Addict Torah: Terumah 2024/5784

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Midrash Tanhuma, Terumah 8

1) And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them (Exod. 25:8). On which day did He relate to Moses the portion relating to the Temple? It was on the Day of Atonement. That was so despite the fact that the Torah portion describing the Sanctuary precedes the incident of the golden calf. R. Judah the son of R. Shalum said: There is actually no such thing as preceding or following in the Torah, as is said: Lest she should walk the even path of life, her ways wander, but she knoweth it not (Prov. 5:6). This verse refers to the arrangement of the Torah and its sections. Hence, it was on the Day of Atonement that He told Moses: Make Me a Sanctuary.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 322, Kindle edition

“Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them” (25:8). These words, heard against the moaning and spitting of calf-fire, raise the central question: what kind of world can be constructed, such that God can dwell in it, dwell in them?

Richard Elliott Friedman, Torah and Commentary, p. 1248, Kindle edition

25:8. I shall tent among them. Forms of this Hebrew verb (škantî) are frequently taken to mean “to dwell”; but when it refers to God, this verb is a denominative from the noun miškn: Tabernacle. As God explains to David, “I haven’t lived in a house from the day I brought the children of Israel up from Egypt to this day, but I’ve been going about in a tent and in a Tabernacle” (2 Sam 7:6). The creator cannot be pictured as residing on the earth but rather is understood to tent among humans, that is, to be present in association with a non permanent, movable structure.

Rabbi Ruth Gais, in CCAR, The Torah: A Women's Commentary, p. 1217

that I may dwell among them…the Tabernacle ( 25:8–9 ). The two key Hebrew words, v’shachanti (“that I may dwell”) and mishkan (“Tabernacle”), are related linguistically to the feminine noun Shechinah. The Rabbis used that term for the indwelling and intimately felt presence of God, believing that the Shechinah was present in the Tabernacle and, later, in the Temple in Jerusalem.

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, p. 639

“yea, in a certain sense the existence of all the world depended on the construction of the sanctuary, for when the sanctuary had been created, the world stood firmly founded, whereas until then it had always been swaying hither and thither.”

Sifra, Shemeni, cited in Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation, vol. 2, p. 200

It has been taught that on the day [the Tabernacle was inaugurated] there was joy before the Holy One blessed be He, as on the day when heaven and earth were created.

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, Vol. 1, location 3567, Kindle edition

A real divine-human relationship depends on God making space for humanity. The covenants between God and Israel and between God and humanity thus depend upon a kind of tzimtzum. In order to summon us as partners, God needs to affirm and respect our independence. This is not absolute, ontological independence, to be sure—we still depend on God for our being—but it is a form of independence nevertheless. Jewish theology insists that God wants relationship, and the possibility of relationship emerges only when both partners are honored in their separateness, and then choose to come together.

George Robinson, Essential Torah, p. 377, Kindle edition

Does God, Who is greater than the heavens themselves, need the Mishkan? Of course not. Hence Moshe’s surprise. What this is finally about is a process, a way of expressing love and interdependence. Otherwise, the passages on the building of the Mishkan would belong in Popular Mechanics and not in a sacred book.

Rabbi Shefa Gold, Torah Journeys, p. 84

And so God says to us, 'Make for Me a holy place so that I can dwell inside you. Yes, it is possible to stay connected with me at all times in all places, even as you engage in the life of the world.' When we make a place for God to dwell in our. lives, then we will never again be trapped in the illusion of separateness. God will be available and accessible to us in the innermost chamber of the heart and in the inner dimension of all Creation. Spiritual practice is about making our lives into a Mishkan, a dwelling place for Divine Presence.

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah, p. 127

The parashah starts out with God telling Moses to “speak to the Israelite people and take for Me a gift or offering from all whose heart moves them.” This is the great challenge for us and for God—we have to be willing and moved to give a gift to God. God is open and welcoming of all of our gifts. The next verses come to tell us what God wants as gifts, and the list, while specific, is also general in its nature. The gifts have to be the best that we have. They have to come from each individual and only from those who want to give.

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, p. 654

“Moses at first did not at first want to accept contributions from the women, but these brought their…mirrors, saying: ‘Why doest thou reject our gifts?...here are our mirrors that belong to us alone, and not to our husbands.’ When Moses beheld the mirrors, he waxed very angry, and bad the women to be driven from him, exclaiming: ‘What right in the sanctuary have these mirrors that exist only to arouse sensual desires?’ But God said to Moses: ‘Truly dearer to me than all other gifts are these mirrors, for it was these mirrors that yielded Me My hosts. When in Egypt the men were exhausted from their heavy labors, the women were wont to come to them with food and drink, take out their mirrors, and caressingly say to their husbands, ‘Look into the mirror, I am much more beautiful than thou,’ and in this way passion seized the men so that they forgot their cares and united themselves with their wives, who thereupon brought many children into the world. Take now these mirrors and fashion out of them the laver that contains the water for the sanctifying of the priests.’”

Rabbi David Kasher, ParshaNut, p. 168, 169

When we look at these stories in the Bible, do we read them as they have been traditionally understood, or do we look at them fresh, and try to make sense of them ourselves? Well, that depends. The tradition is always a starting point, and if it seems to be very well-established, perhaps even an unbroken link to the original tellers of the story, then we accept it. But if we believe that the tradition we have been handed down is, in itself, a record of our ancestors struggling to figure out how to make sense of the story, then we, too, are entitled to engage in that struggle, and to come up with our own – perhaps unique – understanding...For this wood will be used to construct the Tabernacle, the structure which dares to contain the presence of God. How is such a thing possible? How do we encounter the intangible, ineffable, mysterious God here in this physical time and space? Do we rely on the wisdom of our sacred traditions, or do we seek out new forms of revelation and discovery? We must have both.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 349, Kindle edition

The moment of “secret teshuva” is the moment when the people prostrate themselves, each in the privacy of his tent-flap. At that liminal place, at the petach, the tent entrance (referred to four times in three verses), which is both inside and outside, the people imagine Moses entering his liminal place, with God at his back. The midrash focuses on the shift from “Whenever Moses went out …” to “when Moses entered …” This complex reverie works profoundly within them, so that, in an existential sense, it is they who create the dynamic of Yom Kippur. The essential work of Yom Kippur, the intimate repentance, has been invented by them: God responds by giving them the formal resource to all posterity. This “secret” moment, viewed as a national phenomenon, is a significant break point in the spiritual history of the people. Contrasting with the public Sinai moment (“We shall do and we shall hear!”) is the private work with fantasy and desire, “each at the entrance of his tent.” Where the people had first spoken of “doing” (na’aseh), fulfilling God’s commandments, they had regressed to the point of pressing Aaron: “Make (asseh) us gods who will walk before us” (32:1). Now, God gives them a therapeutic instruction: “Let them make (ve-assu) Me a sanctuary …” In Rashi’s reading, this therapeutic making/doing lives first in the transitional space between inside and outside, in the months of Moses’ passage between the two worlds, and in the private reverie that imagines it. At base, this is what it is to build a Mishkan: it requires a new awareness of hollowness that is not neutralized by stable Presence. This is the double creation of the people: in the spatial realm, a sanctuary for God to live in their midst; in the temporal realm, Yom Kippur, the real possibility of inward transformation through time. The two will converge in the physical Mishkan, where atonement will be enacted. But the phase of spiritual reverie, when the heart creates its own space for God, is the crucial one.

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Yourself and Recovery in Torah, p. 130

After we receive the Ten Commandments and the social ordinances, we have to take some action. It is not enough just to study the laws; we have to apply them to our lives. In fact, as Torah says at the end of last week’s parashah, na’aseh v’nishma, “we will do and then we will understand” (Exodus 24:7). It is only in the doing that we truly learn and understand how to use the laws and teachings that Torah and God give us that fly in the face of modernity, saying, “I think, therefore I am.” Judaism, as I understand it, says, “I am, I do, therefore I know how to think.”

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 339, Kindle edition

But in the Mishkan the gold, representing fire, motion, infinite transformation, is not the sacred object. Rather, it frames the sacred space, the hollow out of which God will speak. The heart of the Mishkan is the space between the wings of the cherubim which, from an unbridgeable distance, at opposite ends of the golden Kapporeth (the Cover of the Ark), gaze towards each other, even as they gaze downwards at the Ark.

Midrash Tanchuma, Beha'alotcha 6

Because the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses (in Exod. 25:31), ‘And you shall make a menorah of pure gold.’ He said to Him, ‘How shall we make [it]?’ He said to him (ibid. cont.), ‘Of hammered work shall the menorah be made.’ Nevertheless Moses had difficulty; for when he descended, he had forgotten its construction. He went up and said, ‘Master of the world, I have forgotten [it].’ He said to him (in Exod. 25:40), ‘Observe and make [it].’ Thus He took a pattern of fire and showed him its construction, but it was still difficult for Moses. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, ‘Go to Bezalel and he will make it.’ [So] Moses went down to talk to Bezalel, [and] he made it immediately. Moses began to wonder and say, ‘In my case, how many times did the Holy One, blessed be He, show it to me; yet I had difficulty in making it. Now without seeing it, you have made it from your own knowledge. Bezalel (btsl'l), were you perhaps standing in (b) the shadow (tsl) of God ('l) when the Holy One, blessed be He, showed it to me and said (in Exod. 25:31), “And you shall make”?’

Tanhuma, Shmini 11, cited in Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 325

“This is the work of menora.” (Num 8:4)—showing him with His finger. Nevertheless, Moses had difficulty with it. What did God do? He engraved it upon his hand and told him, “Descend and fashion it as I have engraved it upon your hand, as it is said, ‘Look and fashion them according to their patterns …’ ” (Exod 25:40)

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 326, Kindle edition

The transcendent fires are, essentially, tattooed onto his hand. The image is haunting. If we try to tease out some of its implications, we may say, first, that Moses’ hands are now engraved with a vision. The connection between hand and eye is made taut; seeing and making become intimates, secretly linked. For it is not simply a drawing on Moses’ hand, though even that would focus attention on the hand as that part of the body that can be “consulted,” that is part of oneself and yet external to oneself. But the description of “engraving” is a tactile one: it is an invasive procedure, whose scars will leave Moses with a personal “manual,” in the true sense, of the Mishkan. Inscribed deep within his flesh, he will carry with him a version of the fiery model. In a modest, intimate place, on the palm of the hand, he will bear the mark of transcendence.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p 1274-1275, Kindle edition

26:30. set up the Tabernacle. What difference do these cubits make? Why does it matter whether the Tabernacle is eight by twenty cubits or ten by thirty? Because eight by twenty cubits, and ten cubits high, is the size of the space under the wings of the cherubs inside the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem. Either the Tabernacle really stood in that space, or the space represented it symbolically while the Tabernacle itself was stored away somewhere inside the building. The Tanak reports that the Tabernacle is in fact brought to the Temple on the day of its dedication (1 Kings 8:4; 2 Chr 5:5). The Talmud reports that it was in fact thus stored beneath the Temple (Soa 9a). The ancient historian Josephus says that the effect of the cherubs’ wings in the Temple was to appear like a tent (Ant. 8.103). A psalm says: “I’ll reside in your tent forever, I’ll conceal myself in the hidden place of your wings” (Ps 61:5). The book of 1 Chronicles (9:23) refers to the Temple as “the House of the Tent” (bêt h ’hel). It also speaks of the “Tabernacle of the House of God” (6:33; see also 1 Chr 23:22; 2 Chr 29:6–7; 24:6). What this means is that the Temple was not just the successor to the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle, revered as the ancient channel to God, was actually located inside the Temple.

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah, p. 131

This parashah is also teaching us to take direction from others; we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Our hubris is thinking we have to do it all ourselves.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 495

The tabernacle is to be partitioned into two unequal sections by a curtain, or a veil (Hebrew: parokhet)...A second screen separated the entrance of the Holy Place on the eastern side from the outer court.

Richard Elliott Friedman, The Torah: A Commentary, p. 265

“Anyone who pursues holiness must be aware that he or she must pass through a progression of levels, with increasing awe and increasing danger as one comes closer to the sacred.”

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Recovery and. Yourself in Torah, p. 132

Many have wondered why the Torah would waste so much space with these details. While there will be areas in the building that allow us to express our individual creative spark, we still have to follow the plan. This is the hardest part for most of us to understand—God has a plan for us and for the world. This plan is for us to live well and make our corner of the world a little bit better. The plan is to add our unique gift to the world and live our authentic script. The plan is to live in cooperation, not competition. The plan is to live in harmony, not comparison.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation, vol. 2, p. 192

The Sanctuary was not a place in which the objective existence of God was somehow more concentrated than elsewhere. Rather, it was a place whose holiness had the effect of opening hearts to the One worshipped there. God exists everywhere, but not everywhere do we feel the presence of God in the same way. The essence of “the holy” is that it is a place where we set aside all human devices and desires and enter a domain wholly set aside for God. If the concept of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, is that God lives in the human heart whenever it opens itself unreservedly to heaven, then its physical location is irrelevant.