Sunday, February 22, 2009

Building a Tabernacle, Creating a World

The parshah Terumah is akin to an ancient Hebrew version of Architectural Digest. It’s a guidebook to building the Mishkan -- the Tabernacle -- in intricate detail.

What happened to the great spirituality we’ve seen radiating from Moses’ encounters with the Kadosh Barukh Hu? Has ruach somehow become lost in a sea of minutiae? For crying out loud, in the afterglow of our greatest moment as a people – in this reading, we’re measuring curtains!

As usual, we’re better served by taking a closer look at these “trivial” details ... for as we know, Torah is rarely found on the surface of the text. And since the Mishkan is a place to enable the people to connect with God and holiness, we know that there must be more to this Parshah than meets the naked eye.

We’re creatures of flesh and blood and cannot exist on a purely spiritual plane. We must infuse our worship with the concrete world -- and at the same time, take care that we do not let the concrete world overtake us.

It’s hard having a God whom we cannot see or even visualize. After all, we relate to the world through our senses! The Torah shows us that we can and should find concrete expression of our worship -- as long as we stay focused on God and God’s Oneness.

The Zohar tells us: Rabbi Yose was once deep in study, Rabbi Isaac and Rabbi Hezekiah being with him. Said Rabbi Isaac: We are aware that the structure of the Tabernacle corresponds with the structure of heaven and earth.

A medieval commentator, the Or Hachayyim, explains this further: God equated the building of the Mishkan with the creation of the earth itself!

Simply put, we cannot ignore the details of the Tabernacle any more than a surgeon can avoid the study of anatomy! Let’s take a look at just one of the allusions..

Exodus 26.1 says: “Make the Tabernacle of ten strips of cloth.”

Simple instruction - or deeper meaning?

Below the surface, the Or Hachayyim compares the ten strips of cloth to God’s ten utterances with which tradition teaches that He created the universe.

Ten is certainly a number signifying foundation. We have ten fingers, five on each hand. It takes ten to have a minyan, a quorum for public prayer.

God spoke ten times and created the world. We could easily say dayeinu, that’s enough -- but we have more ... the Aseret Hadibrot, the Ten Statements -- better known as the Ten Commandments -- God’s spoken revelation to the entire people Israel ... these utterances also created .. not only the foundation for all Torah, but the beginning of Jews as a people.

In mysticism, we have the ten sefirot, or Emanations and Attributes of God. Ten represents our understanding, feeble though it may be, of God’s nature.

Therefore, the Or Hachayyim says that through construction with these ten strips of cloth, the Israelites received merit for building the Mishkan as if they had created the universe itself.

This Torah portion has this and so much more to teach us. Stay tuned for more. And please share your questions and comments!

Rabbi Shaina

1 Comments:

At March 11, 2009 at 9:23 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why do we spend so much time on numbers? 10 this, 18 that, the 1st born and on and on. Then we had to build the tabernacle and everything had to be perfect. Even Noah, who wasn't even Jewish, (I don't think) had to have everything just right. I feel like as a Jew, sometimes we spend a lot of time counting even in todays world, you can't walk into shul without seeing people making sure all ten are accounted for. Shavua Tov. Susan

 

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