As we enter Jewish American Heritage Month (or JAHM, as the kids call it), I’d like to take a moment to focus on the power of change. No, not that kind of change, but rather the version we less and less frequently find jangling around in our pockets. Actual metal coins. When it comes to loose change and Jewish life, your first association might be the almighty pushke, which, since time immemorial, has beckoned each Shabbat for a kopek or two (“So you had a bad week, why should I suffer?”) to support those in need around the world and at home. This practice dates back at least two thousand years, where the mishnah (shekalim 6:5) describes thirteen shofar-shaped collection boxes (an ingenious design – coins flow from the narrow opening, where naughty hands can’t reach in, to the wide horn where they are collected), each for a different intended cause.
Even earlier than that, in this week’s Torah portion, Bamidbar, the coin makes an important appearance as a census is taken of the wilderness generation, echoing the one taken directly after the Exodus from Egypt. According to most commentators, this census was done using the same method as the earlier one – in order to avoid any bad mojo traditionally associated with counting humans, each person donated a silver half-shekel coin that was counted instead of themselves. In much the same way that when I want to know if there are enough Jews present to say kaddish, I don’t count the people (heaven forfend!), I just look around the room and say, “To daven or not to daven, that is the question,” and if I make it through the bastardized Shakespeare with one word per person, we’ve got a minyan! Those half-shekel coins were collected, counted, and then put to good use to benefit the community.
But there is a much more contemporary connection between Jewish American Heritage Month and coins than this week’s Torah portion. Did you know that less than one year ago, the first-ever American currency featuring a Jewish person entered into circulation? It was (appropriately) the 18th coin in the American Women Quarters Program, which released five new quarters a year from 2022-25 featuring women who have made significant contributions to our nation. The women include literary giants like Maya Angelou, social/political figures like Eleanor Roosevelt, Indigenous leaders such as Zitkala-Ša, groundbreaking women like Althea Gibson and Sally Ride, and noted scientific geniuses, including Vera Rubin – a Jewish woman from Philadelphia who is arguably the most important American astronomer since Hubble. She discovered key evidence that proved the existence of dark matter, which scientists believe comprises up to 80% of all matter in the universe. Her discovery caused a paradigm shift in astronomy that was significant enough to be called Copernican in scale, and earned her the National Medal of Science in 1993. Many have argued that sexism is all that stood between her and a well-deserved Nobel Prize, in the same way that Rubin had been rejected from Princeton because of her gender decades earlier. The child of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Rubin considered herself to be an observant Jew throughout her life, and her significant discoveries in astronomy brought her to the rarified air of American currency, where no Jewish American has gone before.
So, as you put a few coins in the pushke this shabbat, or maybe make a wish and toss three coins in a fountain (a song written by Jewish composers Styne and Cahn that won an Academy Award!), take a moment to appreciate Jewish American Vera Rubin, the first Jewish person to appear on U.S. currency, and her contributions to astronomy, numismatics, and Jewish history.
Cantor Eric Schulmiller
