Pikudei: Accounting

Pikudei: Accounting

The parsha opens with an accounting; it tallies the amount of currency metal - gold, silver, copper - that was used in the construction of the mishkan and identifies its uses.    I estimate that the gold and silver came to 77 million dollars. That is based on gold priced at $63.00 per gram; the shekel being 10 grams. Thus the 117,730 shekels of gold is 74 million dollars.  The 301,775 shekels of silver  come to 2.3 million dollars (valuing silver at $0.79 per gram).  The money value is what could be looted by a destroyer, the  salvage value., the value of the material as scrap.   How many Jewish fortunes started with scrap - the  junk business?

The true value of the mishkan ( and the Temples that replaced it) was not the price of its raw materials.  It was a great work of art.  It was a priceless Divine - Human cooperation, executed by the most gifted and inspired artists of the time.  The value of the raw materials was trivial when compared with the product that was created from them.  The magnificence of the priestly garb attracted the  allegiance of Alexander the great; he bowed before them ( Yoma 69a).  The value of that alliance is incalculable. 

This parsha ends the second book of the Torah. The book began with the enslavement of the Hebrews, describes their miraculous liberation from the bondage of Egypt, the hardships of the wilderness and the miracles that sustained the nation. The giving of the Torah, intertwined with the golden calf heresy, is described. Some of the laws of the torah are explicated. Most of the second half, the last five chapters, describe the mishkan ( tabernacle) and its contents.  The book ends with the assembly of the pieces and the cloud ( that is connected to Gd) residing over it, or in it; serving as a guide for the travels of the Hebrews. 

We celebrate the mishkan in its absence. The temple, and the service performed in it, has been gone for 2000 years.  We preserve the details of the mishkan, in all its repetition. It contained the great mystery, the tablets from Sinai. It was magical...but it is gone

 How could the ark  fail to protect itself against being looted?  Great, infinite, power is attributed to the Gd that conferred the tablets and prescribed the structure that would surround it. If the High Priest had a defect of intentionality, he would be struck dead when he entered the presence of this overwhelmingly holy object.  Yet, the Philistines captured it (I Samuel 4:11), it was (according to Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Shimon) take to Babylon; and the Romans destroyed the second Temple.  Where was the magic? 

The question is somewhat related to why Gd does not protect the innocents of every generation. How could  Bohdan Khmelnytsky organize the murder of tens of thousands of Jews in the Ukraine in the 17th Century? How could the Nazis and their local collaborators perpetrate their crimes ( in the same territory) ? How can  Putin conquer Ukraine?  See  Psalm 82 ( recited every Tuesday)

עַד־מָתַ֥י תִּשְׁפְּטוּ־עָ֑וֶל וּפְנֵ֥י רְ֝שָׁעִ֗ים תִּשְׂאוּ־סֶֽלָה׃ 

How long will you judge perversely,
showing favor to the wicked? Selah

The temple and the ark are not magical - in that way. Their power is the bond between Gd and the people. When the people respect the bond, they protect the symbols, above all by living the covenant. Generosity is understood to be part of justice. The fair share is not the largest amount you can take without penalty. When the symbols work as a reminder of a Divine authority for good, the tablets and the ark protect the people -  and the people protect them.  When they are viewed economically - as treasures , as objects of envy- their value is reduced to scrap.