Monday, February 3, 2014

Dvar Torah - Terumah - Mishkan in the Heart

Parshat Terumah 5774/2014

Superbowl Sunday is as close to a national holiday as a sporting event can be in this country.  Last year, over 108 million people watched the game, that’s a full third of the population of the entire country.  In the last (2012) presidential election, it’s estimated some 126 million people voted.  It’s nice to know that the democratic process wins out against a ground game of carrying a ball over a line without getting a klop on the kop, regarding participation, albeit by less than 20%.  Clearly, there is something about this event that attracts attention, the question is whether it has anything to do with the football game.

The remainder of Sefer Shemot, the Book of Exodus, offers us a similar question.  The bulk of Exodus now will describe the design, creation, and assembly of the Mishkan, a portable Holy Place where the priests will minister to God’s Presence with prayers and sacrifices as the Israelites wander from place to place in the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land.

Despite the lengthy and precise description of each part of the Mishkan, from the walls to the pegs, the structure is meaningless and empty until the tail end of the Book when God’s Presence fills it.  The same is true of anything we build or create.  Until we build the bookcase, it’s just a big door jamb.  Until kickoff, the Super Bowl is just an occasion for socializing, tourism, and entertainment.  And, by the way, after the game is over.  The winning team returns home to its city where, often, citizens celebrate them with a big parade and hoopla downtown.  I wonder why we can put up a big parade for a football team and there’s not much chance for military veterans returning from service in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to walk down the street to cheers and thanks?

As God begins to explain the design of the Mishkan, God says, “Ve’asu li mikdash ve’shachanti betocham.”  “Let them make for me a holy place and I will dwell amongst them.”  We expect God to say, “Make me a holy place and I will dwell in it, betocho instead of betocham, in them.” But God does not say that.  The Chen-Tov explains that we should not think that the most important parts of the Mishkan are its planks and the various items inside.  Rather, the people should know that their first responsibility is to purify their hearts, purify from the inside, so that the Shechinah, God’s Presence, will live within them, within us.

We’re supposed to build the holiness and spirit within ourselves first, and then that overflows into how we relate to others and to the world.  God teaches us this lesson that the later thinkers put together by example, from the beginning of thinking about the Mishkan.  The first thing that is described is the Ark, the place where the Holy Presence will be, the innermost piece, rather than any of the walls or supports that surround it, creation from the inside out.

We see that the journey of faith asks us to take not a ‘leap of faith’ but rather a ‘leap of trust’.  If we can open to the possibility that God can and will guide us, and like a trust fall be willing to allow ourselves to be carried, then we just might be able to let go of much of the stress and tension of living that comes from our need to measure and control.  No doubt, God asks the Israelites to build a Mishkan and to measure out each piece to the cubit.  There is value in precision, delicacy, and care in all human endeavors. 

But, we are not God.  We don’t have God’s eternal vision, and so we can choose God as our guide, our shepherd, just like in Psalm 23, God is my shepherd, and I lack nothing.

Putting trust in God, making God the ‘head coach’ as it were, could be a lot like realizing that, maybe, in the end, the Superbowl really is not about the game but about the community of friends and family who get together to watch, that it’s the people, and our hearts, that make the day special, the players who have gutted it out all season to get to this point, the soldiers defending our freedom who are watching from tents and barracks abroad, these are what are important.


As the great Rabbi of Kotzk said, “Each of us must build a Mishkan I our hearts, and God will live there.”

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