Terumah 5786

So with Paris Truma, we're now beginning the last five uh five. Yes. Truma. Yeah. The last five paras of sos. And the majority of these paras including paras kisa deal with the instruction of building the mishkun and all the details of how they built the mishkan and how they built the kaim and the different utensils the different objects in the mish in the mishkan the sh etc etc etc. So the med comments on the PK that they made the boards of the Mishkan out of areas out of cedarwood. Truth be told the world does not deserve or need errors. Errors are very very cedars are very very strong. The reason created cedar wood is to use for the mishkash and for the mdishar etc etc and so the whole the whole purpose of of um of arosim was for the construction destruction of the Mishkan and the Ba Migdesh. Other than that, the world really does not need um errors. So, one would walk away from this. It says that aroseim of cedarwood is is very very important, very precious and uh very desirable. And yet, that a person in his life should be like a reed. He should be like a reed which is flexible and he should not be koshakis. You shouldn't be as hard and strong and as unbending as the cedar wood and that's how a person should fashion himself rather be like a con a reed that sways in the wind and is easily bendable and you should not be as my way or the highway type of attitude. And yet when it comes to the Mishkan, the Mishkan was built with what? With arim. These unbendable and almost unbreakable types of wood. So why is that? So I once a safer called the Manakaman which was written by a lead he had in his name was Romanakam Benian Zachs. And he saw in this a a very interesting lesson and that is that in aami human beings should be more like reads. They should be like areas. They should be flexible. They should be bendable. They should be able to know how to comp compromise and to give in and to be matur that's that's a hanoga that's a a a mandate and a maxim when it comes between autumn laav [snorts] but there's some things in the world that you have to be strong like and unbendable and un inflexible and that is when you build a mishk and you build a base midesh and you build a shul which means when it comes to m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man matters of religion you should not just take the attitude well you know let's let's compromise let's uh listen uh I can see your way of doing things as well no when it comes to inyan kadusha you have to stand up for what's right and all too often we see that even in matters of religion people are willing to compromise and to bend their principles and to give up on precedent etc. you know because compromise live and let live I'm okay you're okay that type of attitude many years ago I saw that u you know we're coming up to uh what's called laabdel mardigra and ash Wednesday is uh begins the 40 days before the [clears throat] lent season in which uh Catholics are quote supposed to do chuva and refrain from indulgence etc etc. Of course they begin this with the greatest indulgence and pitus and every thing that you can think of with martyra but ash Wednesday is uh when you begin the the chuva process laavdil uh in in preparation for Easter. So what's ash Wednesday? So, religious Catholics, practicing Catholics, they go ahead and they have this ash that put on their forehead reminds them of of their quote their god, etc., etc. So, I saw it and one Catholic church where is a this is actually in Baltimore, Maryland. So, in rather than having ashes, real ashes, they came up with something called glitter ash. What's glitter ash for people who are gay? They're they have to uh not to not real ash but glitter ash because it shows their acceptance of u of gay people. You know they're also people are also human beings and therefore we have to make them uh comfortable and we have to be welcoming. Now, strict Catholic doc dogma and doctrine is against gay marriages. You know, this is not something that uh that we invented. But all of a sudden, a church is going ahead and saying, "Well, no, we have to we have to compromise." And there they're they're religious institutions unfortunately including reformed Judaism that uh go ahead and say no listen they're people also there you know everybody live and let live and that's not the way to run a religion. If you start doing that then everything is going to fall apart. And uh that's exactly what has happened in many areas of quote religious America today and the world itself that people are so interested in com accommodating and compromising that they can go ahead and literally give up the ranch uh even though that we they know very well that it's against their religion. Um I'm reminded of a story that happened in my hometown Seattle Washington be well before I was born. The bigger column shul that was the name of the congregation big column which is the shul that I grew up in. So it was founded in 1891 and it still exists at uh Karik but uh in the early 1900s or somewhere around then maybe the the tw you know the 1920s etc where u there was a a movement that swept this country and that is the conservative movement and eventually the reform the reform movement in the conservative movement and one of the issues was uh to have to stop with a separate seating and big always and yama has a balcony as nshim is a balcony and the women can see everything and etc but shalom you know it's a you can't have nick seating so one year on leian keeper uh kit night uh the president of the shul was seeing that people were leaving colum and joining the conservative shul at set conservative synagogue and he got up on the beimma on colidre night and he suggested that the shu change had charter and that they permit mixed men and women together. So there was a family in Seattle that's there. The patriarch of that s that family was someone named Romesha Ganau. Romesha udanau and he had I think six or seven sons who were all sharitus and including Tom Kim. So one of his sons was Mr. Ben Ganau Zraa who um who was Nifer several years ago at the age of I think 100. Anyway, he was a tyra at Tom really. And anyway, he reme he told you he used to tell me when when I was there that he was a little boy and in Shaw when that happened. And so his father Romeau when the president of the shul said you know let's let's consider um uh mixeding on kibber that night his father got up in the middle of the president's speech and said sh it ar from beimma which mean you shave it get off the beimma you're suggesting that we could go conservative, have mixed, shake it, get out, get off. So Mr. Ganau, Ben Ganau, used to tell me he felt like digging a hole and crawling away from it. He was so embarrassed by his father, you know, interrupted him, shouted in the middle of sh this and that. But because of someone like Misha Yuanau who was kosha who was inflexible like the cedarwood because of that more than 100 years old is still an orthodox because he stood up for what is right and some things you don't bend and some things you don't compromise. So that's what the medish means homalytically that the world really did not deserve does not need eras but it needs it for the mishkan and it needs it for the bas it needs for the shul because that's where you have to go ahead and stand up and not just fold and and compromise for the sake of shalom some things are inflexible and that's religion that's a shul that's a midesh and that's the mishkan