What's the Best Way to Give? Parshat Terumah

(3) And these are the offerings that you shall accept from them: gold, silver, and copper; (4) blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats’ hair; (5) tanned ram skins, dolphin skins, and acacia wood; (6) oil for lighting, spices for the anointing oil and for the aromatic incense; (7) lapis lazuli and other stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece. (8) And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.

(21) And everyone whose hearts were raised and everyone whose spirit moved them came, bringing God their offering for the work of the Tent of Meeting and for all its service and for the sacred clothing. (22) Men and women, all whose hearts moved them, all who would make an elevation offering of gold to God, came bringing brooches, earrings, rings, and pendants—gold objects of all kinds.

(4) all the artisans who were engaged in the tasks of the sanctuary came, each from the task upon which he was engaged, (5) and said to Moses, “The people are bringing more than is needed for the tasks entailed in the work that God has commanded to be done.” (6) Moses therefore proclaimed throughout the camp: “Let no man or woman make further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary!” So the people stopped bringing.

(12) When you take a census of the Israelite people in counting them, each shall pay God a ransom when they count them, that no plague may come upon them through their being enrolled. (13) This is what everyone who is entered in the records shall pay: a half-shekel by the sanctuary weight—twenty gerahs to the shekel—a half-shekel as an offering to God. (14) Everyone who is entered in the records, from the age of twenty years up, shall give God's offering: (15) the rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel when giving God's offering as expiation for your persons.

As Rabbi Ḥanina says: Greater is one who is commanded to do a mitzva and performs it than one who is not commanded to do a mitzva and performs it.