Terumah 5778

By Simon Goulden

If you think about it, the Book of Shemot is clearly a book about chesed, a particular kind of love: undeserved, spontaneous, and unconditional. What the world today calls ‘love’ - often self-centred, sometimes physical and even conditional - is not chesed. For love to be chesed, it must be given freely and unearned. I believe it establishes the leitmotiv of Shemot.

Shemot opens with the remarkable courage of the Egyptian midwives who demonstrate chesed for the Israelite baby boys. Then Yocheved and Miriam show chesed to the infant Moses, carefully building a basket and then ensuring his eventual rescue by Bitya, the daughter of Pharaoh, who herself shows chesed to the baby Moses. It seems that the life of Moses, indeed the entire Exodus story, was entirely in the hands of women!

As an adult, Moses acts on his chesed for the Jewish slave being beaten by the Egyptian taskmaster, and Jethro and his daughters in turn, meet him with chesed after he flees to Midian. The concrete symbol of that chesed, grace, is found in this week's parashah, Terumah, in the building of the Mishkan (the Tabernacle). God instructs the Jews to build this portable structure as a place in which they can, experience the Divine presence dwelling. In the midst of the Jews, God provides an experiential reminder of His special chesed in liberating them, providing them with a path for living and offering unparalleled access to the sacred and the holy.

The tabernacle built in the wilderness reminded our ancestors of God's unqualified love and they, in turn, were stimulated to redouble their own efforts to live up to God's estimation of the Jews as worthy of Divine favour. We today, can still allow chesed to serve as a driver to greater observance and good deeds, to greater community involvement and charitable work. That way we can all take a portion of God's chesed toward us, and offer it as our own gift of love to the rest of humankind.