Parashat Vaykhel-Pekudei: On Generosity and Gratitude

How do you turn complainers into active participating members of a community? Create a space for them to give. People like to give, like to be part of things. The very same Israelites who complain incessantly throughout their years in the desert -- we don’t have enough water and food, we want watermelon and meat – those same Israelites jump over one another to bring precious metals and stones and fabrics and their own creativity and expertise to the building of the Tabernacle here in our parsha. People actually want to give – it makes us feel good to be part of something larger than ourselves.

When we are giving, we don’t complain. Giving makes us feel rich and generous. There is bounty – the Israelites gave dayam ve’hoter, “enough and even more.” One can sense the excitement in the air – the whole community was rallying around this one project, each person contributing in her own way, feeling needed and a part of things. People want and need a communal space to bring their material wealth, their talents, and also their hearts (the Torah emphasizes again and again that the contributors were moved by the upsurging of their hearts – me’et kol ish asher nesa’o libo).

The Golden Calf was also a communal giving project, and it proved the need for such a project and the people’s willingness to give to it. Aaron said – get gold, and two second later, presto, there was enough gold to make a calf. People want to give. But to what end? The Golden Calf was simply a glorification of the gold itself – a celebration of the people’s egos – look at how beautiful our gold looks!

But the Tabernacle takes giving to another level. It creates a space where the giving that is done is in the service of God, and so becomes a way to acknowledge our appreciation of and our continued dependence on God. It creates a space where generosity is linked to gratitude. Generosity is easier for us than gratitude, because when we give, we feel good about ourselves, whereas gratitude involves a retreat of the ego, an admission that we are not self-contained, but very much dependent on others. The Tabernacle is where generosity and gratitude meet – where one can turn the natural inclination to want to give and participate not into a glorification of the self but into an acknowledgement of the self’s limitations, its interdependence on others and the Other.

Shabbat again helps to create this balance, to ensure that the contributions – the gold we give and the tapestries we weave in this world – are not ultimately aimed at self-glorification, but are tempered, even fueled, by an awareness that God created the world and us.