A Lesson Revisited
Hi, this is Phil. Pardon me for getting personal (for a change), but this is what I came up with when thinking about what to write for the combination of Vayakhel and Sh’kalim. The story you are about to read is true, and it appeared in the Torah Tidbits after Shiva for my father z”l, four plus years ago. I would like to share a new insight from this story.

Summer in the early ‘60s - not sure which year. Garfinkel’s bungalow colony, South Fallsburg, New York. (For those who don’t know what a bungalow colony, ask a friend or acquaintance from New York.) It was a small (20 families or so) colony, all religious. Each summer, on one particular Shabbat, there was an appeal for the local Sullivan County yeshiva. Before the following Shabbat, there was posted on the bulletin board, a list of the families and amounts of their contributions, and the receipt from the yeshiva for the total amount.

Curious, as kids are, we eagerly scanned the list and noticed at the bottom, right before the total, an anonymous donation of $44. That certainly peaked our curiosity and we carefully went through the list of $25 donations to see whose name was missing and be able to discover the anonymous donor. Alas, everyone’s name was on the list. And our curiosity remained unsatisfied.

That is, until the daughter of the treasurer revealed to me in confidence, the the $44 was given by my father z”l. He had first given $25, like everyone else, and then added $44 to bring the total to some nice round number for the yeshiva.

He was not listed as having given $69, nor was his name missing from the list with anonymous giving $69, since that really wouldn’t be anonymous for long.

Somehow I knew that I would be telling this story in his honor, without knowing that it would be about 35 years later at his funeral.

It was a lesson in giving tzedaka that I’ve never forgotten.

But now, as I mentioned earlier, there’s another insight to share.

Back in Parshat T’rumah, the people were called upon to donate to the building of the Mishkan. There was no set amount to give; there was no requirement to give. It was whatever a person’s heart told him to do. And in this week’s sedra, we find the results of that successful Divine “appeal”.

And then we read in the second Torah, that which we just read last Shabbat - about the half-silver-shekel that every- one was required to give. And the insistence that the rich not give more, nor the poor less.

Sometimes one kind of donation is called for; sometimes the other. A wise individual knows which, what & when.