Exodus 25:1 -27:19
Teruma - Gift, donation
2023
MJL
The medieval commentator Rashbam notes that the use of the word terumah, or gift, implies that this is something each person is to set aside from their own belongings. But as much as these gifts are supposed to come from the heart, it is not only the thought that counts. God is very specific about what is required: “These are the gifts that you shall accept,” God says. “Gold, and silver, and copper; blue, and purple, and crimson yarns; fine linen, and goat’s hair; tanned ram skins, dolphin skins, and acacia-wood, [along with oil, and spices, and incense].”
One of these things is not like the others. Yarn, ram skins, wood, incense — all of these make sense. But dolphin skins? Where on earth are the Israelites supposed to find dolphin skins in the middle of an arid wilderness?
Upon receiving the list of materials, I imagine the Israelites saying, “OK, we’re all good on the copper and the goat’s hair, but if you think we’re going hunting for a rainbow unicorn, you have got to be kidding.” But remember, the gifts are supposed to be from their own belongings. They aren’t supposed to go hunt for the unicorn. They are being told that they already have it. All they have to do is offer it up.
I would take Keller’s suggestion one step further, and suggest that we can’t always identify our gifts on our own. We are so used to defining ourselves by our particular roles — as lawyers or accountants, parents or caregivers — that we may not know that we also carry with us gifts of leadership, listening, or creativity. Just as we cannot perceive the rainbow contained within a ray of light until it is refracted through a prism, sometimes we can only identify our own gifts when they are reflected back to us through another’s eyes.
————-
SACKS
A Portable Home
Destruction of First Temple
“The prophet Ezekiel was one of those who shaped a vision of return and restoration, and it is to him we owe the first oblique reference to a radically new institution that eventually became known as the Beit Knesset, the synagogue: “This is what the sovereign Lord says: although I sent them far away among the nations and scattered them among the countries, yet I have become to them a small Sanctuary [Mikdash me’at] in the countries where they have gone” (Ezekiel 11:16). The central Sanctuary had been destroyed, but a small echo, a miniature, remained”
“The synagogue is one of the most remarkable examples of an itaruta de’letata, “an awakening from below.” It came into being not through words spoken by God to Israel, but by words spoken by Israel to God. There is no synagogue in Tanakh, no command to build local houses of prayer. On the contrary, insofar as the Torah speaks of a “house of God” it refers to a central Sanctuary, a collective focus for the worship of the people as a whole.1”
“Judaism created one of the greatest revolutions in the history of religion and society, for the synagogue was an entirely new environment for divine service, of a type unknown anywhere before.”2 It became, according to Salo Baron, the institution through which the exilic community “completely shifted the emphasis from the place of worship, the Sanctuary, to the gathering of worshippers, the congregation, assembled at any time and any place in God’s wide world.”3 The synagogue became Jerusalem in exile, the home of the Jewish heart. ”
“Where did it come from, this world-changing idea? It did not come from the Temple, but rather from the much earlier institution described in this week’s parasha: the Tabernacle. Its essence was that it was portable, made up of beams and hangings that could be dismantled and carried by the Levites as the Israelites journeyed through the wilderness. The Tabernacle, a temporary structure, turned out to have permanent influence, whereas the Temple, intended to be permanent, proved to be temporary – until, as we pray daily, it is rebuilt.”
“They shall make a Sanctuary for Me, and I will dwell in them [betokham]” (Exodus 25:8). The Jewish mystics pointed out the linguistic strangeness of this sentence. It should have said, “I will dwell in it,” not “ “I will dwell in them.” The answer is that the Divine Presence lives not in a building but in its builders; not in a physical place but in the human heart. ”
Voluntary Contribution
Solomon conscripted labor and became seen as an Israeli Pharaoh.
Division of kingdom. Rehoboam keeps conscript labor after Solomon dies. Rebels go to north c Jeroboam. Kingdom now divided and then more easily conquered.
“The Temple was intended to stand at the heart, geographical and spiritual, of a nation that had been taken by God from slavery to freedom. The faith of Israel therefore had to be an expression of liberty. Its Temple should have been built out of voluntary contributions, just as was the Tabernacle. This was no minor detail. It lay at the very heart of the project itself. Faith, coerced, is not faith. Worship, forced, is not true worship.”
The Home We Make for God
“The effect is unmistakable. The latter mirrors the former. As God made the universe so He instructed the Israelites to make the Mishkan. It is their first great constructive and collaborative act after crossing the Reed Sea, leaving the domain of Egypt and entering their new domain as the people of God.x x
Just as the universe began with an act of creation, so Jewish history (the history of a redeemed people) begins with an act of creation. The key words – make, see, complete, bless, sanctify, work, behold – are the same in both narratives. The effect is to suggest that making the Mishkan was, for the Israelites, what creating the universe was for God.”
“deeper wound of Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden.
Now, too, we understand why the making of the Tabernacle is recounted in such detail. It is to tell us that nothing was made by human initiative. Every measurement, every item, every feature of every vessel, represented God’s will made actual by the freely assenting human will. The Tabernacle mirrored the universe to tell us that we too can be creators of universes, but only if we heed the will of God.”
“The universe is the space God made for humanity. The Mishkan is the space human beings made for God. James Kugel puts this idea simply and elegantly. The point of the construction of the Tabernacle was, he says,
for them to open up a space in order to allow Him to fill it. And this is the most basic principle of our way, to open up such a space in our lives and in our hearts. Then such a space will have the capacity to radiate outward. So the holiness of the Mishkan radiated out to fill the whole camp of the Israelites during their wanderings, and the camp itself became changed as a result. And it was quite proper that the people be the ones to build God’s dwelling, because this is the way it always must be: the people create the space and then God can fill it.”
The Making of an Ark
God instructs Moses in the making of the Sanctuary and its appurtenances, detail by detail. In each case the verb is in the second person singular: vetzipita, ve’asita, veyatzakta, venatata, veheveta, “you shall cover… you shall make… you shall pour… you shall place…you shall bring.” However, there is one exception to this rule; the ark. There the verb is in the third person plural: ve’asu aron atzei shittim, “They shall make an ark of acacia wood.” Why “they,” not “you”? Why the shift from the singular to the plural?
The ark was made to hold the tablets of stone given to Moses by God at Mount Sinai:”
“The Torah calls the tablets “the testimony” (“And you shall put into the ark the testimony which I will give you,” Exodus 25:16) since they were the physical symbol of the Sinai covenant. According to the sages, “both the [complete second set of] tablets and the fragments of the [first] tablets [which Moses broke after the Golden Calf] were in the ark.”4 The ark, in short, symbolized and represented Torah.”
The reason, therefore, that the construction of the ark was commanded in the plural is that everyone was to have a share in it:
“In the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson translated this idea into the famous words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” What is interesting about this sentence is that “these truths” are anything but self-evident. They would have been regarded as subversive by Plato, who held that humanity is divided into people of gold, silver and bronze and that hierarchy is written into the structure of society.7 They would have been incomprehensible to Aristotle who believed that some were born to rule and others to be ruled.8 They are “self-evident” only to one steeped in the Bible.
“Physical goods – wealth and with it, power – always represent, at least in the short term, zero-sum games. The more I give away, the less I have. For that reason these are always arenas of conflict, in which there are winners and losers. Political and economic systems play the important function of mediating conflict by the imposition of rules (such as elections in the case of democracy, exchange in the case of market economies). In this way, competition does not degenerate into anarchy. That is the necessity for, and the glory, of politics and economics. But they do not create equality.
“Spiritual (sometimes called social or public) goods, however, have a different logic. They are non-zero-sum games. The more love or influence or trust I give away, the more I have. That is because they are goods the existence of which depends on being shared. They give rise to structures of co-operation, not competition. It has been one of the great discoveries of sociobiology on the one hand, and “civil society” or “communitarian” political thought on the other, that the survival of any group depends at least as much on co-operation as competition. No individual, however strong or gifted, can rival the achievements of a group in which each contributes his or her talents to an orchestrated, collective endeavour. On this, Aristotle and Maimonides agreed: Homo sapiens is, above all, a social animal whose very existence depends on specialization, co-operation and trust.9”
“It was the genius of Judaism to see that the primary social good is knowledge. The simplest and most effective way of creating a society of equal dignity is to make knowledge equally accessible to all. The symbol of this was the ark, the container of the most important of all bodies of knowledge, namely the Torah:”
“Initially, Israel did not have a monarchy. Throughout the long period covered by the Book of Judges it existed as a confederation of tribes without a political leader. At times of crisis individuals would emerge, known as “judges,” who would lead the people in battle, but they had no formal office or succession. Eventually in the days of Samuel the people asked for, and were given, a king.”
“With a touch of exaggeration, the historian Paul Johnson calls Judaism an “ancient and highly efficient social machine for the production of intellectuals.”17 It was, of course, not the production of intellectuals that motivated the Judaic love of learning, but rather the idea that a society structured around divine law should be one in which everyone had equal access to knowledge and therefore equal dignity as citizens in the republic of faith. It was, and remains, a beautiful idea, hinted at for the first time in the simple, yet resonant detail that though all else in the Tabernacle was constructed by individuals (“you”), the Ark belonged to everyone (“they”). Seldom has so slight a nuance signalled so high an ethical and intellectual ideal.”
Excerpt From
Covenent & Conversation
Jonathan Sacks
ALTER
“The Hebrew terumah is a noun derived from a verb that means “to elevate,” and, among several biblical terms for gift, it is the one that designates a donation for use in the cult or by the priests.
“The strong scholarly consensus is that these chapters are the work of the Priestly writers (P), and the fascination with all the minute details of cultic paraphernalia seems a clear reflection of P’s special interests”
“The Hebrew mishkan literally means “abode” (“that I shall abide in their midst”).”
Excerpt From
The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary
Robert Alter
KAPLAN - REUBEN
“D’rash: Kaplan’s Insight
Thus the presence of the multitude in public worship creates an atmosphere that profoundly influences the individual participant. It stirs in him emotions of gratitude and confidence that he could not experience in isolation. He knows his life to be part of a larger life, a wave of an ocean of being. This is first-hand experience of that larger life which is God.”
“What gives Jews our sense of religious identity is not primarily belief, he said, but rather our fundamental sense of belonging to the Jewish people.”
Excerpt From
A Year with Mordecai Kaplan
Steven Carr Reuben
WOMEN’S TORAH
“V’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham, “And let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell within them” (Exod. 25:8).”
“The sanctuary is not for God, it is for the people; it is to be a visible symbol of God’s presence in their midst. God’s promise to dwell among the people is a recognition of the limitations of human beings in trying to understand that God is everywhere. The tabernacle is a concession to humankind and provides a visible focus for the idea of God’s indwelling.”
“The indwelling of God among the people cannot take place as long as the people are passive, doing nothing to help bring the sacred into the world. God is saying, “My dwelling among them is on condition that they make the sanctuary.” We must do the building to glorify God. This is emphasized in the text by the Hebrew verb la’asot (to “make”). It occurs two hundred times in the story of the building of the sanctuary.”
Excerpt From
The Women's Torah Commentary
Rabbi Elyse Goldstein
MEN’S TORAH
“Vayik’chu li terumah me’et kol ish asher yidvenu libo, tik’chu et terumati, “that they take Me a donation from every man, as his heart may urge him you shall take My donation” (Genesis 25:1; translation from Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses [New York: Norton, 2008], p. 460). Terumah means a gift, a freewill offering with neither a minimum nor a maximum amount. Unlike the maaser, the yearly tithe that was a Temple tax of 10 percent of personal earnings, terumah is not quantified. In the case of terumah, the very act of giving has intrinsic value; the substance and the amount of the gift are, at best, secondary.”
Excerpt From
The Modern Men's Torah Commentary
Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin
HELD
“Luria taught that the existence of the world is made possible by an act of contraction or withdrawal on God’s part. God recoils or withdraws into Godself, leaving a space that is not God. This process of divine self-contraction, which Luria called tzimtzum, is what makes the existence of the world, of everything that is not God, possible.”
“It seems reasonable to conclude that the “design and function [of the mishkan] intended to capture something of the original creation, perhaps even to represent in miniature the original environment in which human beings were placed”
Excerpt From
The Heart of Torah, Volume 1
Shai Held
2022
וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃
And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.
ועשו. נקרא מקדש בעבור היותו משכן השם הקדוש:
AND LET THEM MAKE ME A SANCTUARY. The tabemacle is called a mikdash (a sanctuary) because it is the tabernacle of God the holy.
ושכנתי בתוכם (ט) ככל אשר אני מראה אותך וכו'. אשכון ביניהם לקבל תפלתם ועבודתם באותו האופן שאני מראה אותך שכינתי בהר על הכפרת בין שני הכרובים עם תבנית המשכן ועם תבנית כל כליו. כי אמנם תבנית המשכן תורה על כרובים, שהם שרפים עומדים ממעל לו הנראים לנביאים, ומהם בקדש, ומהם בקדש הקדשים, בשני מחברות מחוברות בקרסים להיות לאחדים לעבודת בוראם. וכן ראוי שיהיו בישראל כל קדושיו מחוברים אל ההמון להבין ולהורות. ובקדש הקדשים נתן התורה תוך גוף מצופה זהב מבית ומחוץ כאמרם ז''ל בזה (יומא פרק בא לו) כל תלמיד חכם שאין תוכו כברו אינו תלמיד חכם. ועל אותו הגוף שהוא הארון נתן כפורת כלו זהב, מורה על צלם אלהים בלתי מחובר עמו כלל. וכן כרובים פניהם איש אל אחיו מורים על פעולת המצאת המושכל וקבלתו, וזה בהביט אל התורה, כאמרו אל הכפרת יהיו פני הכרובים ובזה הם פורשים כנפים למעלה, כאמרו ארח חיים למעלה למשכיל ובזה יתעשת האלהים לנו כאמרו ואל זה אביט:
'ושכנתי בתוכם ככל אשר אני מראה אותך וגו, “I will dwell among them permanently in order to receive their prayers and their sacrificial offerings in a manner similar to the way I displayed My presence at the mountain.” Henceforth My presence will be manifest between the two cherubs on the lid of the Holy Ark as part of the overall structure called the Tabernacle. [I will paraphrase from here on in. Ed.]The author perceives of different degrees of holiness, just as the kabbalists perceive holiness in the extra terrestrial world as consisting of spiritually progressively higher different levels. The outer structure known as תבנית המקדש, “the format,” visual image, lead up to the cherubs in the innermost part of that structure. The very concept of the Tabernacle leads the intelligent viewer to conclude that hidden deep within it, G’d’s presence, שכינה must be manifest. The prophet Isaiah 6,2 phrased this as the שרפים עומדין ממעל לו, the types of angels of a rank known as “Seraphim” were in attendance above G’d’s throne. This was the closest to G’d’s essence that the prophets were shown in their visions. The terrestrial Tabernacle, if viewed as parallel to G’d’s throne in the celestial domains, contained different sections of progressively higher levels of sanctity which progressively restricted the type of people allowed to approach those levels. The Torah itself, for which the Holy Ark served as repository, was in an ark constructed of wood but overlaid with gold on the inside and on the outside, to reflect the saying of our sages in Yuma 72 that every Torah scholar whose external appearance did not reflect his internal stature is not a Torah scholar at all. The levels of sanctity in the Tabernacle, beginning already with the courtyard around it, were not sealed off from one another, but, on the contrary, were connected to one another all the way to the innermost sanctuary to demonstrate that sanctity is attainable progressively. On top of the physical box containing the spiritual teaching, the Torah, there was placed a lid also made from pure gold which symbolised the image of G’d. [in the sense that man was created in the image of G.d.] This lid was not linked, attached, to the ark itself at all. The detached nature of this “lid, כפורת,” symbolised that at a certain level of holiness there is no longer a physical bond with the human body, with the terrestrial domain, a domain which is essentially mortal, i.e. requiring regeneration from time to time. The description of the cherubs on top of the כפורת facing each other (verse 20) symbolises the interaction of the spiritual message contained in the Torah and its transmission to the human being studying it. The cherubs themselves are described as facing the lid, i.e. facing the Torah that is beneath that lid. As a result of such an attitude to Torah, i.e. looking to it for inspiration, the cherubs are then described as spreading their wings in an upward direction, as if reflecting that they had received spiritual inspiration enabling them to fly. This description of the cherubs’ posture reflects what Solomon described in Proverbs 15,24 אורח חיים למעלה למשכיל, “for an intelligent man the path of life is upward.” As a result of our relating to Torah in the manner described, we will merit what Isaiah 66,2 describes as ואל זה אביט, when he refers to the prerequisite character traits necessary to merit Divine inspiration.
ושכנתי בתוכם. ולא אמר בתוכו לומר שהמקום אשר יקדישו לשכנו יהיה בתוך בני ישראל שיקיפו המשכן בד' דגלים. ואולי כי דברים אלו הם תשובה למה שחשקו ישראל (במד''ר פ''ב) בראותם בהר סיני שהיה ברוך הוא מוקף בדגלי המלאכים והוא אות בתוכם וחשקו אהב להיות כן בתוכם, ולזה באה התשובה מבוחן לבות ואמר ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי כמו כן בתוכם:
That I may dwell among (within) them: It does not say "within it," which means that the place that God will sanctify to dwell there is within the children of Israel that encircle the Tabernacle with four banners.
ועשו ארון יחזור אל בני ישראל הנזכרים למעלה, ואחרי כן וצפית אותו (שמות כ״ה:י״א), ויצקת לו (שמות כ״ה:י״ב), וכולן בלשון יחיד, כי משה כנגד כל ישראל (מכילתא יתרו א). ויתכן שירמוז שיהיו כל ישראל משתתפין בעשיית הארון בעבור שהוא קדוש משכני עליון, ושיזכו כולם לתורה. וכן אמרו במדרש רבה (שמות לד ב) מפני מה בכל הכלים כתוב ועשית, ובארון כתיב ועשו ארון, א''ר יהודה בר' שלום אמר הקב''ה יבאו הכל ויתעסקו בארון שיזכו לתורה. והעסק, שיתנדב כל אחד כלי זהב אחד לארון, או יעזור לבצלאל עזר מעט, או שיכוונו לדבר:
AND THEY SHALL MAKE AN ARK. The plural [and ‘they’ shall make] refers back to the children of Israel mentioned above. But afterwards Scripture states: And thou shalt overlay it, And thou shalt cast for it — all in the singular, as Moses is the leader of all Israel. It is possible that [in using the plural — and they shall make] He is indicating His wish that all Israel should share in the making of the ark because it is the holiest dwelling-place of the Most High, and that they should all merit thereby [a knowledge of] the Torah. Thus the Rabbis have said in Midrash Rabbah: “Why is it that with reference to all the vessels it says, and thou shalt make, and in the case of the ark it says, and they shall make? Said Rabbi Yehudah the son of Rabbi Shalom: The Holy One, blessed be He, said, Let all the people come and engage themselves in the making of the ark, so that they should all merit [a knowledge of] the Torah.” The “engaging themselves” of which the Rabbi speaks means that they should each offer one golden vessel [for the making of the ark, in addition to their general offering for the building of the Tabernacle], or that they should help Bezalel in some small way, or that they should have intent [of heart in the making thereof].
(ז) וַיִּקַּח֙ סֵ֣פֶר הַבְּרִ֔ית וַיִּקְרָ֖א בְּאׇזְנֵ֣י הָעָ֑ם וַיֹּ֣אמְר֔וּ כֹּ֛ל אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּ֥ר יְהֹוָ֖ה נַעֲשֶׂ֥ה וְנִשְׁמָֽע׃
(7) Then he took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will faithfully do!”-a
(א) ויקח. כאשר קרא באזני הזקנים וקבלו על נפשם אז לקח חצי הדם הנשאר וזרקו על העם. והם הזקנים. כי הם כנגד כל ישראל. כמו שכתוב בפר העלם דבר של צבור וסמכו זקני העדה את ידיהם שהם כנגד כל ישראל.
(1) AND HE TOOK. When Moses read the Book of the Covenant to the elders and they accepted it upon themselves, he then took the remaining half of blood and sprinkled it upon the people, that is, the elders, for they stood for all of Israel. We similarly find the same regarding the bullock offered for an error made by the congregation. We read there, And the elders of the congregation, who were representing all of Israel, shall lay their hands upon the head of the bullock (Lev. 4:15).
The Atlantic
http://TheAtlantic.com
Whoopi Goldberg Comments on Race
Looking back at old stereotypes is a useful exercise; it can help illustrate the arbitrary nature of the concept of “race,” and how such identities shift even as people insist on their permanence and infallibility. Because race is not real, it is malleable enough to be made to serve the needs of those with the power to define it, the certainties of one generation giving way to the contradictory dogmas of another.
https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/ki-tissa/two-types-of-religious-encounter/