This week’s Sedra opens with Hashem’s instructions to Moshe Rabeinu on how to conduct a census of Klal-Yisroel. Hashem instructs Moshe Rabeinu that all men 20 years and older should give a half Shekel and trough the number of half Shekels Klal-Yisroel will affectively be counted. In describing this counting the Passuk says זה יתנו – and this shall be given. Rebbi Meir (Medrash Tanchuma) picks up in the word זה – this and explains that Hashem pulled out from under His Glorious Throne a half Shekel of fire. Rashi appears to have a slightly different text of the Tanchuma as Rashi adds that Hashem showed Moshe Rabeinu the weight of the half Shekel of fire.

Rashi is inherently difficult since one cannot weigh fire. The Medrash, however, is not easy to understand even without the additional issue of weighing fire. The half Shekel coin is distinguished by the fact that it weighs a half Shekel. A shekel is a unit of weight (actually being the root word for ‘Mishkal’, ’weight’). [This is most probably the reason Rashi assumed Hashem showed Moshe Rabeinu the weight through fire because otherwise what is a half a Shekel if not a weight?]. How could Hashem show Moshe Rabeinu weight through a vision of fire?

Just a few lines earlier in the text, the same Medrash Tanchuma explained that Moshe Rabeinu didn’t understand why Hashem wanted to count Klal-Yisroel. Moshe Rabeinu even had proofs from Pessukim that Hashem shouldn’t count Am-Yisroel. Hashem had already stated (Bereishis 28, 14) that the Avos’ children would be as numerous as the dust of the earth, and (ibid 32, 12) “I (Hashem) will make your children (plentiful) like the sand of the ocean.”

This was not the first time that Hashem answered Moshe Rabeinu through a fiery vision. Moshe Rabeinu was grappling with how the righteous could be subjected to suffering while the wicked were allowed to flourish (such as the Jews suffering in Egypt, with their oppressors being the super-power of the era). Moshe Rabeinu received some sort of answer to this through the Sneh – the burning bush that wasn’t being consumed by its fire.

Moshe Rabeinu couldn’t figure out how Hashem wanted him to construct the Golden Menorah out of one solid block of gold without temporarily separating it. Moshe Rabeinu was once again answered with a vision of a Golden Menorah of fire.

Whatever else we might be able to understand from Hashem’s Fiery Answers, one thing is certain: Fire somehow represents the inconceivable. Perhaps this is the meaning of the Passuk in Yermiyahu “הלא כל דברי כאש נאם השם“– “for aren’t all my words like fire, says Hashem”. While we may think we understand Hashem’s words, there is actually a certain depth to all of Hashem’s Words that we cannot fully grasp.

In the Megila we read of Haman Harasha weighing out ten thousand silver bars for the sake of wiping out Am-Yisroel. Chazal tell us that Hashem preempted Haman’s attempt of utilizing coins to wipe us out through the mitzva of Machatzis Hashekel that he gave us and that we fulfilled. It was in the zechus of fulfilling that Mitzvah of Machatzis Hashekel that we were saved from the wicked Haman’s evil plot.

While there may be many explanations to several of the aspects of Machatzis Hashekel, the overall idea of the Half Shekel is something almost impossible to comprehend.

We live at a point in time when we once again are seeing the evil will of wicked people towards Am-Yisroel. Let us pray (in the merit of Hashem’s Mitzvos that we keep) that we may be worthy of being saved in the most glorious way ever – Bezras Hashem may we be zoche to the Geula Asida in the very near future.

A very warm Good Shabbos, Rabbi Y. Dov Krakowski