By Marco Del Monte
The Secret of Wealth
In this week's parashah we encounter one of the most dramatic and at the same time most mysterious moments in the Torah: the delivery of the second tablets. After the sin of the golden calf, the world seems to fracture.
The first Tablets were broken and the covenant between the people and Hashem appears fragile. Yet precisely out of that fracture comes a surprising teaching. Hashem says to Moshe: "Carve out for yourself two stone tablets", Hashem is willing to renew the covenant once more, the thirteen attributes to be recited in order to be forgiven will be taught, where Hashem appears with the appellation of "Long-suffering".
But beyond that, Rashi comes to teach us an interesting detail about the material of the Tablets. Hashem showed Moshe a sapphire quarry from which to extract the stone for the new Tablets, and added that from the waste of the workmanship, Moshe could enrich himself. The unused fragments, the chips that fell during the carving, would be for him. From here a question arises. Why does Hashem want Moshe to become rich? Not only that: why in this exact way? The Gemara teaches in fact that the Shechinah rests only upon a person who possesses certain qualities: strength, wealth, wisdom and humility (Nedarim 38a). Moshe had to possess them all. But an interrogative remains nonetheless: if Hashem desired to make him rich, could He not simply have given him a treasure, a chest full of jewels? Why make him become rich through the waste of the Tablets? A story recounted in the book Sas BeImratecha illuminates this point. One day the Rosh Yeshivah of Kol Yaakov, Rav Yehudah Ades, went to an entrepreneur who had long supported the yeshivah. Up to that time that man had donated modest sums, about a thousand dollars. But that day, to the great surprise of the Rav, he pulled out a fifty-thousand-dollar cheque. The Rav was astonished and asked him what had happened. The entrepreneur recounted that shortly before he had taken his sons to the family textile factory to teach them the trade. During a negotiation he asked for half a cent more for every metre of fabric. The sons were perplexed. Half a cent? What difference could such an insignificant figure make? They even thought that their father, now close to retirement, was losing his sense of proportion. But that fabric order was enormous. In the end that extra half cent generated a total gain of fifty thousand dollars. And it is precisely that sum that the man decided to donate to the yeshivah. Then he said to the Rav: "I wanted to teach my sons that great gains are born from very tiny differences. Sometimes everything depends on a minute detail." And it is here that we return to Moshe. Hashem too, so to speak, is teaching a lesson. He does not make Moshe rich with a spectacular miracle. He enriches him with the leftovers, with the fragments that seem to have no value. But at this point questions arise. Does the Torah really want to teach us an economics lesson? Does the message really reduce to a financial principle? Is it possible that the Shechinah rests upon a person only for the "merit" of possessing money? Obviously not. The Torah never speaks only of money. It always speaks of spiritual life. When the Chachamim say that the Shechinah rests also upon the "rich person", they do not simply mean material wealth. True wealth is wealth in mitzvot. And so even the "waste of the Tablets" takes on a new meaning. There are aspects of the Service of Hashem that seem small, marginal, almost irrelevant. The mitzvot that we perform with precision when no one sees us. A little extra effort in kashrut. A moment stolen from fatigue to listen to a Torah class. A gesture of kindness that seems insignificant. A berachah said with a little more concentration. They seem like leftovers. Fragments. Small chips without importance. But the Torah teaches us that precisely from there true wealth is born. Like that half cent in the textile factory, in spiritual life too tiny details can produce immense results. One small mitzvah more, a step just a little further in Avodat Hashem, a fragment of holiness gathered where others see only waste. At the end of a person's spiritual life, all those small chips add up. And suddenly one discovers one has become rich. Rich in mitzvot. Rich in Torah. Rich in light. And so the implicit promise of the Parashah becomes clear: whoever does not despise the "leftovers" of Avodat Hashem, whoever gathers even the smallest mitzvot, in the end will merit the greatest wealth of all… The Shechinah resting upon him.
Perhaps this is precisely the great teaching: in life things that are truly "small" do not exist. A word, a gesture, an almost imperceptible choice can grow over time and become enormous both for good and, unfortunately, for bad. For this reason it is worth paying attention to the details of our daily life: because often it is precisely the things that seem tiny that become, as time passes, the greatest.
Shabbat Shalom
(the first part is taken from a shiur by Rav Yona Metzgher)
Translated from the Italian with Google Gemini. The Italian text is the original.