From the March 11, 2016 Service.

There is a well-known story of two men who were working on a construction team to add a new sanctuary on to a synagogue. A Rabbi passed the first man and asked “what are you doing?”  The worker answered “I’m laying bricks.”  The Rabbi asked the second man “What are you doing?” and he answered “Building a Temple.”  It’s not hard to guess who was doing a better job and who was happier doing that work.

We spend our lives laying a lot of bricks at work, school and with our families and friends but rather than just laying bricks, how can we be building Temples?

In this week’s Parshah, Pekudei, Moses has assigned the work of building the Mishkan out of the donated materials to talented craftsmen and women in order to get it built, and they get it done successfully.

From that portion we read, “In accordance with all that the Lord had commanded Moses, so did the children of Israel, do all the work. Moses saw the entire work and lo!-they had done it-as the Lord had commanded, so had they done. So Moses blessed them.”

Interestingly, we have heard the details of how the sanctuary should be built in previous Parshot, but it is repeated here as the people actually do it. So that begs the question why did the Torah go step by step again over the construction details of this Mishkan? Why not just say “and so they did?”  It may be because in this Parshah, we are learning how to build Temples rather than lay bricks.  The people who are called to build this sanctuary are doing the most holy of jobs, building a home for God, and contributing their gifts to this important mission.  But their gifts and abilities may not be so obviously holy or mission filled.  Weaving, sawing and hammering doesn’t obviously change the world or even save any lives.  But it’s the worker’s attitude towards his job or craft that makes it holy.

I am on an advisory board at St Jude Hospital in Memphis, and we take Country singers on a tour of the hospital annually so they can better help with fundraising. And every year, the first stop on the tour is to meet a researcher and hear about how he or she is working on curing life threatening childhood diseases.  These brilliant scientists are literally curing cancer.  Last year, one of the singers while in the lab said “I feel like I am wasting my life.  All I do is sing country songs and you are saving children’s lives.”  The researcher responded “I listen to the radio at work, and I’m constantly inspired and motivated to do a better job by those country songs.”

Part of my job is to manage people who convince radio stations to play particular songs. These promoters can easily get burned out after hearing “no” one too many times and after a while some feel like their jobs lack meaning.  But I always remind them that music is the soundtrack of our lives and by getting a song on the radio, someone who hears it could be moved to propose to their love or find their way out of despair.

Mission is not determined by the actual job as much as by the spirit brought into it by the worker. We hear a lot about finding our purpose in life and doing what you love and the money will follow.  And those are good concepts as we are given particular gifts and abilities, and contributing to repairing the world with those gifts and abilities is our spiritual responsibility.  But we do not have to wait until we are able to spend most of our day using those gifts as we imagine we should use them, in order to contribute in a spiritually meaningful way.  If we are waiting tables or working a cash register rather than delivering a speech to thousands or writing the great American novel, we can use our unique ability with words to spread kindness and connect.   If we are working in a factory or washing dishes, we can do each task with the attention to detail that we would bring to painting a great picture or designing a beautiful building.  If we are raising our children or loving our spouse, we can do it with the love and understanding that we would bring to curing a patient’s serious illness.   And if we are roofing or laying bricks we can do it with the joy of a spiritual leader who builds a congregation and brings them closer to God.  Thomas Edison said, “The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.”  Maybe if we wore our overalls more often, we would recognize the plentiful opportunities we have to make a difference every day as we engage in the hard work of living.

So as we face our week, let’s find the mission in our work rather than looking for work with a mission. Every contribution we make to God and to each other is a contribution towards repairing the world.  Pekudei proves that there is no job too small, from weaving blue wool to hammering sheets of gold, to be holy.  And when we look at our daily duties that way, our lives instantly become more meaningful, and we become happier as we imbue each day… each moment… with love.