From David Wolffsohn - Herzl's Successor by Emil Bernard Cohn, 1944, The Zionist Organization of America

What young Zionist remembers today, when he pays his shekel, that it was David Wolffsohn who chose this biblical word for the party obolus, and thus helped to strike a responsive chord in the hearts of the people? (p. 62)

The Congress became the principal organ of Zionism, the Shekel the membership subscription,.... (p. 65)

Herzl had financial difficulties. He needed money for his Actions Committee, because the shekel payments were coming tardily, and were few in number. (p.95)

The Russian Zionists had not sent in their shekel payments. What was to become of the movement when the largest territorial Federation refused to pay its membership dues? (p.158)

If the Russians had at least sent the Actions Committee their shekel subscriptions, Wolffsohn reflected! (p.164)

If only they had sent in their shekel payments! (p.165)

He sent, for example, an announcement for publication in Die Welt fixing the next shekel campaign for Sivan 1st to 3rd. "Why?" asked Feiwel, and Wolffsohn explained that those were the days preceding Shevuoth. He thought of his father, in Dorbian, and of the Jews of his native place. In Russia the Jews knew the significance of those great days, and it would touch their hearts when they saw that the call for the shekel had been expressly issued to coincide with them. True enough, it was not the Jews of the Russian small towns with whom it rested whether the shekel moneys were to be transmitted to the Actions Committee.         It was not an easy thing to be President of the Zionist Organization in March 1906. But Wolffsohn did not abandon hope and he anticipated that Zionism would now, after the massacres of Bialystok, bear double and triple harvest. When should the shekel be paid if not at such a time? (p.167)

...the Party morale seemed to have suffered, for the shekel subscriptions were not coming in. And everything depended on the shekel, for no work could be done without money. (p.169)

         Then suddenly he turned on the Russians: "Two years ago I took over the Central Office and for two years, 1905 and 1906, I have received no shekel contributions from the country where most Zionists live."
        "Pogroms!" Dr. Pasmanik exclaimed.
        "Quite true, pogroms - yet this year the same men, I must say it is to their credit - have collected for the Odessa Committee more than in any previous year. (Hear, hear!) Why don't you apply your own advice to yourselves? Why don't you work in Russia so that you should collect the shekel contributions? Why has there been such a diminution in the shekel contributions in Russia, where most Zionists and most Jews live? You say there were pogroms. And I reply that is just the time when you could have collected the shekel contributions. The fact is, you did collect them, but you didn't send them to us. And then you demand grants for Palestine. Out of what funds, if you don't send us the money?" (p.189)

If it asked for money, the shekel subscriptions which were its dues, so that it could do its work, it was told to work and the means would come of themselves. (p.210)