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Drash
for Shabbat Terumah The Lord spoke to Moses, "And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them." The parsha for this week records the instructions to the Israelites to build the Mishkan, the Tabernacle which will house the Ark of the Covenant, to carry the tablets given to Moses for the people. A symbol of God's presence, its mobility permits the Tabernacle to accompany the Israelites on their journey to the Promised Land. What a mind-boggling paradox. A finite home for God? A specified location to discover him? Doesn't God exist everywhere? There is an interesting midrash in which Moses quotes the words of Solomon (who actually lived 500 years later) when he said: "Behold the heavens and the earth cannot contain Thee, O Lord." And yet we have God reside in the Mishkan. For many of us God is transcendent, everywhere, filling all of space. My classmates in Rabbi's Zohar class are familiar with the concept of tsimtsum, when God, Ein Sof, a God without limit, without defined borders, had to diminish himself, to contract, in order to make space for the creation of the world. So why would such a God have need of the Mishkan? Do we reach out to the unreachable by building him a Temple? In a recent Adult Education Academy Course, Rabbi Cohon addressed our multidimensional perceptions of God. There are a great many names for God, and an equal number of concepts. One of those names is Makom, a Place, just the opposite of an infinite Ein Sof who is everywhere. So why do we need the Mishkan? Several of our scholars and sages have addressed this conundrum. Franz Rosenzweig suggests that the building of the Mishkan was in repayment to God for rescuing us from slavery in Egypt. After years of slavery building edifices for the Pharaoh in Egypt, we now could willingly and voluntarily build something in dedication to God. Other scholars liken the construction of the Ark to a version of creation. The Tabernacle was built with six sections, and completed with the Holy of Holies, the seventh section, just as God made the world in six days, and on the seventh day God created the Sabbath. Sforno, a 15th century Italian scholar reminds us that the Tabernacle was created after the Israelites strayed by building the Golden Calf, and perhaps is meant to be sort of pay-back time. And Rabbi Mati Bar-Or suggests that God reduced Himself in size to fit into the Tabernacle in order to be more easily understandable, so that we could connect more easily. The existence of the Tabernacle and the synagogue might make the incomprehensible a bit more reachable, kind of God in a Box. Mordecai Kaplan explains that Judaism, among other things, is a community, a people with common goals and beliefs who want a place to gather together. One can experience God anywhere, but the Temple provides us a focal point to seek our God, to begin our search. We need a tangible means and a place to reach out to God. It isn't really that we made the Tabernacle for God; it seems more likely that he designed the Temple for us. It is up to us to create within ourselves a meaningful dialogue of these two viewpoints, the abstract, placeless concept of God, and the experience of a more concrete image found in a defined place. We are not limited. We can have more than one point of view. And if we broaden our perspective of our faith, perhaps we may better understand God's place in our world. Shabbat Shalom.
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