Parshas Terumah 5785
I don’t generally pay much attention to my retirement account. But as my wife and I were recently gathering together all the information our accountant needed for our tax returns, it was time to take a peek. And I noticed something on the graph prominently displayed on my Vanguard homepage: A huge dip. Dating back to nearly two years ago. But because I was unaware of it at the time, I didn’t panic. And looking at the graph today, there’s no cause for concern; everything rebounded, and then some.
Over the past two hundred plus years, the stock market has risen and fallen many times over. Yet overall, it grows. So don’t pull out. Keep your money in the market.
As in building any edifice or institution, the first step in the construction of the Mishkan was not the construction at all, but the fundraising. Hashem instructs Moshe to announce to the people the launch of a major capital campaign, so that the necessary funds can be gathered. But interestingly, and despite the seeming willingness of the people to participate, those funds will not be given. They will be taken.
דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְיִקְחוּ־לִי תְּרוּמָה מֵאֵת כּל־אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבּוֹ תִּקְחוּ אֶת־תְּרוּמָתִי׃
(שמות כה:ב)
Speak to the Children of Israel and take a gift for Me, from every person who is moved to donate shall my gift be taken.
(Shemos 25:2)
If the donor pool is comprised of people moved to give, why not permit them to give of their own volition. Why is the campaign an act of taking, rather than giving?
Rav Dovid of Kotzk suggests that the term “ויקחו—take” in this context is not meant to describe the specific process by which the gifts change hands from the nation to Moshe on behalf of the Mishkan. Rather, it is a term that serves to color the enterprise of building a home for Hashem, which in turn represents the totality of our relationship with Him.
In the Holy Tongue, business transactions are referred to as “מקח וממכר—buying and selling.” This, explains Rav Dovid of Kotzk, is what the word “ויקחו—take” in our parsha means to convey. That we view our relationship with Hashem, our endeavors in Torah and mitzvos, as being no less than the running of a successful business.
On one level, this emphasizes the importance of applying metrics to monitor our spiritual growth in the same manner we track our financial growth. Has our spiritual portfolio expanded over the past number of years, or has it stagnated? Has our knowledge and comprehension of Shas, Chumash, and Halacha increased? Are our middos developing along a positive trajectory? In what dimensions of spiritual life do we receive the greatest return on investment, in which a mere few minutes spent on a given exercise or behavior yields oversized results? Where can we trim the fat and where can we double down?
Managing our spiritual business need not take a great deal of time. More than anything, it’s a matter of mere mental adjustment. From a mindset of getting by with a fulfillment of obligations to an expanded one of building something impressive, identifying areas of potential growth, and holding ourselves accountable should we slide into lethargy.
But Rav Dovid points out an additional dimension to business life that must be applied to spiritual life. Namely, to leave your money in the market.
We understand that in business there will be ups and downs. The setbacks are frustrating, the mistakes sting, but we keep at it. We can’t afford—quite literally—to throw in the towel, because the natural pressure to earn a living forces us to engage in business. Which in turn forces us to assess—“Am I really caught in a dead end? Will things actually never turn around? Must I truly jettison this enterprise in favor of something else altogether, or do I just need to sit tight as I work through the fall so that I can soon enjoy the inevitable rise?”
That mindset is no less critical for managing our spiritual portfolio, but in that arena of life, we can trend more easily towards giving up entirely. The natural pressure of needing to put food on the table is absent in spiritual life, and we aren’t forced to assess things quite so reasonably. It’s far easier to throw our hands up in the air and insist that we’re just not cut out for talmud Torah, or proper tefilah, or improving our middos.
But the spiritual market is, in truth, no less volatile—nor no less predictable—than the financial one. There’s a natural ebb and flow that we should come to expect. And just as the rise in the market will not last, nor will the lull, as frustrating as it may be in the moment to experience it. There will be times that we gain full clarity in a Rashi we’re studying, achieve a sense of transcendence in a Shmoneh Esrei, or remain utterly calm and collected in a moment of intense stress. It is foolish to believe that it will always be so, that we will not at some point falter and stumble. But it is equally foolish to believe that that micro-failure is representative of an overall trajectory.
Our relationship with Hashem is one of מקח וממכר—it’s business. And to conduct business is to know that even as your company grows, your portfolio swells, your list of clients expands, there will be dips along the graph.
Know that it will happen, and don’t overreact when it does. View with detachment the setbacks you experience, and don’t take them as an indication of less than sufficient ability to achieve exhilarating growth in your spiritual portfolio. Whatever you do, don’t pull out. Leave your money in the market.