✨🔍 Pekudei; Shabbos HaChodesh 2025
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Sources and Uses
3 minute read | Straightforward
In a finite universe, resource allocation matters, and the headlines often reveal negligence. Trillions of taxpayer funds are spent on healthcare and defense in the public sector with no accountability for where they go. Corporate executives implement cost-cutting measures to increase margins; a few months later, a critical component fails, and a plane crashes. The lack of accountability is how you get lead in toys, carcinogens in baby food, and low-quality materials holding planes and buildings together; numbers tell a story.
In our daily lives, whenever someone wants an investment, one of the most important things investors should consider is the sources and uses, the story the numbers tell. How much money do they need, and where is it going? Will it make the business more profitable, or are you sponsoring the guy’s next vacation? The same analysis applies to charitable giving: what ratio of the fundraising budget goes to the administration’s salaries, travel, and dinners, and how much of your charity actually goes towards helping the cause?
When handling other people’s money, there can be no room for moral hazard; as our sages acknowledge, money makes people act weird.
The Torah dedicates an entire section to a detailed account of how the donations to the building of the Mishkan were used, a public accounting for posterity.
The Torah’s space is a precious commodity; what makes the cut and what doesn’t is noteworthy. What are we supposed to make of this accounting, verifying that, by the way, Moshe didn’t mess with the money, and just so you know, Bezalel didn’t burgle some bars; might have we suspected otherwise?
Firstly, our sages note that no matter how sacred the project or how pure the builder’s intentions are, you are always guaranteed to have some clowns; there were actually people who suspected Moshe of skimming off the top and getting rich off the project!
Secondly, the essential principle isn’t in the specific line items of how much of this or that there was; maybe that part doesn’t matter today. However, the broader concept is dynamite; there must be transparency and accountability regarding public funds, even if the people involved have impeccable reputations. Leaders should eliminate the need for people to trust them, even if you’re Moshe and even for the Mishkan.
As R’ Jonathan Sacks highlights, the prophets regularly lambasted corrupt judges who had undermined their integrity and eroded the public trust in justice. A community and nation that suspects its leaders of corruption is dysfunctional. It is the mark of a society in good health when public leadership is seen as a form of service rather than a means to power, which is all too easily abused.
Our sages interpret a remark from Moshe as a way of acting in public life so as to be beyond reproach:
וִהְיִיתֶם נְקִיִים מֵה’ וּמִיִּשְׂרָאֵל – And you shall be clear before the Lord and before Israel… (32:22)
As such, at least two people must be in charge of administering public finances; Moshe was the treasurer, and Itamar independently audited, which is how Moshe could verifiably claim at Korach’s revolt never to have taken anything from anyone. When the Beis Hamikdash was operational, treasurers could only exchange treasury coins with a third party, not their own. They were not allowed to enter the treasury wearing tight clothes or anything with linings or pockets in which it might be possible to hide and steal.
Contemporary governance and leadership experts reinforce what the Torah stated plainly long ago: accountability is a prerequisite to leadership and is not just a matter of personal integrity but of a systemic design that distributes responsibility and ensures oversight. Leaders are tasked with doing right and being seen to do right, establishing a culture of integrity that underpins a healthy, functioning society.
While authorities differ on whether this is a legal obligation or best practice, there can be no question that the Torah’s detailed accounting of the sources and uses of public contributions is a precedent that public trust in leadership is built on openness and accountability. It is healthy for leadership to be accountable to the community it serves, especially when it comes to the stewardship of public resources.
It is the mark of good leadership to take proactive measures to eliminate the need for trust by replacing it with verifiable transparency, creating a culture of accountability and openness.
Accountability and integrity are everything; when you are transparent, you’ll never need people to trust you.
The Clothes Make the Man
5 minute read | Straightforward
From all over the world, Jews would come to the Mishkan and Beis HaMikdash for spiritual healing and engagement with the divine transcendence. Offering services far beyond the regular public programming and sacrifices, the Kohanim, the priests on duty, would attend to people’s personal spiritual needs, helping them bring sacrificial offerings to find atonement or thanksgiving, whatever their circumstances.
The Torah describes a plain and simple uniform that all on-duty Kohanim would wear: linen shorts with a matching long-robed shirt, a belt, and a turban.
The uniform was modest and minimal, but like all dress codes, uniforms pose a challenge. How we dress is a form of self-expression; doesn’t imposing a uniform dress code stifle individuality and human freedom?
Clothing is a basic form of self-expression, and self-expression is vital to emotional growth and well-being. We use freedom of expression, including clothing choice, to cultivate the ability to make choices about how we express ourselves, an integral part of learning a broader responsibility for our choices and healthy personal development. If you’ve ever seen a child put up a big fight about getting dressed, you’ve seen just how important it is, emotionally speaking, to be able to control your outward appearance as part of being in control of your identity. There should be no question that you can tell something about a person by how they dress. While imprecise, it’s directionally accurate.
Yet, be that as it may, the nature of a public-facing service job is that you must somewhat check yourself at the door. There’s plenty of time for self-expression, but it might not be the right moment to express yourself fully when a client or patient requires your advice and compassion.
Humans have certain behaviors hardcoded into our biological makeup – we make snap judgments from very thin slices of information, including conclusions from how someone dresses. These are powerful drives, and we’d be lying to ourselves if we thought we could suppress subconscious instincts; they are subconscious. So while there are plenty of highly successful or learned people who avoid formal wear on principle and achieve incredible heights wearing gym clothes and flip flops, the fact remains that when you’re trying to impress, regardless of your merits, everyone knows you’re better off in a suit than pajamas.
How someone dresses is, of course, not a reliable or proper way to judge a person at all, but the fact remains that appearances matter. Sitting in the emergency room with a troubling health concern, you might get thrown off a little if the doctor walks in with ripped jeans and spiky chains over a tank top. In scrubs or a clown costume, he’s still the same doctor; the scrubs also help you.
When you’re at the hospital, and you see someone in scrubs in the hallway, you instantly know an incredible amount of relevant and valuable information about that person – they work at the hospital, they know their way around the building, they know a lot about health and the human body, they can direct you where you’re trying to go. But most importantly, you know they’re there to help you; the hospital dress code utilizes nonverbal communication to foster a sense of comfort and gravity that allows patients and their families to feel comfortable and at ease, all before a single word needs to be said.
And it’s no different for spiritual health and well-being.
The Torah mandates a simple dress code for on-duty Kohanim, consisting of a plain and simple uniform, spirit scrubs if you like, out of concern for the weary and troubled souls who came from far and near.
Dress codes are effective. Dress codes work. While it’s not an absolute and immutable law, it is a pretty good rule of thumb, a heuristic that primes us to act a certain way. And to be sure, what we’re discussing is the textbook definition of superficial – but that’s human nature and psychology; we have a strong bias and inclination towards the superficial. The way you present yourself matters.
Dress codes level the playing field by peeling away distractions and removing barriers to people getting what they need. Uniforms aren’t intimidating the way fancy clothes are; uniforms aren’t off-putting the way old, raggedy clothes are. Everyone on duty appears equal, at least in an outward sense. Uniforms also create a psychological bond, building a group identity that motivates individuals to do more; you see this in the military, police, school, and work. It can help engender feelings of support: you see others working with you and recognize that they aren’t just doing it as individuals for personal reasons. When you are servicing the public, it is not about you because you are expressly not representing yourself. Tellingly, the uniforms were procured with public funds and owned by the Beis HaMikdash endowment.
There is nothing inherent about dress codes or uniforms that makes you better at what you do for wearing those clothes, but the fact you’re wearing them signals, at least to some people, that you’re willing to put them first. And even if you don’t think that’s true, it is still a reason somebody else might think it is true, and that’s reason enough.
Like other uniforms, the Kohanim’s uniform conveys information and fosters comfort and security, setting the tone for meaningful and high-signal interactions with spiritual seekers. But like a doctor in scrubs, the dress code is only skin deep.
It’s important to stress that appearance isn’t everything – far from it. No two doctors or people are the same, even though they may wear the same uniform. They each have different personalities and sensitivities, and assuming a basic threshold of competency; they distinguish themselves with their bedside manner – what they’re like to interact with. Our Amida also has a uniform structure, morning, noon, and night, Sunday through Friday, yet no two prayers are alike – the feeling we invest in each word is different each time. R’ Shlomo Farhi highlights that even as similar as the Kohanim’s uniform was, each set of clothing still had to be tapered to the contours of the wearer’s body, with no loose fabric. No two people are alike, and even two conversations with the same person aren’t interchangeable; uniformity doesn’t mean homogeneity, and common form is not common substance.
Shakespeare wrote that the clothes make the man, but if that’s a little wide of the mark, it’s probably correct to say that the clothes set the tone. In your own house, yard, or office, do whatever and be whoever you like. Who’s to say otherwise? But in other-facing, client-facing, or public-facing positions, you should be mindful of how you look to people who don’t know to give you the benefit of the doubt. Plenty of major companies have relaxed dress codes for non-client-facing positions, but you can be sure that the client-facing positions are suited and booted!
The value articulated by a dress code or uniform policy is that while they may not help everyone, they provide substantial benefits to portions of the population disadvantaged in specific contexts.
So perhaps dress codes don’t compromise individuality or self-expression; maybe they curb the outermost and superficial part of ourselves, and that’s the part we can afford to sacrifice for other people’s comfort in public service.
Living with Newness
4 minute read | Straightforward
One of the foundational skills children learn early on is how to read a clock.
What time is it?
It’s not simply a question of hours and minutes; there is something deeper to the question. If you know what time it is, you also know what to do. It’s morning, wake up and eat breakfast before school or work. It’s nighttime, time to wind down and go to sleep. The time of day, the time of year, the seasons, and the calendar all establish the boundaries and time frames upon which our world is built, with specific routines for morning, afternoon, evening, and night, summer, fall, winter, and spring.
Different cultures have established various systems and calendars to measure time. Today, most of the world uses the Gregorian calendar, a fixed calendar determined by how long the earth takes to make one complete orbit around the sun.
The Torah asks us to track time using the moon as a frame of reference; when people spot the new moon, they report it to the highest court, which declares the beginning of a new month – Rosh Chodesh. It’s not Rosh Chodesh because there’s a new moon, but because the Jewish leaders say so. It’s the very first commandment in the Torah, given to the Jewish People still enslaved in Egypt:
הַחֹדֶשׁ הַזֶּה לָכֶם רֹאשׁ חֳדָשִׁים רִאשׁוֹן הוּא לָכֶם לְחדְשֵׁי הַשָּׁנָה – This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you. (12:1)
There are many mitzvos, so one has to come first. But why is establishing the lunar calendar through Rosh Chodesh the first mitzvah, as opposed to any other?
The story of the birth of the Jewish People begins at a time of stuckness, with the Jewish People systematically subjugated and oppressed, powerless objects with no choice or control over their circumstances.
Although slavery is illegal in most of the world, it persists today. What’s more, slavery isn’t just an abstract legal status or even just a phenomenon that still occurs in some dark corner of the world; it’s also a state of mind, body, and soul that can happen to anyone. Thankfully, we don’t have much primary lived with the experience criminal aspect of actual human trafficking, but if you’ve ever felt helpless, powerless, or stuck, you have experienced an element of slavery.
When we internalize that forces of change exist and that we have the power to harness and steer them, the possibilities are limitless. This moment can be different to the moments that have come before; this newness is the beginning of all newness – הַחֹדֶשׁ הַזֶּה לָכֶם רֹאשׁ חֳדָשִׁים רִאשׁוֹן הוּא לָכֶם לְחדְשֵׁי הַשָּׁנָה.
The Shem miShmuel explains that the power of the Exodus story is that its story of freedom on a national level offers us the opportunity to become free of the tendencies and troubles that hound us on a personal level. The sense of futility, powerlessness, and stuckness from being burnt out or overwhelmed is poison. With the power to change, hard times don’t need to be so scary anymore, and the world isn’t threatening; it can be full of exciting possibilities. It follows that the first mitzvah is the one that empowers us to change by giving us a symbol of change.
One preeminent historian has observed that the worst thing about history is that people try to correct the past. People try to save the past, which is impossible; you cannot go back to the past and save the people there or prevent past injuries. We only have the present circumstances and perhaps a hopeful look to the future.
But as much as stuckness can come from attachment to the past, R’ Nachman of Breslev teaches us to avoid dwelling too much on the future and focus on the present day and present moment. As R’ Hanoch Heinoch of Alexander teaches, we can attach ourselves to vitality by being present – וְאַתֶּם הַדְּבֵקִים ה’ אֱלֹקיכֶם חַיִּים כֻּלְּכֶם הַיּוֹם.
The Torah often speaks to us in terms of here and now – וְעַתָּה / הַיּוֹם. Our sages take these references to Teshuva, our capacity and power to change and repent – וְעַתָּה יִשְׂרָאֵל מָה ה’ אֱלֹקיךָ שֹׁאֵל מֵעִמָּךְ כִּי אִם־לְיִרְאָה. Because in one day, everything can change – הַיּוֹם אִם־בְּקֹלוֹ תִשְׁמָעוּ. As R’ Baruch of Mezhibozh teaches, forget the past; right now, be a Jew – וְעַתָּה יִשְׂרָאֵל! The Chafetz Chaim takes this to be a reference to introspection – וְעַתָּה יִשְׂרָאֵל מָה ה’ אֱלֹקיךָ שֹׁאֵל מֵעִמָּךְ – what does this moment require?
It follows that our sages wisely guide us to seize every moment; if not now, when? As the Chiddushei Harim observes, every “now” has a different duty, calling for some new, renewed, or entirely other choice or deed. As R’ Ahron of Karlin points out, each moment has its resolution; each moment of existence is incomparably unique, never existing before in the history of Creation, and never to be repeated before becoming irretrievably lost forever.
As the Vilna Gaon points out, Moshe speaks in the present tense to offer us all the power to choose – רְאֵה אָנכִי נתֵן לִפְנֵיכֶם הַיּוֹם בְּרָכָה וּקְלָלָה. Rashi quotes a Midrash that every day, we should perceive our experience of Judaism as brand new – הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה ה’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ מְצַוְּךָ.
Even once a person has resolved to change, they can still be anchored by the weight of their wrongdoing. The Shinover Rav suggests that although the past can’t be undone, it can be creatively reinterpreted, in the way Yosef reframes a troubled past with his brothers to relieve them of their guilt – וְעַתָּה אַל־תֵּעָצְבוּ וְאַל־יִחַר בְּעֵינֵיכֶם כִּי־מְכַרְתֶּם אֹתִי הֵנָּה כִּי לְמִחְיָה שְׁלָחַנִי אֱלֹהִים לִפְנֵיכֶם. What happened then wasn’t so great, but that brought us to where we are, here and now, and you can only move forward from where you are!
The world tracks time using the sun; the Sfas Emes notes that the nations of world history rise and fall like the sun, lasting only when things are bright. The Jewish People track time using the moon, persisting in darkness, and even generating light among total blackness.
The very first mitzvah is the lunar calendar, the only calendar with a visual cue for changing times and a powerful symbol of change, a natural symbolic image of a spiritual reality. It’s not just an instruction to count the time but a commandment to rule over time and even natural phenomena. It is an instruction to live by and with the power of change and renewal. It is a mitzvah to live presently with this moment and make it count.
Every day, every week, and in truth, every moment, is brand new, brimming with freshness, vitality, and renewal.