T'rumah: Creating Sacred Space

Parashat Terumah focuses on the building of the Tabernacle and its implements and represents a shift from the narrative of the earlier chapters of the Book of Exodus to the detail-oriented descriptions of ritual and material culture. This text study will explore the purposes of building a Tabernacle and how sacred space is meaningful in our lives.

Yehuda HaLevi (1075 – 1141) Spanish Jewish physician, poet and philosopher

Where might I go to find you,

Exalted, Hidden One?

Yet where would I not go to find You,

Everpresent, Eternal One?

Martin Buber (1878-1965) Austrian-born Israeli Jewish philosopher

“Where is the dwelling of God?“ This was the question with which Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk surprised a number of learned people who happened to be visiting him. They laughed at him: “What a thing to ask! Is not the whole world full of God‘s glory!“ Then he answered his own question: “God dwells wherever we let God in.“ (from Tales of the Hasidim)

R. Isaac Abravanel (15th cent. Spain)- Commentary on Exodus 25:8

Why did [God] command the erection of the tabernacle, when [God] said "that I may dwell among them," as if God were an object demarcated and limited in space — which is the opposite of the truth!... After all, God himself spoke these words through the prophet Isaiah (66:1): "The heavens are my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what kind of house can you build for me?"

Midrash Rabbah

They shall make for Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell within them (25:8) There was once a king who had an only daughter, and one of the kings came and married her. When her husband wished to return to his country, her father said to him: "My daughter, whose hand I have given you, is my only child; I cannot part with her. Neither can I say to you, ‘Do not take her,’ for she is your wife. This one favor, however, I ask of you: wherever you go to live, prepare a chamber for me that I may dwell with you, for I cannot leave my daughter.” In the same way, God said to Israel: “I have given you the Torah. I cannot part with her, and I also cannot tell you not to take her. But this I request of you: wherever you go, make for Me a house wherein I may dwell.”

From Legends of the Bible, by Louis Ginzberg (1873-1953)

Rabbi Louis Ginzberg was a Talmudist and leading figure in the Conservative Movement of Judaism of the twentieth century.

God was indeed anxious to have a sanctuary erected to Him, it was the condition on which he led them out of Egypt, yea, in a certain sense the existence of all the world depended on the construction of the sanctuary, for when the sanctuary had been erected, the world stood firmly founded, whereas until then it had always been swaying hither and thither. Hence the tabernacle in its separate parts also corresponded to the creations of the six days. The two tablets in the ark corresponded to the heavens and the earth, that had been created on the first day. As the firmament had been created on the second day to divide the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above, so there was a curtain in the tabernacle to divide between the holy and the most holy. As God created the great sea on the third day, so did he appoint the laver in the sanctuary to symbolize it, and as he had on that day destined the plant kingdom as nourishment for men, so did he now require a table with bread in the tabernacle. The candlestick in the tabernacle corresponded to the two luminous bodies, the sun and the moon, created on the fourth day; and of the seven branches of the candlestick corresponded to the seven planets, the sun, Venus, Mercury, the moon, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. Corresponding to the birds created on the fifth day, the tabernacle contained the cherubim, that had wings like birds. On the sixth, the last day of creation man had been created in the image of God to glorify his creator, and likewise was the high priest anointed to minister in the tabernacle before his Lord and creator.

Sefer HaChinuch (16 cent.)

Know, my child, that any commandment that God requires of humankind comes only out of God's desire to benefit us... God's command to build the Tabernacle, for us to offer therein our prayers and sacrifices, comes not out of God's needs to dwell in an earthly dwelling among humankind, but rather [out of God's awareness that we need] train our own selves...

R. Umberto Cassuto (20th cent.)

In order to understand the significance and purpose of the Tabernacle, we must realize that the children of Israel, after they had been privileged to witness the Revelation of God on Mount Sinai, were about to journey from there and thus draw away from the site of the theophany. So long as they were encamped in the place, they were conscious of God's nearness; but once they set out on their journey, it seemed to them as though the link had been broken, unless there were in their midst a tangible symbol of God's presence among them. It was the function of the Tabernacle (literally, 'Dwelling') to serve as such a symbol. Not without reason, therefore, does this section come immediately after the section that describes the making of the Covenant at Mount Sinai. The nexus between Israel and the Tabernacle is a perpetual extension of the bond that was forged at Sinai between the people and their God. The children of Israel, dwelling in tribal order at every encampment, are able to see, from every side, the Tabernacle standing in the midst of the camp, and the visible presence of the Sanctuary proves to them that just as the glory of God dwelt on Mount Sinai, so too God dwells in their midst wherever they wander in the wilderness. This is the purpose of Scripture (25:8), when it states: 'And let them make Me a Sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.'

Malbim (19th cent. Eastern Europe)- Commentary on Exodus 25:8

...Each one of us needs to build God a Tabernacle in the recesses of our hearts, by preparing oneself to become a Sanctuary for God and a place for the dwelling of God's glory.

From NY Times Article: Examining the Growth of the ‘Spiritual but Not Religious’

by Mark Oppenheimer (July 18, 2014)

“On airplanes,” Rev. Lillian Daniel wrote in 2011, “I dread the conversation with the person who finds out I am a minister and wants to use the flight time to explain to me that he is ‘spiritual but not religious.’ Such a person will always share this as if it is some kind of daring insight, unique to him, bold in its rebellion against the religious status quo.” Before you know it, “he’s telling me that he finds God in the sunsets.” In the book, Rev. Daniel, a Congregationalist preacher who is pastor at a church near Chicago, argues that spirituality fits too snugly with complacency, even hedonism — after all, who doesn’t like walks in nature? — whereas religion is better at challenging people to face death, fight poverty and oppose injustice. Religion, by bringing people together, in community, at regular intervals, facilitates an ongoing conversation about matters outside the self.

* * *

When Courtney Bender, now teaching at Columbia, went looking for spiritual but not religious people in Cambridge, Mass., where she was then living, she found them not on solitary nature walks but in all sorts of groups — which complicates the stereotype of them as anti-institutional loners. She described her findings in “The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination” (Chicago, 2010). They “participated in everything from mystical discussion groups to drumming circles to yoga classes,” Dr. Bender said in an interview. And her finding that spirituality “is not sui generis,” but rather learned in communities that persist over time, actually runs contrary to spiritual people’s conceptions of themselves, she said. “There is something in the theology of spiritual groups that actually refocuses their practitioners from thinking about how they fit into a long continuous spirituality.” In other words, their self-image “makes them think, ‘I don’t need history, I don’t need the past,’ ” Dr. Bender said, adding that they think, “I am not religious, which is about the past — I am spiritual, about the present.”

Sanctuary

music by John Thompson & Randy Scruggs

v'asu li mikdash

v'shochanti b'tocham

va'anachnu n'varech Yah

mei-atah v'ad olam

O Lord prepare me

to be a sanctuary

pure and holy,

tried and true

With thanksgiving, I'll be a living

sanctuary for you.