Parshas Terumah Shekalim 5785 - the meaning of the 3 terumos in the service of Hashem

00:00 This was in the early years of the Rebbe’s leadership, around [unclear]. The Rebbe sent a letter to Eretz Yisroel, to the chassidim there, saying that they needed to act and bring about a revolution: bring Yiddishkeit to people and do everything possible to bring Jews closer, spread Yiddishkeit, and spread the wellsprings of Chassidus. The Rebbe strongly encouraged the chassidim to throw themselves into the work, establish as many educational institutions as possible, and so on. At that time, chassidim wrote the Rebbe a letter saying that they were ready to devote themselves heart and soul, with their entire being, to whatever the Rebbe wanted. They were ready to jump into the fire. Whatever the Rebbe wanted, they were ready to do. But they wanted clear instructions. They wanted the Rebbe to tell them what to do and how to do it; whatever the Rebbe said, they would do. The Rebbe then wrote a letter to Agudas Chassidei Chabad and Tzeirei Agudas Chabad about this. In the letter, the Rebbe wrote something very interesting. He said that in Tanya, the Alter Rebbe says that “the beginning of the service, its essence and its root” is kabbolas ol malchus Shamayim, accepting the yoke of Heaven. In other words, accepting the yoke of Torah and mitzvos, having fear of Heaven, is the foundation of serving Hashem; it is the beginning of the service, its essence and its root. But it is only the beginning of the service, the foundation. The structure of the service must be built with joy, delight, desire, and love. A person needs to feel meaning and vitality in serving Hashem. And—

01:55 For that, a person needs to act using his own abilities. Kabbolas ol—accepting the yoke and saying, “I obey; I am ready to do what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants”—is only the foundation of the service. The service itself must come from his own inner faculties. And so the Alter Rebbe... Similarly, the Rebbe wrote, this also applies to each person’s shlichus, role, and work. Kabbolas ol in the relationship between the Rebbe and a chossid—obeying, saying “I am ready to obey”—is the foundation of a chossid’s connection to the Rebbe. But a chossid’s work must be done with desire and delight. It is wonderful that the chassidim want to obey and are ready to do so, but if they want the Rebbe to tell them what to do in every detail, it will not be their own work. They need to act using their own abilities, with their own desire and delight. They should therefore choose according to their abilities and what they feel drawn to, and pursue it with the greatest vitality. Today’s parsha is Parshas Terumah. Right at the beginning of Parshas Terumah, we read, “They shall take an offering for Me.” These are the contributions each person had to bring for everything needed for the Mishkan. We find—Rashi brings this from the Midrash—that there are three offerings. “They shall take an offering for Me”; then it says, “From every person whose heart moves him, you shall take My offering”; and then, “This is the offering you shall take from them.” The word “offering” appears here three times. Rashi says that—

03:26 This refers to the three offerings each person brought for the Beis Hamikdash, for the Mishkan. There is the offering for the sockets, which was a half-shekel contribution. The first time they brought the half-shekel, that money was used to make the sockets in which the boards of the Mishkan stood. Then there is the offering for the sacrifices, which was also a half-shekel. We find in Parshas Ki Sisa that the offering for the sacrifices was a half-shekel—“The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less”—and that this money was used for the communal sacrifices throughout the year. Then there is the offering for the Mishkan, which is what the verse here is discussing. This offering had no fixed amount of a half-shekel. Rather, it was “whatever his heart moves him to give”: gold, silver, copper—all the fifteen or thirteen things listed there in the verses. These are the three offerings. And here we find a major difference among them. The first two were a half-shekel. The amount was exact, no more and no less: “The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less.” By contrast, of the third offering it says that one should give according to “every person whose heart moves him”—give wholeheartedly, as much as one wishes. We need to understand the difference between these offerings. Why, for the first two specifically, did one have to give a half-shekel, no more and no less? Why, if someone wants to give more, is he not allowed to? If someone wants to give more, can he not give more? What is the point of requiring precisely a half, no less and no more?

05:03 Specifically for the first and second offerings. And even between those first two, we find that the offering for the sacrifices was brought every year, including later, when the Mishkan and the Beis Hamikdash already existed. As the Mishnah says in Tractate Shekalim: “On the first of Adar, they make announcements concerning the shekalim.” In other words, the half-shekel was collected every year. During Adar, they prepared for the communal sacrifices, so that when Nissan arrived, the sacrifices would be offered from the new shekalim. But the first offering, the offering for the sockets, happened only once. The sockets of the Mishkan were made from that offering only once. What do we learn from the three offerings in our service of Hashem, and why? The offering for the sockets happened only once, and in it everyone gave precisely a half-shekel. The offering for the sacrifices was also a half-shekel, but it was given every year. Then there was the offering for the Mishkan, in which each person gave whatever his heart moved him to give. As is well known, the entire concept of the Mishkan also exists in a person’s service of Hashem. “They shall make a sanctuary for Me,” and as brought in the holy Shelah and Reishis Chochmah: “And I shall dwell within them”—each person must build his own personal Mishkan. The entire parsha, as we see in the works of Chassidus, and also in Kabbalah and the Zohar, deals with the human soul, the personal Beis Hamikdash, the personal Mishkan. Every detail in the building of the Mishkan relates to the work within a person’s soul. The verse says, “They shall take an offering for Me,” and the Zohar says that “they shall take for Me” means: Me. The Rebbe cites the Zohar in Tanya: “They shall take for Me” means “You are taking Me.” A Jew takes Hakadosh Boruch Hu—

07:03 So to speak. But what is an offering? In its plain sense, an offering is specifically tzedakah, and more broadly, mitzvos. More specifically, the Zohar says that terumah, “offering,” is “Torah mem”—the Torah given over forty days. And the Rebbe cites “You are taking Me”: when a Jew studies Torah and fulfills mitzvos, he takes Hakadosh Boruch Hu—“they shall take for Me”—with him. If we look at the vessels of the Mishkan and everything associated with it as they relate to the work within a person’s soul, this concerns a Jew’s service: he must bring all the offerings—the offering for the sockets, the offering for the sacrifices, and the offering for the Mishkan. In all three, a person must devote himself to serving Hashem with all his strengths, all his faculties and talents. The holy Maggid interprets the verse “From every person whose heart moves him”: “every person” means a person in his entirety. In other words, the whole person, the complete person; “whose heart moves him” means that your whole heart, together with everything that makes you who you are, must be devoted entirely to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And within this there are three stages. What are the three stages? There are several explanations, and we are discussing one explanation the Rebbe gave at a farbrengen on [unclear]. The point is that when we look at the offering for the sockets, the first thing—the sockets—are the foundation. In the plain sense, the sockets are the foundation of the entire Mishkan. The sockets were placed on the ground, and the boards were set—

08:52 Into them. The sockets signify foundations; they were the foundation of the entire Mishkan. In serving Hashem, this is what Tanya calls “the beginning of the service, its essence and its root”—the foundation of the service. The foundation is kabbolas ol, self-nullification. The holy Shelah says that the sockets, adanim, are connected to the Divine Name associated with Hashem’s mastery: Hakadosh Boruch Hu is Master of the world, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the King, He is the Master and we are His servants. “For we are Your people and You are our G-d.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the Master, and we are His servants. This is “the beginning of the service, its essence and its root”; this is the foundation of the service. And the foundation must be kabbolas ol. It is kabbolas ol, self-nullification, humility—a person devoting himself with self-sacrifice. This is the foundation of the service. That is why the offering for the sockets happened only once, and why “the rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less” applied to it. For in kabbolas ol there are no levels. In kabbolas ol there is neither rich nor poor. In kabbolas ol all Jews are equal. It is the essential bond between a Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu: I am a Jew, I devote myself, I am a servant. In this, it makes no difference whether you are Moshe Rabbeinu or the simplest of the simple. The point of self-nullification, the point of kabbolas ol, of devotion to Hakadosh Boruch Hu—this must be the foundation of the service, and

10:09 This is the meaning of the sockets. That is why there was just one half. When a Jew knows that he is only a half, it gives him the strength to devote himself to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Then comes the second stage, the offerings. This is connected to rectifying the sin of the Golden Calf. As we know, the half-shekel is given every year, but the Torah goes on to say in Parshas Ki Sisa—and this year Parshas Terumah and Parshas Shekalim come together—that there, the half-shekel was used to bring the offerings. This, too, was a rectification for the sin of the Golden Calf. That sin damaged a Jew’s connection to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It damaged the overall connection between a Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu; in other words, it created a flaw in that fundamental bond. It brought back the effects of the sin of the Tree of Knowledge. The sefarim explain that through the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, impurity descended into the world. Adam’s first sin brought impurity, filth, and defilement into the entire world. Then came the tzaddikim, culminating in Moshe Rabbeinu and the giving of the Torah. They brought the Shechinah back down, and the sin of the Tree of Knowledge was rectified. This made it possible for a Jew to turn the world into a vessel for G-dliness. The higher and lower realms became joined, as the Midrash says, so that a Jew could turn the world into a vessel for G-dliness. When

11:31 the sin of the Golden Calf came, it reawakened the sin of the Tree of Knowledge and brought impurity back into the world. It was therefore a collective sin, a flaw affecting everyone, and its rectification must likewise be collective. This is the meaning of communal offerings. The community—all Jews together—is one single entity. So much so that even Moshe Rabbeinu, who had not taken part in the sin, was told, “Go down—descend from your greatness.” The sin of the Golden Calf brought a decline even for him, because it damaged the very bond and weakened the overall connection between a Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Its rectification, therefore, is to give the half-shekel again. This must happen every year, and it must be a communal matter. Thus, with the half-shekel, one “hands it over completely to the community,” as the halachah says, making it communal property. It is used for communal offerings. As the halachah says, the half-shekel funds can be used only to bring communal offerings, because they encompass all of the Jewish people. In our avodah, this means praying with a minyan: the avodah of the offerings expressed through the avodah of prayer. This is why the verse says, “From every person whose heart moves him to give.” “His heart” refers to service of the heart. The first contribution, the foundation of kabbolas ol, is described with the words “And they shall take for Me”—Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. This is the meaning of “they shall take for Me”: kabbolas ol, the beginning, core, and root of avodah. This

12:41 is the foundation. There, through the words “for Me,” you take hold of Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself, as we quoted earlier from the Zohar, [unclear]. But on this foundation a person must then build the particulars and repair the flaw—and that is the avodah of the offerings. What does this mean in a person’s own avodah? It means prayer. Prayer corresponds to the offerings and is the means of rectification. That is why the verse says “whose heart moves him to give”—service of the heart. Service of the heart is prayer, and that is the meaning of “his heart.” Then comes the third element: one’s individual avodah. A person cannot remain only with the foundation, with kabbolas ol alone. The entire building must be built upon that foundation. That is why the Mishkan was built of wood, something that grows. What does growth represent? Growth comes through one’s inner faculties—one’s own intellect and emotions—and there, the avodah must be rich and expansive. There, each person must give according to what “his heart moves him to give”: gold, silver, and copper, and blue and purple wool. All these particulars of avodah are one’s individual work with the inner faculties, intellect and emotions. Here, too, the avodah must be done with abundance, as the halachah puts it: “A wealthy person who brings a poor person’s offering has not fulfilled his obligation.” You must make use of all the lofty faculties that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given you—powerful, great, and expansive faculties—giving according to what “his heart moves him to give,” with all your abundance. And one thing

13:55 cannot take the place of another. For all the importance and necessity of the foundation—the half-shekel, the contribution for the sockets, the foundation of the entire building—if you remain with the foundation alone, there is no Mishkan. All three elements are essential. There must be the foundation, the avodah of kabbolas ol, humility, and bittul, which are the sockets of the Mishkan. This is the meaning of “they shall take for Me”—“for Me, for My sake.” Then there must be the avodah of prayer. This is also the order of avodah beginning with Modeh Ani upon waking in the morning: first come acknowledgment and kabbolas ol, the foundation of avodah. Then comes the avodah of prayer, the recitation of the zemiros and Shema, [unclear], during which a person sits and connects with Hakadosh Boruch Hu—“whose heart moves him to give,” service of the heart. This is the meaning of the contribution for the Mishkan and the contribution for the altar and its offerings. After that comes avodah with all one’s faculties: “All the choicest for Hashem.” A person must give Hakadosh Boruch Hu his best and finest, all his abundance, and serve Him with intellect and emotion, richly and expansively; study properly and extensively in the beis midrash, both nigleh and Chassidus, and invest his greatest strengths in it, each person according to his situation, [unclear]. This is “All the choicest for Hashem”—giving Hakadosh Boruch Hu the best and finest. And this is

15:07 the lesson the parsha teaches every one of us, in every generation, today: how a Jew should serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu in all three ways, through all three contributions. In this way we build a Mishkan for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and soon we will merit the greatest building of all, the Beis Hamikdash. Through the avodah of “And they shall take for Me a contribution,” may we very soon merit the building of the Third Beis Hamikdash, “may it be built speedily in our days.” And may we have a joyous month, the month of Adar. May these be days of “the reverse happened,” as the verse says: “The reverse happened: the Jews gained power over those who hated them,” and “For the Jews there was light and joy, gladness and honor”—“so may it be for us.”