We spend a lot of our lives building things—families, teams, institutions—but we don’t always pause to reflect on how that experience shapes us. Sometimes building feels energizing and meaningful. Other times it leaves us feeling detached from the very thing we helped create. What’s the difference?
I started thinking about this question in a very concrete way when I worked at a Jewish-owned tech start-up. One Friday, the founder asked me to share a short thought on that week’s parsha—Parshat Terumah—at a business lunch. And, being that it was a business lunch far away from synagogue, the goal, the founder told me, was to illuminate what makes work meaningful.
At first glance, Terumah might seem among the least relevant parshiot to modern life, work included. It is devoted almost exclusively to the construction of the Mishkan—an ancient religious structure that has not been a lived part of Jewish practice for nearly two thousand years. How, I asked myself, could detailed plans for a portable sanctuary speak to a contemporary workplace?
But then, reading Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, I came across the beginnings of an answer. In his essays on the book of Exodus, Rabbi Sacks recounts a conversation he once had with Tony Blair, then Prime Minister of the UK. Blair admitted that he struggled to see the relevance of the Torah’s extended passages about the Mishkan—what he jokingly called “the boring bit.” Rabbi Sacks later reflected that the question stayed with him and eventually crystallized into his book The Home We Build Together.
In the book, Rabbi Sacks argues that the Torah understands how difficult it is to sustain a people without a shared sense of purpose. The Israelites, newly freed from slavery, struggle repeatedly in the desert not only because of physical hardship, but because freedom alone does not yet give them confidence or direction. What they were missing was the experience of becoming a people who could build something meaningful together.
It’s not that they hadn’t built things before. Take their toiling in Egypt, for example. But there, their labor had served someone else’s needs. According to the sages of the Midrash, much of that work was deliberately pointless—forced labor meant to exhaust and demoralize the Jews.
The Mishkan represented something entirely different. For the first time, the people were invited to build something of their own. And crucially, the Mishkan was built through voluntary contributions. Every person gave what they could, and every gift counted.
Seen this way, Parshat Terumah speaks directly to the challenge of building human organizations. The Mishkan was not simply a structure; it was a formative process that taught a people just freed from slavery how to work together.
This insight feels strikingly relevant today—especially in the working world. Start-ups are infamous for their high failure rates, and even established organizations have struggled in recent years with what has been called the “Great Resignation.” Many of these failures do not stem from a lack of talent or intelligence. They arise when people feel disconnected from what they are building—when their work is done for others rather than with others, and when they feel like parts rather than partners.
In Jewish life especially, people flourish when they are invited to build rather than merely show up—not only because it strengthens communities, but because the act of building gives us a deeper sense of belonging.
Terumah teaches us that communities take root when people are invited to build together as partners. What we build together ends up being part of how we build ourselves.
Josh Poyurs is the Vice Head of Kodesh and Ethos, leads strategic projects, and is a Faculty Member at Yeshiva College, the second largest Jewish school in South Africa with over 800 students. Josh combines his Masters in Clinical and Research Psychology, his MBA, his experience in both management consulting and tech, and his years of learning in Yeshiva and Kollel, to deliver meaningful classes, and transformative projects that are backed by science and infused with a Torah ethos. He is a member of the third cohort of the international Rabbi Sacks Legacy Scholars Programme, and lives in Johannesburg with his wife, Ashleigh.
This essay was written as part of our collaboration with The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Sacks Scholars.
