Volunteerism in the Torah?

Welcome to A Word a Week -- my new blog that looks at one word in the Torah, and the message behind it.  Comment; Share;  Discuss; Enjoy!

This week's word of the week is נדיב nadiv - from the phrase:

דַּבֵּר אֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְיִקְחוּ-לִי תְּרוּמָה:  מֵאֵת כָּל-אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבּוֹ, תִּקְחוּ אֶת-תְּרוּמָתִי

"Speak to the people of Israel -- Take for me a contribution, from all those of willing
heart: gold, silver, and bronze." [Exodus 25:2]

The word root here - nadiv (in the text it appears as yidivenu)  is translated as willing, it also shares the same
root as the Hebrew word for volunteer - mitnadev, and an optional sacrifice - nedava.

• The cool thing about this word is that it's in a compound word kind of setup: Yidevenu-Libo - volunteering their heart. It begs the question: 

If we are asked to give gold, silver, and bronze,  to paraphrase a famous song:
What's heart got to do with it?

You might go one of two routes:

1. It's about giving freely. The heart is the mind, and so you've made up your mind to give (it's not a commandment - you must / you shall formulation).
2. It's about courage / bravery. The contribution went to building the mishkan - the first temple, it was a grandiose portable synagogue. But no one had built anything like that before, so it took some courage to come forward and volunteer - hearts and minds - along with the material goods, to complete this project.

So what does any of this have to do with us in 2013? 

Jewish institutions (as well as non-Jewish ones) rely on the energy of good people to thrive in their mission. Not just the people that work there - the volunteers, the funders (big and small), and those that give their time and energy to the mission and vision of those organizations. We call those people the stakeholders.

It's takes both: the material / monetary resources (the gold, silver, and bronze) to keep the lights on and the programs and initiatives happening, AND the drive the will and the courage to come forward and
be a part of something bigger, to work towards a better and repaired world.

Be honest.  What do you care about? 

Is it poverty? Is it hunger? Is it AIDS prevention? Breast cancer awareness and prevention? 

Is it Israel?

Is it the environment?

As Rabbi Heschel said:

"What's needed is not a service of the lips but a worship of the heart."

Find the cause that speaks to you - to your heart, and find the energy, the time, and heart to give.

In the words of the Jewish tradition, in a text almost two thousand years old (the Mishna):

It's not up to you to finish the task, nor are you free to desist from the work.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mick Fine
MAZON Hunger Advocacy Fellow
Graduating Rabbinical Student
The Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Contact me at Mickfine@gmail.com

My Purim Confession: Why I Passionately Dislike(d) Purim

I have to confess: I don't like Purim. Or rather, I didn't used to like it, at all. 

This is the story of how I came to find it a meaningful and really quite lovely holiday.

I spent this past week bad-mouthing Purim to anyone that would listen.
I went on little tirades. My list was something like:

•  I don't like getting dressed up, and I get dirty looks when I don't.

•  I don't even get it - Passover is about freedom, Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur are these cosmically huge events with forgiveness and holiness. What's Purim even about?

•  The Megillah doesn't mention God, and yet people get very uptight about hearing "every word".

I had come to the conclusion that it was a kids holiday, a Jewish Halloween, so that we could play dress up and tell the cute and dramatic story of a Jewish girl that becomes the queen - a fantasy that is quite universal, I might have added.

And then I woke up on Friday, and I heard a speech given by Reb Shlomo Carlebach
(composer and teacher extraordinaire), and it all started to make sense.

The name of the speech was Gevalt Purim, Yiddish for "what an amazing Purim", "wow. Purim", or "Purim. Awesome". I'm going to highlight three points from this speech that have really stuck with me.

• He talked about giving. On Purim there are special mitzvot: giving food to friends/family - a piece of cake, an apple, and giving money to the poor. Rabbi Carlebach taught that their is a connection:

• "All year long the poor man thinks: He's giving to me because I'm poor. On Purim the poor man sees you giving out gifts to your friends, the poor man thinks: Maybe you're giving me the money because you're my friend.
• On Purim, there is this beautiful commandment to give to the poor in this way that takes into account the psyche / feelings of the receiver. [Gevalt] - Wow.

• He talked about love. He explained that 
• "Love is not giving someone two million dollars and a fur coat. Love is a piece of cake and a apple." Rabbi Carlebach said that he would frequently travel to Vienna. In Vienna they made particularly beautiful girls clothing, and he asked his two daughters what color dress they wanted. Pink and red, they said.
• "Would you know that I probably bought nearly 2,000 dresses. Not really. But every shop I past, I thought about buying this dress or that dress. When do you give those 2,000 dresses? A piece of cake and an apple."

• He talked about God. Where's God in the story? 
• "Can you imagine the thousands of miracles God does in every split second?" It's not just the big ones -- splitting the sea, Mount Sinai, the Nile turns to blood. It's the infinitesimally small and cosmically large wonders of nature. It's meeting your wife because you went to a movie with a friend, and that friend invited a friend, that said: "We should put those two together." (true story) THAT'S the kind of God I can believe in: the One that works behind the scenes, renewing nature every day. 

And so, I must admit, I'm a convert. 

I get it now. Purim's not about being a hedonist, drinking until you are in a drunken stupor. It's the most human of all Jewish holy-days. It's the people holy-day -- a day that we are called on to remember that we are reliant on those closest to us, those we love, and that others are reliant on us, even those we don't even know. It's about the great joy of giving small things. 

It's about survival, and remembering how fragile the thread is that keeps us connected to life - l'chayim!

I guess Purim is not so bad after all, in fact - I quite like it, now. 

Wishing a happy and a healthy (and responsible) Purim to all my friends and loved ones.

Mick

To see the whole speech (30+ minutes) - check out this link. It's in 6 parts, and is well worth the time.