In the year 91 BCE, Alexander Yannai of the Hasmonean family succeeded his brother Yehuda Aristoblus to the throne of Judea. Alexander Yannai was a Sadducee who virulently persecuted the Pharisees. At one point during his bloody reign, following a victory he scored on a battlefield, he invited all the Torah scholars for a celebratory feast. During this feast he was slighted by one of the guests, which led him to execute all the Torah scholars in attendance.
A few of the sages managed to escape to the town of Sulukus in Syria. There, too, they encountered anti-Semitic enemies who murdered many of the exiled sages. The handful of surviving Torah scholars went in to hiding, finding refuge in the home of an individual named Zevadai. On the night of the 17th of Adar they escaped the hostile city of Sulukus.
Eventually these surviving scholars revived Torah Judaism. The date they escaped the clutches of death was established as a day of celebration.
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, “They don’t need to give a hundred silver pieces, not fifty, and not even thirty. They only need to give one half a shekel.”
-Midrash
When you’ve failed and you want to clean up your mess, very often the job seems overwhelming.
In the case of the golden calf, Moses imagined that the smallest amount it would take to pay back the damage done was thirty silver pieces per soul. 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.
But G‑d told Moses, no, it takes just half a shekel. Which is one sixtieth of thirty.
Why one sixtieth? Because that is the tipping point of significance.
When something falls into a quantity sixty times its size, halachah generally considers it insignificant, as though it's not there.
But at one in sixty, there are only 59 parts against it. One sixtieth just barely crosses the threshold of significance.
So that is all you need to do. Not to fix up your whole mess all at once. Just something that’s enough to have some measurable impact, to be of some small consequence, no matter how miniscule.
And then G‑d will provide the means to complete the job.
As the Midrash says, “Open a pathway into your heart as small as the prick of a needle, and I will open it as large as the great doorway of the Temple.”