This week’s Torah portion, Terumah, begins: “Speak to the children of Israel, and they should take terumah (gifts/donation) for me, from every person who’s heart gives, shall you take my terumah.” The Torah then proceeds to list the types of gifts that the jewish people should give for the building of the Tabernacle, such as gold, silver, etc..
The language is strange. The verse should really read: and they should “give gifts” not “take gifts”. We are doin the giving, it is the Tabernacle, “God’s house,” which is doing the taking.
There are instances in life when giving is a form of taking and taking is a form of giving. When we give to God, though we are giving, in truth we are receiving. God does not need our gift, but giving to the Divine is a type of spiritual practice, a self sacrifice that really is for us. This is true in human love also- by giving to the one we love we really receive, and by receiving we give to the other. The following experiment reports that in fact people “get” much more by giving than they do taking.
“In a controlled experiment, social psychologist Liz Dunn and colleagues gave students at the University of British Columbia an envelope containing money and told them that they either (1) had to spend the money on themselves before 5 p.m. that day or (2) had to spend the money on someone else before 5 p.m. Those who gifted for others were happier than those who gifted for themselves. In some cases, there were 5 dollars in the envelope and in other cases there were 20 dollars. The amount didn’t matter — the results were the same. Spending on others made people happier than spending on themselves. Ironically, when asked to predict which outcome would make one happier (i.e., spending on oneself or spending on others), another group of students at the same university thought spending on themselves would make them happier than spending on others (Psychology Today, 12/25/2010).”
How does one cultivate this love for, and desire to give to, others? The Torah states “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It seems that, paradoxically, love for others actually comes only after there is love for the self. As Erich Fromm put it in an essay entitled, “Selfishness, Self-love and Self Interest (1956)”: Selfishness and self-love, far from being identical, are actually opposites. The selfish person loves himself not too much but too little; in fact he hates himself.”
God does not need our gifts or our Tabernacle. The Tabernacle we read about in so much detail in this portion is of course really for us. It behooves us to take the lesson of the first verse of this parsha into our own lives, that to give, whether in our relationship with God or with others, to think about the needs of the other, is our true purpose and fulfillment as people and as Jews.