrash, they heard the call for material donations for the construction of the Tabernacle, and thought they would wait until the ordinary people had stopped giving and then step in, with great fanfare, to complete the missing materials. As it turned out, the people gave an overwhelming amount, more than could even be used, so that the nesi’im were left with almost no role to play. They ended up making the small, last minute contribution of the breastplate stones. It is for this reason, says the midrash, that the word nesi’im is missing a letter in this section of the Torah, spelled without its usual yod.

The nesi’im did not understand what makes a person great, what makes a person a true nasi, literally a person who is “lifted up” or “elevated.” In this case, the ordinary people of Israel were nesi’im; the Torah calls those who contributed to the Mishkan ish asher nesa’o libo, “one whose heart has lifted him up.” What elevated them was that they were not interested in individual glory but in participating, making their little contribution to the joint project of the Mishkan. The Torah says they came anashim al nashim, “men on top of women,” all in a jumble, not as individuals, but together, running to be part of the group.

The construction of the Mishkan involved many different skills – weaving, metal-work, carpentry and other fine craftsmanship, and as such it was a model of a communal project that requires each person to play his part. In the end, the Torah attributes the work not to Bezalel, the architect, or even to the craftsmen, but rather to the community as a whole – “Thus was completed all the work of the Tabernacle . . . The Israelites did so” (39:32).

So it is with the whole Torah. The Torah was not given to Avraham, or, as Nehama Leibowitz puts it, to Robinson out on an island. It was given to the entire nation, and only the entire nation can together fulfill it. There is no one individual who can do all the mitzvot; some are only for women, some only for priests or Levites or non-priests or Levites, or those who live in the land of Israel. Only together, as a nation, can the Torah be fulfilled.

This is what Moshe said to Pharaoh back in Egypt. Pharaoh said if you’re going to worship God for a few days, just take a few men. But no, Moshe said: We will go with our young and our old. We will all go. This is a religion that requires every one to play a part.

This week, in addition to reading about the end of the construction of the Mishkan, we also read the first of the 4 special readings before Passover, called Parashat Shekalim. It too delivers the same message of interdependence and community. In it we read about the counting of the people, which was done through the contribution of half-shekels each. Why a half-shekel and not a whole shekel? For counting purposes, it would have been simpler to have a 1:1 correspondence of shekels and people. But no. The message is that none of us stands on her own, a complete entity, able to make a complete contribution on our own. We are all halves, incomplete without another, only whole when we come together.

In describing this half-shekel count, the Torah uses the phrase ki tisa et rosh, which literally means “when you raise or elevate heads.” It is not by raising ourselves above others that we are truly elevated, as the nesi’im thought; on the contrary, elevation happens by making ourselves a part of each other, forming ourselves into corresponding halves that work together in the building of the Mishkan and the world.