Mind Your Own Tabernacle! - (Parsha Terumah) Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hi guys so you know in these uh portions last Shabbat and this coming Shabbat we received the Commandments of the Tabernacle and then later in the portions of vak and PUD they're kind of the sister pair where we see the actual enactment of what was commanded and so naturally this idea of having a tabernacle a focal point of Holiness in our lives brings up a lot of questions and one of them is how do we properly Orient ourselves in life now because you know the end goal of the Tabernacle is that Hashem dwell in our midst but without a tabernacle or a temple how do we draw from these portions and learn how to live a life of Holiness and godliness through our actions in our life you know without that actual you know without that structure and the idea I want to share actually struck me from hearing an interview by a professor named Brandon wary who's a professor of philosophy and wrote a book called why it's okay to mind your own business the main thrust of his idea being that in our generation the ethical weight has been you know put on doing that which is great great and Grand if you listen to any high school or College commencement speech the main theme is always going to be do something great make a name for yourself save the world save the whal save the planet and his argument is that that type of endeavor might give a feeling of morality but without any actual weight it's really just Sizzle no stake if you feel you're saving the world by telling everyone else not to drive their cars but in reality you've done nothing that's really difficult and of moral gravity then what have you done the idea being that you know fixing something Grand is going to make me in some way better rather than understanding that the real work comes from working from within and then spreading out perhaps little by little not to say that you don't need big dreamers in the world but that's not really for most people and I found that really powerful especially for those of us theoretically who perhaps might be surrounded by some people who have you know who think big and have huge dreams and plans and projects and want to save Israel and you for example me might just be a person trying to get their laundry room in order and like trying to help a kid who's struggling with her letters and maybe just trying to get your own mind in order and you can sometimes feel like well where do I fit in all of this my world is small I don't have grand plans to fix the world like do my little efforts and my daily struggles even matter and so this professor's words really resonated for me because he was saying that it's the heart and soul of what you know he calls morality we here might call goodness godliness Holiness but the idea is that it's to start from within with humility and actually from that from our inner work we can actually affect more good in the world than wasting all of our mental energy on trying to think of how the entire world needs to be become better and things that we really have very little influence on and once I internalized that idea it really came alive for me in these Torah portions because interestingly mosha asks in the paraa of truma for donations that each person can bring whatever they want and it specifies you can bring more you can bring less like here's like bring whatever you want and there's this National project with room for huge donations and little donations what's interesting is that you know you can give whatever your heart wants to this big project you can't really read truma without jumping to chapter 35 because in chapter 35 we hear that actually everyone became completely taken with his Grand project and it brings so much then in 366 we hear so Moses commanded and they announced in the camp saying let no man or woman do any more work for the offering of the Holy and so the people stopped bringing mosha actually has to stop them from donating and the word here in English is that they stopped bringing but that's not the word in Hebrew the word in Hebrew is actually a very unusual word for stopping it says K in Hebrew actually means a prison meaning they imprisoned themselves from bringing it's not just stopping bringing it's like imprison roning yourself that's a weird word what does it mean to imprison yourself well let's think about what a prison is a prison is like an enclosed space so you want to go out there and make the Tabernacle everyone wants to make the Tabernacle and have your efforts go to the holiest thing that there is but wait you have all these strengths we don't it's not needed anymore in the Holy it's too much you have your world where your efforts can actually make a bigger difference so it's not like mosha saying bring nothing to the Grand story but your primary efforts actually need to be imprisoned in the area where you have true control and influence the spot and met says on this why did mosha want them to stop because it got to a place where they let where they felt like wow I'm doing so much I'm doing so good my gifts are so large and he said this is a terrible danger in having this belief that you can actually single-handedly yourself bring about the completion of hashem's will in the world and I you know think I'm the one who built the house of God and that's interesting because parallel to Bringing these gifts they were commanded to bring a half a shekele of silver now a half shekele is interesting because there were so many gift why do you even need a half shekele but there's something really Illuminating about realizing that you're not bringing even a whole shekele every person brings a half shekele like you are not able to complete things you bring to the world something but you're not going to complete it and in chapter 38 interestingly when we get the tally of everything that built a temple it turns out that the half shekels built more in the temple than just the heartfelt donations and what's super interesting also is the sink it says about the copper sink the priests used to clean themselves what it was made out of it actually actually says in chapter 38 they were made out of mirrors we could just know that they're made out of copper like what doesn't matter what they were originally they were melted into a sink it's like it's there also to tell you that the fundamental work of the priests preparing themselves for the highest level of work starts from something made out of a mirror like looking back at yourself you can't really do something Grand in the service of others until you've really looked inwards and fixed yourself and that reminded me of an amazing passage in iot to Rabin Natan um lessons of ethical teachings of Rabin Natan which is a book that some something akin to Pure K with the ethics of the father some think it's like a like an explication of that any even in chapter 11 Rabbi Yuda Ben beta says what should you do if you have nothing to do now that's a fabulous question right because like it's hard that it was even like to imagine that it was asked like almost 2,000 years ago when people had to wash their clothes in the river and draw water from the well like could you ever really be bored and have nothing to do that sounds like a question that we'd be asking in 2024 right like in a generation where people are so comfortable that they have to watch Netflix and YouTube and because you don't have anything to do and and the sages though are still asking well what do you do when you have nothing to do and when it's coming from a rabbi it's like a no-brainer I asked this at the Shabbat table yesterday I said what would a rabbi say you should do if you have nothing to do and everyone called out at once go learn Torah right that seems like the obvious go-to answer for rabbis that's not what they say rabud B beta says find a piece of Garden or field that's empty and plant it make it flourish now that's so interesting what is he saying the question is what do you do when you have nothing to do what does it mean you have nothing to do it's like youve set yourself up properly in your life and your life is not in a total state of disar and can you're actually like doing okay now you wait till you've done that and then what do you do you don't have to go out and Conquer The Tall mood and you don't have to conquer any kind of you know social justice you go out the place closest to you to like the garden next to you and you see if you can put it in order make it a little bit more beautiful maybe that could be you know parallel to stepping out for something in the community maybe there's a person in your community that's struggling it's really a marvelous passage take something that's desol it and make it beautiful in your surrounding and I think it's amazing because it's also really timely like when such big things are happening in isra is and so many people including me often feel helpless to actually know like what to do for Israel it's interesting that the Torah in describing this massive Redemptive project of building the Tabernacle shows us our primary efforts need even when we think that they're going to be like to like do something Grand and great and amazing and famous the Torah reminds us all the time it starts within you you look in the mirror you set your home straight you take all those things you want to bring to the Tabernacle and bring them back into your home enclose them imprison them in your home that's really what Hashem is asking from us or at least most of us and you know this really for me connected to the vision of what it means to be waiting for mashiach and to be waiting for Redemption because sometimes I like I'll be honest it's a little bit embarrassing but sometimes I get I'm sure some of you have thought of this also I get a little bit nervous about mashiach times's coming because I say like if everything is good what will be my point like if I have any day Jeremy will tell you if I have any day where i'm not super busy I will almost instantly become depressed and feel like my life is meaningless why because like if I have nothing to fix then what am I doing and sometimes I get a little bit nervous about Redemption because I think to myself like if everything's going to be going great and mashiach has fixed everything well what am I going to do and I think what this is teaching us is that even when there's the Tabernacle or the temple even when things are fixed on a grand scale the real work then can actually begin that's where we need to be oriented is to an inner work of fixing ourselves fixing our surroundings maintaining that which we've created and if everyone did that just imagine how marvelous the world could be if people understood if like the outside was fixed the political systems and and the social systems were you know corrected we could actually focus on that which the Torah is telling us is the main thing which is to look in the mirror to go inwards and from that space to spread out little by little and fix ourselves and fix our surroundings um and so with that I wish everybody a good week and I hope that this kind of gives a little bit of strength and encouragement to those of us who are working in our little spheres to try to make things you know better piece by piece to the best of our abilities so bye guys have a great week