Shortly after we graduated from college, Annie and I decided to join the synagogue where I had been teaching. The membership packet included a form for volunteer opportunities, with spaces for family members to write their skills and interests. My column contained skills like “great with kids” and “loves arts and crafts.” Annie was volunteering for Habitat for Humanity at the time, so her column said, “great with power tools” and “loves to hang cabinets.”
Clearly, building projects were not my area of expertise. So it’s ironic that I’m here to talk to you about a Torah portion that is mostly blueprints.
The blueprints are for a sacred structure – the mishkahn – our portable sanctuary in the wilderness. These instructions are thorough and practical. There are a lot of cubits involved. I’m sure if we put Annie in charge, we could build the thing today.
But, the blueprints in Parashat Trumah are ALSO instructions for building sacred community. God commands:
וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃
“Build me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them.”i This is not just a town center. It’s a dwelling place for God.
Rashi puzzles over a seemingly superfluous phrase in the next verse, וְכֵ֖ן תַּעֲשֽׂוּ, “and so shall you do.”ii He interprets it to mean that building a mishkahn was not just a commandment for our ancestors, but an obligation for all time. We are all called to be mishkahn builders. Now since I assume we’re not going to get contractors in here to install a new mishkahn, reading Rashi raises the question, how will we fulfill the commandment to build dwelling places for God?
So much of our time at the College-Institute is devoted to asking how we will build sacred communities, where people come joyfully to pray and learn and act. This is a theme that speaks loudly in the parasha, but it also whispers another, subtler message. The commandment does not start with schematics. Six verses before God tells us what we are building -- v’asu li mikdash -- God explains the spirit in which we should build:
דַּבֵּר֙ אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל וְיִקְחוּ־לִ֖י תְּרוּמָ֑ה מֵאֵ֤ת כָּל־אִישׁ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר יִדְּבֶ֣נּוּ לִבּ֔וֹ...
“Tell the children of Israel to bring me gifts from every person whose heart is so moved.”iii Trumot – Gifts. Before we can even imagine building the mishkan, we must inspire people to bring their gifts.
When we think of trumot, we tend to think of material gifts, of gold and silver, dolphin skins, and acacia wood. But the text implies that equally important are the offerings of people’s hearts. God calls for:
כָּל־חַכְמֵי־לֵ֔ב
“everyone who is wise of heart”
אֲשֶׁ֥ר מִלֵּאתִ֖יו ר֣וּחַ חָכְמָ֑ה
“whose spirit I have filled with wisdom.”iv
Nachmanides argues that the material goods are also a metaphor for the wisdom and skill that the people brought to the project.v The people are the gold and the acacia wood.vi The expression of each spirit is a vital element in the construction of the mishkan. Each person shared her gift, and the result was an abundance of talent so great that God and Moses were overwhelmed.
Every person has a gift, a sacred talent to share. This is their trumah. Like Moses, Jewish leaders must ask people to bring their gifts, knowing that each is a sacred material in the construction of a dwelling place for God. Our communities are vessels overflowing with talent.
In his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey describes dichotomous worldviews: a scarcity mentality and an abundance mentality. A person or organization with a scarcity mentality looks at the world and says, “I don’t have enough. How can I get more?” An abundance mentality says, “I have everything I need. How blessed am I?” Both mindsets look at the same data, but draw different conclusions. Covey challenges us to move from a mentality that sees only scarcity to one that appreciates abundance.
So many Jewish organizations operate from a place of scarcity – there is never enough time, never enough people, never enough money to do the work we want to do. Our synagogues are so desperate for more dues paying members that the dream of gifts overflowing feels like a fantasy. But Trumot transform our communities by enabling us to peer past perceived scarcity and see an abundance of talent living in our communities.
I learned to look for abundance, not from Covey, or the Torah, but from my mother. She was a non-profit consultant who specialized in volunteerism. But more importantly, my mother was a gratitude guru. She made a daily practice of listing out loud the many gifts for which she was grateful. She often shared that this practice of gratitude had been transformative, helping her to navigate even her darkest days because she never lost sight of her abundant blessings.
If she were here, she would look out on this sanctuary and see an ocean of Trumot. She believed that each of us has a unique gift to share, and that organizations need to be better at helping us to share them. This was more than her vocation, it was her conviction. When she looked at people, she saw wellsprings of talent. When she met someone, on a plane or in line at the grocery store, it took barely a second before she learned what they were excited about. This was her gift: she was a diviner of talent. When I read this Torah portion, it is her voice I hear whispering, “Imagine if each of us could develop skills to find gifts in every person we encounter.”
During my internship last summer, I met Barbara. She and some friends had approached their Rabbi, Danny Zemel, with the idea to start Wise Aging groupsvii at the synagogue. Rabbi Zemel, who has a natural abundance mindset, saw in Barbara and her team gifts of passion, organizing skill, and vision. With his blessing, they started 3 Wise Aging groups, which have already engaged more than 40 people.
Evelyn participated in one of these groups. She had been a member of the synagogue for years, but had not been particularly active. This program offered an exciting opportunity to explore her Jewish identity. At one meeting, she shared that in her professional life she runs a program connecting dance and spirituality. At the next meeting, she led her group in a spiritual movement exercise, which everyone found powerfully meaningful. Weeks later, she was in Rabbi Zemel’s office, discussing how she could share this gift with even more congregants. Now, she is building a new place for God to dwell in her community. My mother used to say, “Every person in your community has gifts they would be eager to share, but most have never been asked.”
The Torah portion teaches us to ask for gifts. As a non-profit consultant and a believer in abundance, my mother’s language for this was volunteer engagement. She wanted Jewish leaders to become volunteer engagement experts – masters at identifying Trumot and builders of opportunities for the sharing of gifts. Often, these gifts will match projects we are already doing, but sometimes, like with Barbara and Evelyn, new ideas will emerge from the unique talents within our community. We can’t say yes to every program idea, but we must learn to say yes to every talent -- to match people’s talents to our mission. What if we planned our program calendar in dialogue with people’s gifts? We see this in the Parasha. God does not start with program – “make me a sanctuary” -- God starts by asking for gifts. God knows people aren’t motivated by building funds; they are motivated when we connect to their hearts and their wisdom.
In two weeks, we will read about a very different building project: the Golden Calf. Aaron tells the frightened people to drop off their gold, and he builds the calf for them. They pay their membership dues and say, “Do this for us.” What Aaron builds is not a dwelling place but an idol. The Golden Calf is the kind of building project that comes out of scarcity – built out of the fear that Moses had disappeared. The move from the calf to the tabernacle is a transition from a mindset of scarcity to a mindset of abundance. It’s the abundance that comes when we ask for people’s gifts, not their gold.
If we want to build our modern mishkanot out of abundance, we need volunteer engagement that permeates every aspect of our institutions. And as leaders, we must model this engagement to our staff and lay leaders. A few weeks ago, I met with a congregant who works as a corporate consultant. We discussed his worry about declining engagement in Jewish life, and he shared ideas for how we might create a unified message of engagement around the High Holy Days. I said, “It sounds like your gift is messaging. You could help us to articulate our vision more clearly.” As we moved from talking about his idea to talking about his gift, I could see his eyes brighten, his demeanor change. Something holy happened in that moment. What if Rabbis, Cantors, Educators, professors, and administrators made a spiritual practice out of sitting with people and helping them to name their gifts?
But it is not enough just to identify the gifts. We have to create opportunities to share them with the community. It’s not enough for me to say, “Your gift is messaging.” We must figure out how he can put that gift to use. Perhaps over the summer he will work with the rabbis and lay leaders to envision a unified message for the High Holy Days. When I started this sermon, I told you a story about filling out a synagogue volunteer form. The sad but unsurprising ending is that nobody ever called us about anything written on that form. They asked us to identify our gifts but never gave us a place in which to share them. From the Golden Calf to our own organizations, we’ve seen what happens when we fail to engage our members around their gifts. Parashat Trumah is about asking for our gifts and putting them to use.
Let us imagine for a moment, a synagogue that pursues volunteer engagement at every level. Picture meeting the congregants and staff of Temple Ohev Mitnadev.viii
Shira is a market researcher who volunteers while her kids are at the preschool, helping the office to interpret data from a recent parent survey. She loves it because she can use her professional skills at a time that works in her schedule.
Adam’s Bar Mitzvah is in May. For his mitzvah project, he planned a workshop for older adults to learn computer skills so that they can FaceTime with their grandkids.
Miriam has been exploring her love of prayer in an advanced liturgy class with the cantor. Soon she and the other participants will be ready to put together meaningful shiva minyanim.
When new members join the congregation, they meet a retiree named Edith, one of the synagogue’s “trumah coaches,” who helps them identify their gifts and connect them to synagogue activities they might find meaningful.
Rebecca, the Director of Volunteer Engagement, works with every staff member to tap into this expanding pool of talent.
Congregants here don’t just serve on committees. I’ve never met anybody whose sacred gift is the ability to sit on committees. Rather congregants share their time and talents, in ways that enrich their lives and the life of the congregation. Some are eager to share their professional skills, while others offer surprising, hidden talents. Some people’s sacred gift is as simple as a free hour and an eagerness to help. The work of the synagogue is not simply programs. It’s finding and sharing gifts.
In the Torah, the Israelites eventually come back to Moses and say, “The people have brought more Trumot than we know what to do with!” When we ask for gifts, abundance overflows. When we engage people around their sacred talents, together we build a sanctuary.
When we build with our gifts, it’s not just our communities that we make into a sanctuary; it’s our lives.
וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ
“Build me a sanctuary,”
וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם
“that I may dwell in them.”ix
Not b’tocho -- so that I can dwell in IT -- the sanctuary. B’tocham -- So I can dwell in THEM. The Divine presence came to rest in the hearts of the Israelites, and “not in the wood and metal of the mishkahn.”x If we bring our gifts, if we put them to sacred use, God will dwell in us.
The people we serve are searching for meaning. They aspire to understand their place in a confusing world. They are eager to find purpose and encounter God. They feel scarcity and crave abundance. When we walk with them on a journey of discerning their trumot, we give them a path to find what they are looking for. When we help people to identify their gifts and offer them to their community, we invite them to experience the unique wisdom God has placed inside them, and see their sacred purpose. Think of Evelyn, who discovered that her dance could speak to her Judaism, and that her gift could move her community to a higher place.
This is different from other volunteerism. Jews already volunteer in incredibly high numbers, coaching youth soccer or delivering meals on wheels. But serving in or with a Jewish organization feels different. This is the core of trumah. The root of the Hebrew word is unclear. Some scholars trace it to an Acadian word meaning, “lift up.” Jewish leaders help people to lift up their talents by reminding them that those talents are gifts they receive from God. At the PTA bake sale, saying thanks to God for your brownie prowess would be cause for concern. But in sacred community, this is our goal. My mother showed me that gratitude is a deeply religious conviction. When we say thanks for our blessings in a Jewish context, we have a language and a community in which to acknowledge their source. Whether people use their talents to transform our community or turn them outward to change the world, we help them to lift their gifts from the secular to the sacred in the service of the One who gave them. This is not a tool for us to do more work. This is a means for us to change more lives. We can move people from the scarcity of “Who am I?” to the abundance of “I have purpose.”
As Jewish leaders, we have a sacred obligation: To help people find their sacred trumot. and to build sanctuaries where those gifts can be shared. Let us build. Let us build out of abundance. Let us build mishkahnot that can stand the test of time. Let us build with people, with their gifts of artistry and wisdom, which are the pathways for God to be present in their lives. Let us build for our community, places for God to dwell in our sanctuaries and social halls. This is not a means to an end, but the essence of the call. Let us build together. When we do, we discover God dwelling among us.
Footnotes:
i. Exodus 25:8
ii. Exodus 25:9
iii. Exodus 25:2
iv. Exodus 28:3
v. From Mikraot G’dolot, Nahmanides on 25:3 These are the gifts. Literally, "this is the offering" (OJPS). According to the True interpretation, "this" refers to the Shekhinah and the wisdom provided by it, as when God said to Solomon in 2 Chron. 1:11, "Because you want this, and have not asked for wealth, property, and glory ... but you have asked for the wisdom and the knowledge to be able to govern My people...." The word is used the same way in Gen. 49:28, Deut. 33:1, and Ps. 118:23. Genesis Rabbah alludes to this interpretation as well.
vi. Exodus 25:3-7
vii. Based on the book Wise Aging by Rabbi Rachel Cowan and Dr. Linda Thal
viii. Hebrew for “Lovers of Volunteerism” I want to express deep credit to Beth Steinhorn, my mother’s thought partner and President of the JFFixler Group, for helping me to develop these examples.
ix. Exodus 25:8
x. Language from Meam Loez on Exodus 25:8
i. Exodus 25:8
ii. Exodus 25:9
iii. Exodus 25:2
iv. Exodus 28:3
v. From Mikraot G’dolot, Nahmanides on 25:3 These are the gifts. Literally, "this is the offering" (OJPS). According to the True interpretation, "this" refers to the Shekhinah and the wisdom provided by it, as when God said to Solomon in 2 Chron. 1:11, "Because you want this, and have not asked for wealth, property, and glory ... but you have asked for the wisdom and the knowledge to be able to govern My people...." The word is used the same way in Gen. 49:28, Deut. 33:1, and Ps. 118:23. Genesis Rabbah alludes to this interpretation as well.
vi. Exodus 25:3-7
vii. Based on the book Wise Aging by Rabbi Rachel Cowan and Dr. Linda Thal
viii. Hebrew for “Lovers of Volunteerism” I want to express deep credit to Beth Steinhorn, my mother’s thought partner and President of the JFFixler Group, for helping me to develop these examples.
ix. Exodus 25:8
x. Language from Meam Loez on Exodus 25:8