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Shabbat Terumah - 2/8/08

Miracles. What constitutes a miracle? Perhaps a subjective question. For me, for example, as an extremely busy parent, a quiet house with no one else in it to bother me, feels nothing short of miraculous.

What about in our Biblical text - really is the definition of a miracle any less subjective? So far in Exodus, we have encountered two biggies: redemption and revelation. On Shabbat Shira, a few weeks ago, we recalled the freeing of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage - a story so ingrained in our Jewish psyche that we relive it through its retelling not just in the yearly Torah cycle but on the festival of Pesach through our experience of the Haggadah. God’s intervention - the miracle if you will - is full of high drama, barbaric plagues, emotional and physical upheaval culminating in an arduous journey through the parted Reed sea and finally to celebration on the other side.

Then, on what appears to be the heels of redemption, but upon a closer look at the text, we find follows quite a bit of grumbling, quarreling, and a myriad of disputes, comes Revelation. Again, high drama - if the battle with Amalek wasn’t enough to get the Israelites’ attention - here God makes an un-ignorable statement replete with smoke, trembling mountains, fire and lightening, loud thunderous noise - all this to accompany God’s, albeit grand, but 10 statements, 10 guidelines, that later will be fleshed out, but are handed down, according to the Biblical text, in a miraculous and dramatic moment. Again, a story we relive often. Tradition reminds us that all of us were at Sinai - this was not just a miraculous singular moment for the Israelites, the Rabbinic sages implore us to understand it as a moment intended for all future generations. We too were at at Sinai.

So what follows all of this drama - parashat Terumah. At first sight, the first fundraising appeal: וידבר יי אל משה לאמר: דבר אל בני ישראל ויקחו לי תרומה - bring me gifts. But reading on, this portion lays out in extraordinary, if not tedious and meticulous detail of how to construct the Tabernacle and all that goes into it.

These are not simple IKEA-style, one man or woman can do it, instructions. For example with regard to the planks for the structure our text requires “...The length of each to be be 10 cubits and width a cubit and a 1/2. Each shall have two tenons, parallel to each other...make 20 planks on the south side, making 40 silver sockets under the 20 planks, 2 sockets under the one plank for its two tenons and 2 sockets under each...” and so on. I consider myself pretty handy. Just this past weekend Andrea & I put together one of those supposedly easy to build shelves for my ‘not so new anymore’ house. But if that shelf came with instructions as convoluted and demanding as those that are dictated by God in our parasha, you can bet, I’d have returned it pretty quickly.

Of course, the Israelites don’t seem to have that choice - we assume that they had no choice. But didn’t they? Of course if the Tabernacle didn’t get built, the entire story of the Israelites would end here. Ah... perhaps just as important as redemption and revelation is the miracle of the building of the Tabernacle - not a miracle performed dramatically by God, but rather a miracle performed by the determined and cooperative labors of the people.

The Tabernacle - the mishkan - the first formal place of worship, of gathering for the community. A place that is to be a symbol of God’s presence and ultimately of communal unity. Far from the drama of the stories leading up to this point in Israelite history, and yet the process of building the Tabernacle is just as defining of peoplehood. As Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson notes in his The Bedside Torah, the building of the Tabernacle marks a second creation - the creation of the Jewish people.

Note, I said the process. Certainly Jews are not defined by the buildings they build. The text makes it very clear that it is not the material gifts that determine the success. In a few weeks, indeed we will read in Vayakhel, that so many gifts were brought, so many material offerings, that Moses was forced to proclaim to all: "אלֹ־יאשוּ עוד מלאכה לתרומת הקדש" - stop making further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary. Stop your individual donations. We should all - each of our congregations - be so fortunate to have to stop individual gift giving.

What is needed - what God is requiring here in these instructions is a communal effort. All the materials - the blue, purple & crimson yarns for example, the dolphin skins, the gold, the talents of silver described at length - none of it matters if the Israelites are unable to work together to get it done. No matter the amount of material riches bestowed on any community, our synagogues included, not a penny of it is worth a damn unless the individuals work together towards a unified goal.

The Israelite saga - their growth from a vagabond group of slaves into people with a shared identity and mission is begun with redemption and revelation, but it is solidified by accomplishing this great and miraculous task. Only now, not simply as passive recipients of God’s interventions, but rather as God’s active partners, can they continue on their journey foward.

It is revealing how much textual space is given to the descriptions regarding and the building of this first mishkan. Save for but one diversion, the Tabernacle will now take up the rest of the book of Exodus. And when do we find out if they finish? Not until the penultimate chapter of the book of Exodus, does the reader learn, “וַתֵּ֕כֶל כּל־עבוד֕ת משכּ֖ן א֣הל מוע֑ד” “Thus was completed all the work of the Tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting. The Israelites did so; just as Adonai commanded Moses, so they did.” Now that - is nothing short of miraculous!

Shabbat shalom.

Cantor Rhoda J. H. Silverman