Terumah: donations and gifts

Gd, who has personally hardened the heart of Pharoah, asks for donations from every person whose heart is willing. This creates a mystery. What goes into the willingness of the heart? Whose heart has Gd made willing and whose heart has Gd hardened... and why? We has seen in the Exodus story that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened to display the glory of the miracles. Does Gd soften the heart of Israel to demonstrate their merit?

Why donate? It turns the transient, intrinsically meaningless material possession into a lasting memory. It stores a moment and an object in the cloud(s). It eternalizes things that would otherwise necessarily be lost. And maybe if I give a gift to Gd, heaven will favor me. Perhaps these ideas are related. Perhaps by releasing the grasp of the possessive, acquisitive instinct (softening the heart?) life goes better, heaven smiles.

The centerpiece of the Tabernacle complex is a box. The aron. It contains the great gift from Gd... the [broken] tablets. Another great story about a box is the story of Pandora. Pandora’s name means: “all (pan) gifts (dora)” , The Pandora story is a variation of the Eden story. [ Note that the aron contains the eduth, the same 2 letter root as Eden] Pandora is given to Protheus as a wife along with a box that she is forbidden to open...like the fruit that Adam and Eve may not eat. Pandora opens the box [Eve eats the fruit] and all ills of humanity are released [and death comes into the world]. In one version of the Pandora story, the last curse - foreboding- is trapped in the box, at least partially because if people constantly worried about their inevitable future [death], they would give up.

The box in the Mishkan was never to be opened. It [like the road to the Garden of Eden] was protected by Cherubim.

In another version of the Pandora story, the last “gift” to escape from the box is hope. The great hope of Israel is for the return of our box [ the aron and the eduth] to its place ( in our hearts?)

Hope reigns eternal. The Eternal reigns through hope.
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last year: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1lyG3mxE_u0_sM1V9vGI09cxlXemiPvTPxvesTSkeMs8