When G‑d told Moses that every Jew must give enough to clean up the spiritual damage caused by the golden calf affair, Moses was concerned. “A person will have to give all he has to clean himself up!” he said. But G‑d said, “Not a hundred silver pieces, not fifty, and not even thirty—but just one half a shekel must they each give.” (Midrash) When you’ve failed and you want to clean up your mess, very often the job looks far too big. In this case, Moses imagined that the smallest amount it would take was thirty silver pieces. That was the value of a Hebrew servant. And with the golden calf, the Jewish people had abused their role as servants of G‑d. So G‑d told Moses, no, just half a shekel. Which is one sixtieth of that. Because sixty is the tipping point. When something falls into a quantity sixty times its size, hal