It is perhaps symptomatic of our age, that the mere mention of the word “charity” by a Rabbi is enough to evoke, in his listeners, a feeling of uneasiness which is usually expressed in the annoying thought, “well, here comes an appeal again.” Charity has been snatched off its lofty pedestal of G-dly ethics and squeezed through the narrow channels of commercialism. It has been transformed from a moral necessity into a social advantage. Or, to be fair, we would say that where charity was once regarded as a function to be executed as a personal privilege, it is nowadays considered only as a pressing communal urgency. The personal element is all but gone. The sense of Mitzvah has been pushed into the background. It is fitting, therefore, to return to the original meaning of charity – as tzdakah, which means “righteousness,” or Terumah which means “uplifting” or “dedication to G-d.” The portion of this week concerns itself with Terumah, the giving of the tithes; and the laws concerning Terumah might perhaps shed some light on modern and also universal problems in the giving of Terumah or charity.Just as the Torah dedicated an entire Sidra or portion to Terumah, so did the Mishnah devote an entire tractate to this matter, and the tractate is indeed known as Massechet Terumah. And the very first Mishnah in that tractate begins, not with an outline of the proper way of offering Terumah, but, in a uniquely Jewish way, with all the wrong ways of giving charity. Our Mishnah reads: חמשה שתרמו אין תרומתו תרומה. There are five people who give terumah, or five methods whereby a person can offer it, which are legally invalid; the offering is not at all regarded as real Terumah. These five have, in the method of their donating, indicated a serious imperfection which makes their entire effort null and void. And, therefore, he who would give meaningfully and properly must first learn to avoid these five pitfalls.חרש. The Terumah of a cheresh is of no significance. What is a cheresh? …

We Americans are many times puzzled, and more often shocked, at Soviet Russia’s definition of such words as “Democracy” or “Peace” or “Justice.” Their grotesque distortion of the meanings of these terms, the great abyss which separates their understanding of these words from ours, leads us to think of the great dangers in practicing certain ways of life in a most unnatural manner. Whether it is Stalin’s unnatural interpretation of “Democracy,” or Peron’s unnatural practice of “Justice,” or McCarran’s unnatural definition of “Americanism,” we feel outraged by the sheer unnaturalness of the attitudes adopted. But if we do take such an attitude of puzzled indignation against perversion of such other lofty concepts, certainly we American Jews should apply the same standards and the same tests to our own approach to our religion. Let us face the facts; the approach of the majority of our Jews to Judaism is, in many cases, as unnatural and as bizarre as Stalin’s is to “Democracy.”It is such unnaturalness in religion which the Bible, in its symbolic language of today’s Sedra, wants to prevent, and against which it agitates. In instructing Moses concerning the building of the Mishkan, or Tabernacle, G-d says: ve’asissa es ha’krashim la’Mishkan atzei shittim omdim, “and thou shalt make the boards for the Tabernacle of Shittim wood – that is, wood from the Shittim tree – standing up.” Now the Rabbis attached a great deal of significance to this prescription of atzei shittim omdim, standing Shittim wood. This particular type of wood, our Rabbis seem to indicate, symbolizes Judaism and recapitulates all of Jewish history. One Midrash tells us that the reason the Bible emphasizes ha’krashim, the boards for the Tabernacle, with the definite article, is because these particular boards of Shittim wood were well known to the Jews of that generation. According to ancient Jewish legend, when Jacob went down into Egypt he brought along with him Cedar trees and planted them in the land…

It has become accepted practice for Rabbis to berate, periodically, the "Good Heart" Jew, he who excuses neglect of Torah and departure from all standards of Jewish living with the shabby claim of a good heart. It is a tendency which is truly dangerous. We refer to them as Cardiac Jews, and rightly make every attempt to educate our people to the fact that good intentions are not sufficient. Today, however, I want to make sure that no one is left with the erroneous impression that Judaism deprecates the Good Heart and concentrates on practical deeds to the complete exclusion of any interest in a man's essential goodness of heart. To maintain that Torah demands just mechanical performance of certain rituals is to do violence to the whole spirit of Judaism.As a matter of fact, the principal attack of Christianity against Judaism is the claim—the false, narrow, and spurious claim—that Judaism is nothing but "legalism" and "quibbling" and an insistence on unfeeling motions, devoid of love and mercy and goodness. Of course, that is sheer nonsense. It is the so-called "Jewish Bible" which ordained: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself... thou shalt love the stranger in thy gates," and so on.And it is precisely this point—the necessity of integrating the good heart with the good deed—that we learn from this morning's Torah Reading. In commanding Moses and Israel to construct the MISHKAN, G-d says: *Veyikchu li terumah me’eit kol ish asher yidvenu libo...*—that it be built from the gifts of gold and silver and copper which will be donated from any man whose heart moves him to do so. One Sage commented that really, when one donates this *terumah*, this contribution to G-d, he gives nothing—for does not the Bible tell us *ki li hakesef ve’li hazahav, ne’um Hashem*—and if so, we are merely returning to G-d what is His. What, then, can man ever give to G-d? How can man express his profound gratitude and give a true *terumah*? And he answers: *me’eit kol ish asher yidvenu li…

Our Tradition paints a very gloomy picture of the frightening and catastrophic days preceding the coming of the Messiah. In addition to all the world upheavals and bloodshed and immorality expected in the Ikveta Di-Meshicha, in the era preceding Mashiach, our Rabbis predicted that chutzpah yasgai, that chutzpah will abound, that there will be an unnatural increase of brazenness and effrontery and arrogance (Sotah 49). And one may well wonder if the excessive haughtiness and obnoxious chutzpah we find so common in our world today is not the very thing our Sages were talking about. Perhaps if indeed chutzpah is to herald the coming of the Messiah, then the Golden Age cannot be far off.What is chutzpah? It is a universal quality, but a uniquely Jewish word. It is essentially untranslatable. You might say: boldness, effrontery, arrogance. It is all these things but more too. Chutzpah, a great Sage of the Talmud once said (Sanhedrin 105), is malchuta beli taga, kingship without a crown; it is authoritativeness without authority, dominion without dignity, ruling without right, arrogance without warrant, positive and dogmatic opinionation without basis – in short, a man acting the part of a king when he has never been entitled to the crown: malchuta beli taga.Chutzpah is, of course, an unpleasant characteristic. When we speak of a man a chutzpanick we pass an unfavorable judgment upon him. And yet chutzpah has a positive side too. Our Rabbis meant to praise Israel when they attributed to it the greatest amount of chutzpah from amongst all nations. There are times that chutzpah makes for survival, times that it expresses a profound loyalty to values which transcend ordinary politeness and courtesy, and even life itself. The chutzpah of the Jew in refusing to settle down and assimilate, his insistence that Torah must survive at all costs and in all environments, his persistence in the face of great odds that he is member of G-d’s Chosen People – that is a constructive and d…

Just how important is the Synagogue in Jewish life? This question agitated some of the best minds of the Talmudic sages some two millennia ago when they debated the relative worth of Synagogue and School. It was a source for deep thought and contemplation by medieval thinkers who were comparing the merits of prayer in the Synagogue and the other mitzvot. It is a significant and crucial question in our own day, when the Synagogue has become the focal point of the entire Jewish community and its single most important institution. Just how important should the synagogue be in Jewish life?On the one hand, it is clear that the Bet ha-Knesset, the Synagogue, is preeminently a place of holiness, or Kedushah. Thus our Talmud tells us that it is forbidden to live in a city in which there is no Synagogue (Sanhedrin 17). The Talmud of Jerusalem taught that he who prays in a Bet ha-Knesset, is considered as if he had personally made an offering in the Temple of old. And our Talmud, again, tells us that Rabbi Joshua, the son of Levi, told his children always to rise early to attend the Synagogue service, so that they may thereby merit long life (Berakhot 8).So that you cannot gainsay the value of the Synagogue. It is the place where the Jew pours out his heart before G-d. It is a place where there occurs the dialogue between G-d and His children. It is the place where the noise of the market and the clamor of the world are silent before the awe of the Almighty.Yet, on the other hand, just saying that a Synagogue is important is not telling the whole story. We must qualify, explain, and analyze.Let us then turn to our Haftorah, from the First Book of Kings, which tells us about the Holy Temple, the Bet ha-Mikdash, the House that Solomon built – the precursor of the modern Synagogue. The two concluding verses, (11-13) contain G-d’s promise and challenge to Solomon and Israel upon the completion of the building of the House. Contemporary Jews too are here offered some extremely pe…

It is really unnecessary to dwell on the importance of inspiration in life. Inspiration is that which makes the dull exciting, which fills the routine with a sense of mystery, and which transforms the prosaic into the poetic. Without inspiration, art reduces to mere photography, music to a form of applied mathematics, and teaching is nothing more than mechanical informing. It is no different with religion. Without spirit, without inspiration, there is a danger of religious practice freezing into mechanical behavior. When our rabbis told us Al taas tefilat’kha keva, “do not make your prayer a matter of routine,” they meant to emphasize the element of inspiration in prayer. It is precisely that element which makes the great difference between the two Yiddish terms “davnen” and “updavnen.”But while it is unnecessary to persuade anyone of the importance of inspiration, it is necessary to analyze its meaning, its cause and its effect in the Jewish scheme of things. For Judaism decidedly has a judgment on the matter.The Jewish view of inspiration can best be understood in contrast with a prevalent non-Jewish view, in which inspiration is taken as a detached and isolated phenomenon. It is assumed that it is something which has no inner cause and no outer effect. It comes out of nowhere, and leads into no place. A representative of this point of view is the renowned English philosopher and psychologist, William James, in his “Varieties of Religious Experience,” in which the main theme is that of religious inspiration. In order for one to achieve the Divine Presence, according to James, “he must relax.” Inspiration just “happens” to you, it is not related to your striving for it. And while it may transform your life, it has no necessary effect upon society and your fellow men.It is against this view that the Jewish idea of inspiration can best be understood. Judaism does not see inspiration as something that is unrelated to the rest of life. It is so intertwined with all ot…

Our Sidra and Haftorah of this morning deal essentially with the same theme: the building of a central place of worship for the people of Israel. The Sidra tells us of the commandment to construct the Tabernacle or Mishkan. The Haftorah relates the building of the Mikdash, the Temple. Yet, despite the similarity of subject matter, there are remarkable differences between the Mishkan of Moses described in the Sidra and the Mikdash of Solomon described in the Haftorah. It seems as if the arrangement of this Haftorah to follow this Sidra was intended to teach us a study in contrast; there is a clear message in the juxtaposition of these two different stories of the sanctuaries of Israel. The Mishkan, as our Sidra describes its construction by Israel under Moses, was a highly popular project, although it was a relatively plain structure, for it had to be portable in order to accompany the Israelites during their long travels in the wilderness. Its construction was a cooperative venture by all strata of society. The men worked, the women weaved, the laborers labored, in a folk project, a community undertaking. The Mikdash, however, despite its architectural grandeur, was not something built by the entire community. It was not the people who erected the Mikdash; it was foreign skilled labor. Professional artisans were imported from Tyre, whose King was Hiram, a friend of Solomon. The contract was sub-let; it was not a do-it-yourself project. The Mishkan and its construction was something which captured the fancy of the people. It fired their imagination. They gladly volunteered to serve as the builders of the Tabernacle, and they contributed its furnishings. There was an overflow of enthusiasm, an unparalleled and unsurpassed outpouring of love for this sacred project. Such was the plan at the very inception of the project: מאת כל איש אשר ידבנו לבו תקחו את תרומתי, “of every man whose heart maketh him willing ye shall take My offering.” So successful was this element of נ…

We read in this morning’s Sidra of the instructions given to Moses to build the Tabernacle. Amongst other things, he is commanded to build the Ark, containing the Tablets of the Law. This aron, Moses is told, should be made of wood overlaid with zahav tahor, pure gold, both on the inside and the outside of the Ark: mi-bayit u-mi-hutz tetzapenu. Our Rabbis (Yoma 72b) found in this apparently mundane law, a principle of great moral significance. Rava said: from this we learn that kol talmid hakham she’ein tokho ke’varo eino talmid hakham, a scholar whose inner life does not correspond to his outer appearances is not an authentic scholar. The Ark or aron, as the repository of the Tablets of the Law, is a symbol of a talmid hakham, a student of the Law. The zahav tahor, a pure gold, represents the purity of character. And the requirement that this gold be placed mi-bayit u-mi-hutz, both within and without the Ark, indicates the principle that a true scholar must live in such a manner that he always be tokho ke’varo, alike inwardly and outwardly.Thus, our Rabbis saw in our verse a plea for integrity of character, a warning against a cleavage between theory and practice, against a discontinuity between inwardness and outwardness, against a clash between inner reality and outer appearance. A real Jew must always be tokho ke’varo.Now that sounds like a truism; but it is nothing of the sort. As a matter of fact, at a critical juncture of Jewish history this requirement was the occasion for a famous controversy. The Talmud refers to the time when the Patriarch of Israel, Rabban Gamliel, the aristocratic descendant of Hillel, was deposed from his office as the head of the Sanhedrin, and R. Elazar b. Azariah was elected in his place. Rabban Gamliel had always been strict about the requirement of tokho ke’varo; he declared that any students who could not say unhesitatingly that they possessed the quality of tokho ke’varo, were not permitted to enter the academy. When R. Elazar …

Our Sidra’s key verse, ועשו לי מקדש, the commandment to construct a temple, offers us an opportunity to speak of the synagogue, which our tradition regards as a מקדש מעט, a miniature sanctuary. There are three conceptions of the function of a temple or a synagogue. The first is the common-sensical understanding, one that appeals to most of us at first blush. That is, that the synagogue is the source and origin of kedushah in the community. It is the provenance of spiritual values which radiate from the synagogue outwards in concentric circles. The synagogue, according to this understanding, is the wellspring of religious teaching for the entire community. The second conception is the classical Jewish view, which does not agree with this first idea. It maintains that the synagogue must not be the cause or source of holiness, but the effect and the result of the kedushah of all the people. The Rambam points to this idea as the reason for the portion of Terumah, with its commandment to build the mishkan, coming after the portions of Yitro and Mishpatim, which speak of the revelation of Torah and the system of laws and social justice which together qualified Israel as a goy kadosh, a holy nation. It is only afterwards, after we had already attained this level of holiness, that it became necessary and meaningful to speak of a mishkan, of a Tabernacle, which would focalize the preexistent holiness within the community and allow man to confront the Presence of God in a sustained and regular manner. Only through the study of Torah and the practice of mitzvot do we become a holy nation, and only then does a sanctuary become relevant.A temple or a synagogue, then, is not the cause of holiness but its effect, not its origin but its result. Therefore, a synagogue whose members do not observe the laws of Torah, or which is built by people who are in violation of the principles of justice and whose money was improperly acquired, is truly invalid; it is a sacrilege.This interpret…

In this most diagnosed of all ages, it is inevitable that measure be taken of the disaffection from the synagogue and Jewish community by many young Jews. First, however, it should be pointed out that this is not the first or even the most serious “Generation Gap” in Jewish history. Even before it was called a “gap,” I remember brooding on it when I was on the other side of the great divide. And even then I was aware of the fact that my father, in his youth, was subject to even greater centrifugal pressures which threatened to pull him apart from his father. After all, my grandfather came from the shtetl, speaking only Yiddish and thoroughly immersed in that culture, while my father grew up as a youngster in New York and in its public schools speaking English. I have even seen reports of the Generation Gap in Jewish literature going back hundreds of years, and I suspect that one may even find hints of it in the Bible, especially the books attributed to Solomon.Yet, whether the Gap today is more or less than in the past, we must take it seriously. For at stake is – our future.In feeling the pulse of the current spate of alienated youth, one interesting and disturbing phenomenon appears in many reports: the harsh criticism by the young against the “materialism” of the Jewish community. Whether in sociological and statistical studies or impressionistic reports by rabbis and communal leaders, we learn that young Jews are being “turned off” by the emphasis on fund-raising and by the means used to effect it: card-calling, telephone squads, public appeals, breakfasts and lunches and dinners and banquets, tributes and plaques… The young hurl the charge at us, “hypocrisy!” They maintain that a man should give from the right motives: from inner feeling, from compassion and charity, for its own sake and out of his own volition. Money that is given should be honestly acquired, freely given without pressure, and it should be done privately and modestly. The fundraising “affairs…