By Rabbi Miriam Berger

When the fires raged in LA my family Friday night dinner table conversation became reminiscent of a peulah (a programme) that seemed to be replicated many times on RSY-Netzer summer camps of my childhood. Wide games that invited the question, if you had to flee your home in a hurry what would you take?

All of a sudden, those of us who had felt safer than our ancestors, rooted in the diaspora homes we were born into, could see how we too could lose everything in the blink of an eye and needed a bag packed like generations before us had.

The natural disaster felt a less threatening reason to engage with the “6 P’s” of what to ensure you take with you – people & pets, paperwork & plastic (credit cards), passport, prescription, photos, phone (and charger).

It’s too hard as Jews to think anything other than natural disasters would be our reason to have to pack and flee especially with the distinct change of climate we all feel too strongly since the worldwide response to October 7th and the ensuing war.

However with the passports, photographs and personal ID there was not much mention of animal skins, olive oil or spices as the essentials. When we teach our children the Pesach story of our earliest ancestors fleeing slavery in Egypt, we talk of them taking the dough that didn’t have time to rise rather than gold, silver and copper being top of their packing list too.

So in Parashat Terumah you may be surprised to see the gift list Moses is instructing the wilderness dwelling, fresh from slavery, peoples to contribute to building the next chapter of their lives.

The Israelites are invited to contribute thirteen materials – gold, silver and copper; blue-, purple- and red-dyed wool; flax, goat hair, animal skins, wood, olive oil, spices and precious stones.

The midrashim fixate on the question of where they had acquired such items to make such contributions possible. Wondering whether they had been gifted it by the Egyptians in their desperation to encourage them to leave in order for the plagues to stop or whether they had stolen it amidst the confusion. Meanwhile the question of how could they gift it, is not the message I take from this parasha. My message is, if the cause is worth it then set the bar high and the people will recognise how important their contribution is.

Why the Terumah offerings? We are told that the combination of their offerings, “shall make for Me a Sanctuary, and I shall dwell among them.”

Such a concept must have been new and hard for some to fathom. It must have felt like a huge imposition for a group of people only recently uprooted from all they knew, so uncertain of what the future would offer, to think about giving their precious possessions up for such a radically new concept. Yet it was that very act of giving which made them part of a future, that made them feel they had contributed and were therefore fully part of the community which was going to bring them stability and continuity.

The Israelites knew however precarious life felt that they needed to use whatever resources they had to build for the future. Moses was inspired enough to know that if he was going to lead the Israelites through this wilderness time of uncertainty and despair, he needed to set the expectations of contribution high and give everyone the ability to be counted by pitching in.

Parashat Terumah gives me the blue print for “the big ask” just as Moses had to make. It reminds us that even at a time when our hearts are broken and our levels of fear are so high, we have to remind each other that the needs of the whole community have to at the forefront. Ask what contribution you can make to the future. Know that whilst we carry with us the survival techniques for the here and now, so we also build the place that represents our resilience and a Judaism fit for generations to come

I don’t know whether I’m writing this for me or for you. As the founder-director of a brand-new organisation with a big capital outlay to get us open, I am going to need to find in myself Moses’ optimism and chutzpah to ask people to find the equivalent of gemstones in the wilderness. Yet, in my mind a centre of well-being in the midst of the turmoil we are living through is equivalent to the mishkan in the wilderness. We too can create a healing focal point for this chapter of our lives.

• Rabbi Miriam Berger is Rabbi Emerita of Finchley Reform Synagogue and founder director of Wellspring UK. For more information about Wellspring UK see wellspringuk.org.

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