Do I Deserve It? | Rabbi Haggai Lundin | Beit Midrash

Family and Society
Army and War

קטגוריה משנית

Torah Portion and Tanach
Terumah

"The contract between the state and its citizens has been violated"; "We were abandoned on October 7th"; "The government does not deserve this people".

These kinds of sentences, circulated by very specific people, assume that there is a separation between the citizens and the state. The mindset is that the State of Israel is a kind of "service provider" and the citizen is the customer. Once this is the way of thinking, it is also clear what "I deserve", and woe betide those who will not give it to me.

This week's Torah portion Teruma, deals with the contributions that the Israelites brought for the building of the Tabernacle. The word teruma in Hebrew is derived from lehitromem, to ascend; to succeed in transcending personal egoism and connecting to something bigger. Every detail of the Tabernacle eventually connected to the entire structure. The ability to contribute to the whole comes about due to the individual seeing themself as a partner with the whole and not as a bystander.

There definitely is room for harsh criticism of specific people in the country, but the contributor’s position is that of a partner, not a customer. Just as couples can criticize each other, and just as there is friction between parents and children – and at the same time, the healthy situation is that they see themselves as one unit, and in any case the criticism will be practical, less virulent and without threats.

Those who are in such a mental position also know how to appreciate the contribution of others. As a citizen evacuated from the city of Sderot and staying in a hotel for the past months, I remind myself from time to time that in other countries where civilians are forced to evacuate due to war or natural disaster – refugees are not always settled in hotels, nor receive benefits from the government (!) and get a never-ending embrace from all sectors of the population. The people of Israel love to gripe but also know how to contribute wholeheartedly.

Shabbat Shalom!

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Terumah

Army and War