Integrity: Inside Matching Outside; Aligning Our Ideals and Our Actions (Terumah 5774)

Imagine being in high school and your teacher asks for help solving an ethical problem. The teacher bought a desk from a complete stranger for $150 on Craigslist. He picked up the desk and took it home in his mini-van. A friend helped carry it into the house. Unfortunately the desk was a little too big to get through the door of the room where the teacher wanted to put the desk. 

They tried taking the door off its hinges but still the desk didn’t fit through the doorway. Then they started to take the desk apart, figuring they could move it in pieces better than whole. 

After taking off the top of the desk the teacher noticed a plastic bag stuck behind the desk's file drawers. Inside the bag were some $100 bills. Lots of them. By the time he finished counting all the money in the bag stuck behind drawers in the desk he bought for $150, the teacher had counted up $98.000. Now the teacher asks his students for advice: Should he invest the $98,000 for his four children’s education or give the money to a charity or to his school, or return the money to the woman who sold him the desk?

A little detail in this week's Torah portion, Terumah, offers some guidance. Think about that as we turn to In the parsha, Terumah, our ancestors begin to get instructions for crafting the tabernacle in the wilderness. Early in the parsha we are told how to construct the aron (the Ark) that will hold tablets of the Ten Commandments. Made of acacia wood, Torah directs that it be covered inside and outside with a layer of gold. 

According to Rava (4th century Babylonia) this taught a fundamental lesson -- that our outside behaviors should reflect our inside ideals. And that integrity means the two are aligned -- our ideals and our actions should be in harmony (see Brachot 28a).

In other words, who we are on the inside should be reflected -- easy for others to observe -- through our behaviors on the outside. Or similarly, as my colleague Dr. Ira Schweitzer teaches his students, “when you spend time to make sure your clothes and hair are just right, take a few moments to make sure your intentions and actions [are just right too.] Your inner thoughts and motivations should be as important to you as how you look to others.” Ideals and actions -- inside and outside -- should be aligned. That is a form of integrity. While integrity may be easy to idealize, it can sometimes be difficult to enact. Think of the courage it takes to make the right decision when the temptation (say, $98,000) to do otherwise is so great. 

Which takes us back to the teacher who found $98,000. Based on the true story of Rabbi Noah Muroff, a New Haven rabbi who teaches 9th graders. Rabbi Muroff did not poll his students to make his decision - he knew immediately how to harmonize his ideals with is actions. He returned the money. Muroff and his wife reasoned that the money belonged to someone else and they were obligated to return it. It turns out the woman who sold the desk for $150 had kept in cash her inheritance from parents who had died recently. She lost track of where the cash; it never occurred to her that it might have fallen behind one of the desk drawers. She just assumed it was somewhere else in her house. Muroff drove the money to her house and brought his four children with him, so they might see first hand how important it was to do as you say and say as you do. 

That teacher might not have needed encouragement, but often we do. We sometimes need support from family or friends when we are seeking to align our ideals with our actions -- to harmonize who we are on the inside with how we behave on the outside. Whether for ourselves or for our friends, may we have strength in the week ahead to harmonize ideals and actions.