Parashat Terumah: Ask Not What Your God Can Do For You

It might sound strange that the Torah portion that discusses God commanding the Israelites to build him the Tabernacle is called Parashat Terumah, as terumah means gift, offering or donation. It also might seem strange that the Torah dedicates hundreds of verses to describing the details of building the Tabernacle.

Israel’s arguably greatest public intellectual, Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903-1994), believed this is because the Torah is essentially a book of human duties. Placing human duties at the center contrasts with placing human rights at the center. In a culture centered on duties, people are active and preoccupied with questions “what should I give,” “what am I doing for others.” In a culture centered on rights, people are passive, expecting things to be done for them.

The Danger of Human Rights

English Orthodox philosopher and theologian Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020) noted that when the Israelites left Egypt, they repeatedly received. God performed the ten plagues for them, split the sea in their honor, brought down food from heaven, and extracted water from the rock. Then a role reversal occurred: God commands them to prepare a house for Him. Parashat Terumah is where the shift from the discourse of rights to the discourse of duties begins.

Human rights created a dramatic and important revolution in the world, but we must also be aware of the dangers of this: passivity, sense of entitlement, egotism. How can we succeed in creating a culture that knows how to combine both duties and rights at its center, and not just in times of emergency?

The IKEA effect

The shift from a receiving position to one of action can create in us a deeper sense of connection to the actions in which we take part. Research shows there is a cognitive bias, dubbed the IKEA effect, whereby we overvalue products we took part in creating. According to various studies, most of us are willing to pay more for a product we took part in preparing. One might expect the opposite bias – if I invested time and energy in creating something, I deserve a discount! But what happens is the opposite: when I invest in something, I think it is worth more.

The Tabernacle Effect

I’ve been involved in building and guiding leadership programs for different target audiences, and I learned that it’s a mistake to build a pampering leadership program that just gives and gives and doesn’t expect participants to give back and act within the program. Actually, programs that place challenging demands at their center and dare to make participants work hard are much more effective. According to this logic, if the Israelites build God’s house, they will value it more and feel a deeper connection to it. The IKEA effect is actually the Tabernacle effect. But in our Torah portion there is something even more significant:

“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the children of Israel that they bring me an offering: of every man whose heart prompts him to give you shall take my offering.” (Exodus 25:1-2)

Building the Tabernacle is mandatory, but it’s built out of voluntary contributions. The Tabernacle is built from generosity of heart. God tells Moses: have faith, don’t take a tax, ask for a contribution. With public goods, those that we benefit from even if we didn’t contribute anything to their creation, we often encounter the free-rider phenomenon. Others work and I benefit. The temptation to be a free rider is great, and indeed a certain percentage of people don’t resist the temptation and hitchhike on others’ goodwill. Nevertheless, the Parasha expresses faith in generosity of heart. The process of building the Tabernacle is based on there not being many freeloaders. Interestingly, the first call for activity in building the Tabernacle is based on generosity and free will.

A Society in which the Divine Presence Dwells

One of the wonderful Israeli phenomena we experienced after the terrible crisis was the generosity of heart expressed in a wide variety of ways of giving. “And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8), says God in Parashat Terumah. Not “in it,” but rather “among them.” A society engaged in giving, a society that knows how to act generously and place both duties and rights at its center, is a society in which the divine presence dwells – whether you take this statement literally, or whether you take it, like me, as a metaphor for the spirit and beauty that exists in such a society.

Lior Tal Sadeh is an educator, writer, and author of “What Is Above, What Is Below” (Carmel, 2022). He hosts the daily “Source of Inspiration” podcast, produced by Beit Avi Chai.

For more insights into Parashat Terumah, listen to “Source of Inspiration”

Translation of most Hebrew texts sourced from Sefaria.org
Main Photo: The Tabernacle, illustration from the 1890 Holman Bible\ Wikipedia