Parshas Terumah begins with a sharp contrast between the building of the Mishkan, the first tabernacle, and the Beit Hamikdash, the Holy Temple. To the Mishkan, donations are solicited from anyone whose heart is moved, while King Solomon relies on draft labor brigades and workers from King Hiram, a foreign monarch, to construct it. And so the First Temple eventually falls and is destroyed. The Haftorah for the previous parsha, Mishpatim, tells one of the causes. The account in Jeremiah relates how under siege by the Babylonian invaders, the nobles of the kingdom make a covenant to free their Hebrew slaves. Once the siege is lifted however they enslave them once again. The breach of the covenant to free their slaves is one of the causes of the destruction and fall of the kingdom. Mishpatim begins with the laws of slavery because regulating the rights of even the people at the lowest state, thieves who have been sold into temporary bondage for their crimes, is at the foundation of ethics...