PARSHA - KI SISA - Coin of fire/Tzedoko

The Torah portion this week is Ki Tisa which translates both as "When you count", as well as "When you raise up." It begins with G-d telling Moshe that when he takes a census of the Jewish nation, he should do so by having each individual give a half-shekel atonement offering. When Moshe was perplexed as to how the Jews would be uplifted, G-d told him that it would be accomplished through this half-shekel gift.

The Rambam writes that the highest form of tzedakah is when the Jew gives tzedakah as a reflexive response to G-d’s command, without any motive or desire whatsoever. It was in this manner that the Jewish people gave the half-shekel.

For, with regard to the coin that the Jews were to use, we are told that “G-d showed him [Moshe] a coin of fire whose weight was half a shekel , and said to him: ‘similar to this [coin] shall they give.’ ”

By exhibiting a “coin of fire ,” G-d empowered each Jew to give his or her half-shekel with all the fire of their Divine soul, thus enabling the gift to be wholly selfless — the epitome of tzedakah.

This half-shekel gift was therefore very different from all acts of tzedakah performed until then, and enabled the Jews to be uplifted to a far greater degree than they had yet experienced.

This lofty manner of tzedakah is alluded to by the phrase “a coin of fire, whose weight was half a shekel ” — a combination of two opposite qualities.

A coin possesses shape and form, while fire has no distinct shape. Fire rises, while the value of a half-shekel coin lies precisely in its weight.

Because fire rises, it symbolizes the selfless desire to leave the physical and become one with our Source above; the weight of a coin is symbolic of the heaviness of physicality that causes one to be dragged downward.

The combination of these two opposites in the half-shekel — weightless and formless fire with weighted and shaped coin — thus denotes a level of tzedakah that surpasses all limitations. It is tzedaka given with fire and passion, and not as a result of one’s emotions or intellect, or for the sake of reward, but simply — like fire itself — because of every Jew’s limitless and intrinsic response to G-d’s command.

Thus, we understand how the Jews were uplifted through this counting.