Show Up With What You Have

I got an email from our shul president yesterday. Our executive director is retiring at the end of June. That makes — let me count — the chef (gone last month), the assistant rabbi (contract not renewed last year), the rabbi (retiring in June), the director of lifelong learning (also retiring), the school director (also retiring), and now the executive director. One of the three finalists in our rabbi search backed out.

We're running through staff the way the desert ran through sandals.

None of this is a crisis, exactly. Institutions turn over. People move on. But I sat with that email longer than expected, doing the quiet arithmetic that happens when you realize the version of a place you know is temporary. The specific people who make a specific place feel like yours — they're not the building.

My mother's yahrzeit is this coming week. The Hebrew date coming up, the Gregorian date a couple of days ago — they don't land on the same day, so the thing hits twice, a few days apart, every year. So between the shul news, the yahrzeit, and Iran firing missiles at Israel while our community feels under attack from within and without, this has not been a week that hands you joy on a plate.

You have to go looking for it.

Meanwhile, in Miami on Tuesday night, Team Israel beat the Netherlands 6-2 to close out the World Baseball Classic. I don't particularly care about baseball, generally. But good news is hard to find.

They finished 2-2 in what everyone called the "Death Pool" — grouped with Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, teams that should have eaten them for lunch. Most of these players are American Jews who play in the minors or the majors and chose to wear "Israel" across their jerseys. Harrison Cohen, a Yankees prospect, pitched two perfect innings, struck out five of six batters, and said afterward that wearing that word on his chest meant something about how he was raised — his parents, his family, his heritage. Matt Mervis drove in two runs with a double. After the game, his father told him that at the exact moment the ball left the bat, fans in Tel Aviv were running for shelters as Iranian missiles struck the city.

They played "Hava Nagila." Thirteen thousand people in Miami, some holding Israeli flags, while the country on the jersey was under fire.

This is the week of Vayakhel-Pekudei, the double portion that closes the book of Shemot — Exodus.

Vayakhel means "he assembled." After the Golden Calf — after the worst breach of trust in the young history of the Jewish people — Moshe does something that sounds almost too simple. He gathers everyone together.

וַיַּקְהֵ֣ל מֹשֶׁ֗ה אֶֽת־כׇּל־עֲדַ֛ת בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֲלֵהֶ֑ם אֵ֚לֶּה הַדְּבָרִ֔ים אֲשֶׁר־צִוָּ֥ה יְהֹוָ֖ה לַעֲשֹׂ֥ת אֹתָֽם׃

Moses then convoked the whole Israelite community and said to them: These are the things that GOD has commanded you to do:

— Exodus 35:1

The first thing he tells them is to keep Shabbat. Before the building campaign, before the donations, before any of it — rest. Then he asks them to bring whatever they can.

קְח֨וּ מֵֽאִתְּכֶ֤ם תְּרוּמָה֙ לַֽיהֹוָ֔ה כֹּ֚ל נְדִ֣יב לִבּ֔וֹ יְבִיאֶ֕הָ אֵ֖ת תְּרוּמַ֣ת יְהֹוָ֑ה זָהָ֥ב וָכֶ֖סֶף וּנְחֹֽשֶׁת׃

Take from among you gifts to GOD; everyone whose heart is so moved shall bring them—gifts for GOD: gold, silver, and copper;

— Exodus 35:5

Kol nediv libo — everyone whose heart moves them.

The Mishkan, the portable sanctuary in the wilderness, got built because people showed up with whatever they had. Gold earrings, ram skins dyed red, acacia wood, spun linen. They brought so much that Moshe had to tell them to stop.

The workers came to him and said the people are bringing more than we need — please, make them quit donating. That might be the only fundraising campaign in recorded history where the organizer had to shut it down for excess generosity.

The word vayakhel is worth sitting with. It doesn't mean "he built" or "he commanded" or "he inspired." It means he gathered. He brought people into the same space at the same time.

After a catastrophic failure of communal trust — the Golden Calf was a collective act, not one person's sin — the repair starts with physical proximity. You don't fix a fractured community by sending a memo. You get everyone in the room.

Pekudei, the second half of this double portion, is the accounting — the inventory of every material used, the final assembly, the priestly garments stitched and placed. It's the last Torah portion in the book of Shemot, and it ends with the most extraordinary sentence in Exodus:

וַיְכַ֥ס הֶעָנָ֖ן אֶת־אֹ֣הֶל מוֹעֵ֑ד וּכְב֣וֹד יְהֹוָ֔ה מָלֵ֖א אֶת־הַמִּשְׁכָּֽן׃

the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the Presence of GOD filled the Tabernacle.

— Exodus 40:34

The people showed up. They brought what they had. They built something together. And the Presence showed up, too.

That's the whole thing. Vayakhel to Pekudei. Gather, contribute, build — and then notice that something larger than the sum of the parts has moved in. Not because the organization was flawless or nobody was leaving. Because people came.

I think about this as I get ready for Shabbat. A stadium full of Jews in Miami singing "Hava Nagila" while missiles fall on Tel Aviv. A shul in Atlanta where seemingly half the staff is walking out the door and people will still fill their seats on Saturday morning. A portable sanctuary in the desert, built by a community that had just shattered every promise it made, finished because someone said: come back.

Bring what you have.

I'll be in my seat. I'll say kaddish for my mother. I'll daven next to the same people I've been davening next to, for as long as they're still there. That's the offering I've got this week, and it's enough.

Shabbat shalom.

— Uriel ben Avraham