Parashat T'rumah - Values and Motivations

רפואה מן התורה

Healing from the Torah

Parashat T'rumah

Exodus 25:1-27:19

By Adam Ruditsky

     Last week in Mishpatim Israel encountered laws of behavior, and this week in T’rumah, they are being asked to consider their values and motivations when they do them.  In particular, Israel is being encouraged to consider the reasons for giving the gifts (תרומה, t'rumah) of their possessions in order to help build the Mishkan in the wilderness.  More than that, it hits the sensitive area of personal finances and how they are allocated, something that speaks just as loudly to us today as it did back then.
     For our drash, the main flow of T’rumah is about a people who are asked to build a physical location to connect with their God (1) with the right motivation of heart to do so by (2) giving of their material resources.  Keep in mind that until this point Abraham met God on a mountain, Rebecca met God in her tent, Jacob wrestled with an angel of God at the river of Jabbok and Moses met God at a bush in the land of Midian; so why build a physical location to connect with God?  The Mishkan served Israel by providing away for the entire community to meet with God while at the same time allowing each individual to ritualize an encounter with their own sense of the Divine.  But why does Israel need to limit God to a Mishkan when their ancestors did not?  Rabbi Sharon Sobel in the Women’s Torah Commentary teaches that the physical nature of the Mishkan (and later the Temple) was a place for sacred rituals, sacrifice and prayer, not for God mind you, but it was “a concession to humankind and provides a visible focus for the idea of God’s indwelling.”  Making meaning of something that no longer exists can be found in the Talmud itself when Rava teaches that the symbolism of the Ark, which was in the Mishkan to hold the Ten commandments, was covered by gold “inside and outside” to teach that the inside of a Sage’s wisdom was to be reflected outwardly (B Talmud, Yoma 72b).  The beauty of the inside and the outside of the Ark in the Mishkan can symbolically reflect our inside nature that manifests its fruits in how we live outwardly.
     This inside and outside approach to T’rumah foundationally is a matter of free-will that has everything to do with the values and motivations pertaining to the choices of behavior.  So, when Moses speaks to Israel about giving their gifts (or behavior) of material possessions and/or wealth (values) to help build the Mishkan (motivation), he further says it should be done יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבּוֹ (yid’d’vehnu libo), or by “whose heart will motivate” a person to do so.  Rashi says that this is speaking about a person’s “expression of good will,” whereas Mussar Rabbi Joseph Meszler writes that this is about being “generous of heart,” and just not a heart that is simply “motivated.”  Yet how might we understand יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבוֹ (yid’d’vehnu libo) and the place of the heart?  In Jeremiah we read two connected concerns about the heart of a person.  In Jeremiah 4:4 we read “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart,” and in Jeremiah 17:9 we also read, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceeding weak--who can know it?”  A person’s middah (character) is given health by the heart, which Jeremiah wants his readers to know can be deceitful if not circumcised spiritually to fulfill its goodness, something that has to do with choice.  Just as the Mishkan served the entire community and the individual so too does the idea of a circumcised heart (cf. Deut. 10:16 and 30:6).  This circumcision however is gender neutral/spiritual, which is why Jeffrey Tigay from the JPS Commentary on Deuteronomy writes, this “blockage” of heart (see Rashi) is circumcised in order to “remove impediments that prevent Israel from voluntarily following God’s teachings.”  Impediments can be many but they are internally driven; fear, anger, lack of forgiveness or greed, yet in a positive way the tearing away of those impediments will produce thankfulness, generosity, forgiveness or compassion.  Therefore, in the Aramaic Targum Jonathan, the interpretation of יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבּוֹ (yid’d’vehnu libo) from Exodus 25:2 says, “of every one whose heart is willing, but not by constraint,” meaning by control or limitation.  In the Talmud, Bava Batra 8b, the Gemara says that a person may not be “coerced” into giving, and in the Tosafot of Cullin 110b, we further read that a Rabbinical court cannot use physical means to “enforce” the positive commandment of charity from the Torah.  All that to say that a “person’s expression of good will” reflects the good nature of a person’s free-will to give based on motivations that supports their values.  In Torah, the heart is the seat of both.
     Let me ask a question;  Is it a wrong, or a bad motivation, to give a substantial donation to a cancer wing of a hospital for the primary purpose of a tax benefit as opposed to the patients themselves?  This is a question about a givers choice that is based on the idea of values and motivations.  The fact is that the above question is not an either/or but a both/and, and it is a good thing to personally benefit from a good deed that blesses others.  This is what Perkei Avot 4:17 can be interpreted to mean when it says the crown that is greater than money and accomplishments is that of  “a good name,” which in Torah language reflects a good heart.   Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes that “the Temple was intended to stand as the heart, geographical and spiritual, of a nation that had been taken by God from slavery to freedom.”   The motivations of these former slaves was to be based on their values of freedom, and when they were asked to give, it was to be from a heart of free choice to erect in their midst what was of value to them.  I think T’rumah is asking us to also consider our values and motivations of our heart when as people we are asked to give or lend assistance, albeit via our money or our time.  Such is the words of Proverbs that says, “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.”

Shabbat Shalom!