February 5th, 2022
4 Adar I 5782
Click here to listen to a recording of Rabbi Sarit's sermon for this Shabbat.
In writing, and recording these sermons the last few weeks, one interesting element for me is knowing who listens to them vs. who reads them. Each of us connects and learns in different ways - some through listening, some through reading. It made me think about this week’s parsha in comparison to the last two weeks. They provide very different modes of connection. The last two weeks featured God speaking through Moshe and the people hearing God’s law, and this week, there is a different mode of engagement - a physical, active, doing, on the part of the people.
In this week’s reading of Terumah, we are introduced to all of the intricacies of building the Mishkan, the Tabernacle that traveled with the Israelites as they made their way through the Wilderness. But before the Torah can begin with the specifics, God instructs each of the Israelites to give of themselves for this communal building project. This is where the name of the parashah comes from - Terumah - gift. Bring me a gift, God says, each of you, communally, as a collective, in order to embark on this large-scale building project.
The Rabbis of the Midrash beautifully imagine God knocking on the hearts of the Jewish people, awakening their spiritual sensibilities, and inspiring them to give these gifts for the Mishkan.
Borrowing a verse from Song of Songs, the Midrash uses the refrain,
אֲנִי יְשֵׁנָה וְלִבִּי עֵר
Ani y’sheinah v’leebi err
I am asleep but my heart is awake.
Throughout this Midrash, the Israelites are depicted as asleep, whereas God, tapping on our heart beating center, awakens us. The Midrash ends by imagining God speaking to the Jewish people saying, “For how long must I travel without a home? My head is drenched in dew. And God said, ‘build me a sanctuary’ so I need not be outside.
The midrash imagines a type of spiritual asleep-ness that the Jewish people experience. But what the midrash depicts as the alarm clock, the thing that pulls the Jews out of their slumber is not simply God knocking on their hearts, it is God asking them to give - the opening words of the parsha - vayikchu li Terumah.
The way the rabbis understand this dynamic asks us to consider what it may mean for us to be spiritually asleep, and what it takes for us to become awake. Many of us may not describe ourselves as spiritual, or if we are hoping for spiritual moments we may want to stumble upon that experience, for something to ‘hit’ us, for us to chance upon moments of deep and profound encounter with God. Some of us may even go the extra mile of putting ourselves in moments that have greater chances of offering us a spiritual experience - a particular class, a prayer experience, a moment with nature.
But the Midrash provides a different model, one that pushes us to think of our active role in a new way. And we might respond with the admission that, maybe we do need to put in some effort in order to cultivate that relationship with God. But the teaching of the Midrash is far more specific. Vayikchu Li Terumah - give to me a gift, and then you will be able to build this spiritual, communal center. But the gift, we know, is not actually a gift to God. It is a gift to community, which then allows each individual to feel God’s presence.
The power in this teaching is the understanding that in order to feel spiritually awake, in order to answer a knock at the door of our hearts, to hear that knock at all, we actually need to give of ourselves. Not just put in effort and maybe pray or read or meditate or sing or study - though those are of course worthwhile endeavors - but give. And more specifically, the Midrash teaches, we must give to community, we must give to the project of building community, in order to feel awake. Our own sense of aliveness can hinge on how we give of ourselves to the communal experience of being Jewish.
But this wouldn’t have been intuitive to our ancestors and it may not be to us. If we compare the instructions from God in this weeks parashah to the past two weeks, we see completely different depictions of what God expects from us and what we receive from the relationship with God. Last week in Mishpatim and the week before in Yitro, we received dozens of commandments from God through a fiery mountain, a top-down, multi-sensory experience where God just… arrives at the people.
So you could imagine the Israelites, post-Sinai, thinking that the way it works is that you go to a place and you wait 3 days like they did at Sinai and then they have a powerful spiritual encounter. But then we get to this week of Terumah, when God comes back to them and says that the way it REALLY works is not that God just comes down to you, but YOU give, in order to then feel God. The idea that you will be a passive receptor of spiritual experience is not an option. To feel awake, for our heart to be awakened in the words of the Midrash, is not actually about receiving, it is not just God knocking on our hearts. God knocks on our hearts in order to motivate us to give, and then, only then, we can receive.
So when we arrive this week with the need to build a Mishkan, a physical place for our service to God to take place, God could have just snapped God’s fingers and made the Mishkan appear. God could have just made it Godself - God didn’t need us to spend so many chapters of Exodus taking part in this building project. But in the process of Terumah - the parsha of giving to build this communal project, God was teaching us what it would take to receive, to be in relationship with God, and to be in relationship with spiritual community.
But of course, we can’t just give in any way. As we’ll see in 2 weeks, when giving in the wrong way, we end up with an idol. We have to give in a way that’s guided by and informed by these past two Torah portions, with an ethical and ritual framework. We need those top-down laws offered in Yitro and Mishpatim, but we can’t stop there, we have to use the principles they set forth to guide our giving.
The story we’re being told is that there is receiving of Divine law, and then giving of ourselves. But it’s not so much one before the other, rather a cycle that reinforces itself. We give so that we feel open to receive so that we give. When we receive the gift of community, we open ourselves to giving. It is a giving that gives way to a type of receiving. A giving that opens us up, that gives way to community, a giving that awakens our hearts.
To close, it’s hard for me to think about this type of giving, without acknowledging the receiving that I’ve experienced these past two weeks in profound ways. With the outpouring of offers of people to bring us food or make a grocery run, the emails full of love I’ve received daily, to the flowers and the meal drop offs, to the Trader Joe’s deliveries with snacks - I have, most certainly been on the receiving end more than my fair share these past two weeks. I appreciate them because they are gifts, but I value them because they are the tools of a relationship that goes beyond the simple act of bringing and giving, they are the bricks of community building. In hoping and believing that anyone in our community would receive the same outpouring of love, I know that these acts of building are the foundations of our own Taberncle, our Mishkan. It’s not just tzedakah - in fact it’s not tzedakah at all. They are gifts of our community building a Mishkan, building a tabernacle of how we function, of how our hearts feel awake, together.
