Money: Is there ever enough?

Whoever has ever run a household budget, let alone an organization, business, campaign - and certainly a synagogue - knows that there's never enough money. At some point, there's gonna be a hole, a shortfall or the need for some money to tide you over from one month to the next. We know it, and everyone knows it, and Moses also knew it!

And yet, when the craftsman and artisans building the Mishkan came and said, "We've got enough!," Moshe, without missing a beat, said, "STOP! No More! We're fully covered," a call then resounding through the camp, telling the masses to halt their donations immediately. 

Transplant that on modern times. As a rule of thumb, I try not to ask people to donate money for any cause; I think it's a personal decision, and I'm not looking to reciprocate and donate to each and every cause simply because I felt a particular cause was important and so asked others to partake. That notwithstanding, a week doesn't go by without a request from a friend, acquaintance, colleague - and lately, former student, to contribute to a charitable cause. And so, imagine a world, where anticipating that very need, an organization or synagogue says, "We've reached the target. Brakes!!!!!!!!!! Not a cent more!"

As an aside, we know that historically, there were times - like in that of Yehoash, Judean King (836-797 BCE), when the Beit Hamikdash simply didn't have enough money to go around. The regular repairs could not be made, and Yehoash needed to convene a meeting with the High Priest, Yehodah, to consider ways to better fund the regular repairs. 

Also, when Yerovam (797-776 BCE) bifurcated Israel and refused to allow Jews to come to the High Temple, likewise, likely, the needed funding did not come through. 

So why was Moshe so intent on pausing any additional funding? 

It would seem that the intent was to convey the miraculous nature of God's home in the desert, in stark contradistinction to the temple's needs. In the desert, God's presence was so absolute that no laundry was done (the mist of heavenly clouds bathed people's clothing freshening them anew every day); food was heavenly - manna, and of course, a covey of pheasants swept through the encampment when manna became a little bit too redundant.  

Miriam's well followed the Jews through the desert, a pillar of fire guiding them when they traveled at night, and the heavenly clouds led them during the daytime hours. In other words, life in the desert was nothing like the life we know now - and it was intended to be that way, like the famous Bernard Shaw line about it being a pity that childhood was wasted on the youth. 

The desert was an embryonic time, a time that would never return, where we would feel God's full glory to the exclusion of any real, or grounded responsibility - but in our world, we certainly don't experience that, and so, I would like to posit, that were any extra money to be taken over and beyond that which was absolutely necessary, it  would both undermine the people's generosity of spirit, and largeness of soul in understanding that their very existence was reliant fully on God, something we now - and all too often at that, fail to understand, grasp and internalize. But there once was a period like that, like the prophet, Jeremiah (2:2), stated,

Go proclaim to Jerusalem: Thus said GOD:

I accounted for your favor

The devotion of your youth,

Your love as a bride—

How you followed Me in the wilderness,

In a land not sown.

The Jewish people knew that Hashem was among them which gave them the faith in themselves to see past the challenges of day-to-day life and revel in the divine protection they needed far from any human habitat, where the only reliance - or security - they could have, was on God alone.

The Mishkan, in the most minimal and spare demands, conveyed that message, infusing the nation with the spirit of generosity, but also teaching them trust in Hashem, and that Hashem would never ask any more of them, materially or otherwise, than they could give.