Terumah 
by Rabbi Wein
Source: http://www.torah.org/learning/rabbiwein/5761/terumah.html

The ability to part with one's wealth and possessions for a 
philanthropic purpose is not easily attained and is also not 
easily maintained when attained. The "normal" attitude towards 
wealth and possessions is characterized by the great rabbis of 
the Book of Avot as being: "What is mine is mine and what is 
yours is yours." The desire to have more wealth and possessions 
is so intense that the Talmud sadly comments that "most people 
are guilty of stealing from others." Since the drive to have 
more material wealth and keep and conserve what is mine is 
apparently so ingrained in our human nature, the Torah goes to 
great lengths to uproot that characteristic - selfishness and 
miserliness - from our nature and to turn us in the direction 
of selflessness and generosity. The Torah therefore made the 
construction of the Mishkan, the tabernacle in the desert, 
a human project rather than a Godly one. The Jewish people were 
requested to donate from their own personal wealth substantial 
contributions of materials in order to complete that structure. 
After centuries of slavery in Egypt, after suffering 
impoverishment and want, it would be only natural to expect 
that there would be a hesitance among the newly-freed slaves to 
part with their only-recently-acquired goods and possessions. 
The Torah boldly moves to counter that weakness of character 
and demands immediately that the generation that only just left 
Egyptian poverty and bondage become a nation of sharing and 
philanthropy. 

The Torah however does not measure donations and giving by 
purely objective standards. It is not merely the amount, 
important as that figure is, that is being given that 
ultimately counts. It is also and perhaps even more 
importantly in a spiritual and psychological sense than 
the amount of the gift, the spirit and donative intent of 
the giver that determines the true value of the gift and 
donation. The Torah records that the contributions for the 
Mishkan were to be taken "from every person whose heart 
prompted him to donate" to the holy project. And that, 
my friends, is a very subjective standard, known perhaps 
only to the Creator of us all. When we donate money, time, 
talent, effort to a good cause, there are usually a wide 
variety of forces and influences that motivate us to do so. 
If we can examine our motives and impulses to give to 
charitable causes and "improve" on those motives to raise 
them to a more selfless and less complicated level of our 
being, the gifts that we give will have far deeper meaning 
and effect upon our inner character, even if the amounts of 
the gifts basically remain constant. 

The great Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, the founder of the "mother" 
of all later Lithuanian yeshivot, the yeshiva of Volozhin, 
employed fund-raisers to travel in Eastern Europe to collect 
donations for the support of the yeshiva. A wealthy donor to 
the yeshiva once complained to Rabbi Chaim that he wanted his 
donation to go directly to the study of Torah and not be 
consumed in the expenses of the fund-raising projects and 
employees. Rabbi Chaim coolly answered him: "When Jews 
contributed gold to the building of the Mishkan all of them 
undoubtedly wished that their particular piece of gold be used 
in the creation of the Holy Ark itself and not dispensed for 
other purposes connected with the expenses of that construction. 
Bezalel, the builder of the Mishkan, possessed Divine inspiration 
and therefore he was able to discern which gold was given with 
the purest and most selfless of motives and which gold was 
donated because of other causes and influences. The "pure" gold, 
given selflessly, without hesitation and in fulfillment of God's 
commandment, found its way into the construction of the Holy Ark, 
which housed the tablets of stone of Sinai. The other gold, 
containing the dross of conflicting and varying motives for its 
donation, was used for the other tasks necessary for the creation 
of the Mishkan. So too is the matter regarding the donations to 
the yeshiva of Volozhin. The purer the intent of the donor to 
only do God's will and to truly support the study of His Torah, 
the more likely it is that his donation will be used directly 
for the study of Torah itself and not be subsumed in the 
expenses of the fund-raising operations of the yeshiva. So, 
it is the donor himself, not I nor my staff, that will make the 
eventual determination as to how and where the monies donated 
will be allocated and spent."