Parshah Columnists - Terumah

For the first time since leaving Egypt, the people were being asked to become active participants.

Shabbat is so effective for me that my undistracted brain begins to coalesce in imaginative ideas and beautiful prose.

It should come as no surprise that doing good correlates to feeling good.

G‑d is everywhere, who could keep Him out? The more pertinent question is where does G‑d make Himself "at home"? More germane to us: Is it up to us where He dwells?

She arrived in New York wearing a floor-length yellow sari and couldn’t care less about what she no longer had. She feels differently today.

Sugihara and his wife stayed up all day and night writing visas for the desperate Jews.

To put it simply: are we waiting for G‑d, or is G‑d waiting for us? Who makes the next move?

A synagogue can be a humble hut—but we need to demonstrate what our values are and where our priorities lie. To give honor and glory by beautifying His Holy House is one way...

The Third Temple is not a building, but a state of harmony between G-d, humanity, and nature.

The acacia wood of which the Sanctuary was made has in Hebrew a strange name—it can be translated as “the wood of folly.”

The Jewish home is indeed "a small Sanctuary." Like the Temple, it is a center for Torah, prayer and kindness...

When people contribute financially they feel invested in the project and their expectations become the true catalyst of sustainable growth.

I can understand the outrage. Isn't a tax that devolves on everyone equally, regardless of his or her ability to pay, patently inequitable?

He held two backpacks, one full of sandwiches and the other money. He strolled down the aisle offering the patrons a choice: "If you have, please give. If you need, please take."

Hospitals, retirement villages, anti-discrimination commissions, museums, and Yiddish theaters. All are worthy causes and deserving of support, yet they are not our communal priority...

I’ve heard of people packing the kitchen sink, but who takes wooden walls with them on their travels?

The menorah symbolizes our spiritual needs, and the table is a metaphor for our material needs. But there is a connection between the two . . .

Don’t we all remember the precise location where we proposed, or the hospital ward where our first child was born? How could we forget? And yet, somehow, we’ve lost touch with the place more important to our people than any other . . .

Angels proclaim G-d’s greatness; we shout the praises of technological gadgets. Yet G‑d chose our world as His home....

The importance of the synagogue is emphasized by the exacting instructions given for the erection of the Tabernacle.

What was so difficult about the design of the Menorah that G-d, the greatest teacher of all time, could not make Moses, the greatest student of all time, comprehend?

"When the king asked me to disclose my holdings," the rabbi explained, "I included only the funds that I have donated to charity. Those are the holdings I know will always be mine..."

Single-minded people aren't much fun. We wouldn't want to be like them -- well, maybe just a little bit...

“My design for A New Home for the New Millennium may seem revolutionary,” explained the architect, “but only because we have drifted away from the home’s initial, primal function . . .”

It was the first Israelite house of worship, the first home Jews made for G-d. But the very idea is fraught with paradox, even contradiction. How can you build a house for G-d? He is bigger than anything we can imagine, let alone build.

The Torah describes two acts of creation: G‑d’s creation of the universe, and the Israelites’ creation of the Mikdash or Mishkan, the sanctuary that traveled with them in the desert, the prototype of the Temple in Jerusalem. The connection between them is not incidental.

What significance do these hold? Why did they have to be made of one solid piece of gold?