Why Does the
Tabernacle Matter?
A Drash for
Saturday, 16 February 2013
In following the weekly Torah portions for the last few weeks,
you’ve been treated to a tour of compelling narratives. Moses’ election to lead the people Israel to
freedom. His encounter with
Pharaoh. The plagues. The parting of the sea. The encounter on Mt. Sinai. The ‘Top Ten’ Commandments. Legislation on ‘big’ issues that gives us
pause to think. And now this week’s
reading…
“Bring me gifts…gold, silver, copper, blue. Purple, and crimson
yarns, linen, goats hair, ram skins, dolphin skins, acacia wood, oil, spices,
lapis lazuli and other stones…make me an ark of acacia wood, two and a half
cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. Overlay it with pure gold inside and out, and
make upon in a gold moulding around.
Cast four gold rings to be attached to its four feet…make poles of
acacia wood and overlay them with gold, then insert the poles into the rings on
the sides for carrying the ark…” As Yul Brenner
famously said in The King and I: Et
cetera, et cetera.
From the sublime to the boring.
From the narratives of great events and concepts, to a set of precise
instructions for building a box in which to carry a couple of stone
carvings. Well, guess what? The rest of the book of Exodus is more of the
same, except for a brief interruption for the Golden Calf. Otherwise, from here on in it’s about detailed
instructions for crafting objects that you and I have never seen.
Reading these parts of Exodus, how are we supposed to be
inspired? What is the lesson to take
away, that we can apply to our lives in our own day and age? Is there one?
The instructions
that we’re reading this morning come from well over 3,000 years in the
past. Jewish history has taken some
interesting twists and turns since then.
Including our religious practices and our religious ‘space.’ From the Tabernacle to the Temple to the
synagogue to Temple Shalom, dedicated on this spot in 1992.
Many of you have
travelled extensively. Sometimes in the
course of your travels you visit synagogues in various and exotic locales. Synagogue architecture varies considerably
from place to place. Jewish buildings
dedicated to communal worship in different parts of the world, are built to
different stylistic motifs that evolve over time. A synagogue in Berlin does not look like a
synagogue in Calcutta, which in turn does not resemble a synagogue in Curacao. Of course, a traditional synagogue has
separate men’s and women’s seating sections, while a progressive synagogue does
not. And yet, there are common elements
that link them all. And if they weren’t
there, the buildings could still be used for worship. But no congregation would think about
omitting those elements. All of those
elements are found in our sanctuary.
What are they?
Some representation
of the Ten Commandments. An Ark for
keeping the Torah scrolls, with some Biblical verse inscribed. With a curtain and a constant light
above. And scattered throughout the sanctuary,
certain symbols are considered required.
The Magen David – usually lots of them!
The Menorah. Some symbolic
representation of the Tribes of Israel.
The shape of the room varies. The
floor coverings vary. The layout of the
furniture varies. But no congregation
would dream of omitting any of the important symbols or objects. Despite there being no Halachah concerning
them, we know they’re supposed to be here. When we design and build a space for Jewish
worship, there are certain rules as to what’s included. And these rules have evolved over centuries.
I once built a new
Jewish chapel. In addition to working
with the architect to hammer out the room’s size, shape and orientation, I got
to design and commission all the furniture.
The Ark. The reading table. The matching parochet – the curtain
for the Ark – and mappah – the covering for the table. The ner tamid. The commander gave me a budget, and I
took the money and spent it! The
resulting chapel was very different from, say our sanctuary here. It was more contemporary, more spare, more
functional in a utilitarian way. It had
my own personality all over it. But any
non-Jew seeing that chapel and this sanctuary would surely recognise both as
being executions of a worship space for the same religion, because despite my
affecting a very different style, I included all the same required elements –
the same ones you see in different renderings here. Any Jew stepping into the chapel, whether its
particular style was exactly to his liking or not, would recognise immediately
that he was in a Jewish space and would feel comfortable.
But in our reading
this morning, the people Israel are about to build their very first
Tabernacle. There are no long traditions
as to what it looks like. As to what
goes into it. So the people have to be
instructed. Because it matters.
It matters because
God is the constant in the upheavals of life:
for our ancient forebears as for us.
The wandering in the wilderness epitomises the dislocation and disorientation
that many of us can feel as we follow our lives’ courses. Wherever we go, wherever we wander, however
we organise our lives, God – and the way we approach Him – provides the
unchanging anchor that gives us a sense of who we are and what our destiny
is. And our worship space, the sanctuary
built by the local congregation for its use, is the visible reminder of that
constancy.
The people Israel
have just been freed from Egyptian bondage.
Of course, they are grateful for their liberation. But along with that liberation comes a need
to live with a lack of constancy in their lives, and this is frightening to the
people. Many times during the sojourn in
the wilderness, they petition Moses to let them go back to Egypt. At least there, they knew what to expect on a
day-to-day basis. Moses knows that
constancy is a very real need. But he
also knows that they will never live out their destiny as slaves to Pharaoh. So he is introducing structure into their
lives. That structure is symbolic of
God’s constant presence. Of God’s
watching out for them. Wherever they
roam, God is the constant. Wherever they
roam, if they sense God’s presence then they are home.
We don’t often think
of this concept, but we certainly feel it.
Whenever we visit a new place and go to the local synagogue, we mentally
compare it to the place we know best. If
we attend a service elsewhere, we compare it to the service in our home
congregation. And this is not unique to
Jews. If you visit other faiths’ houses
of worship in various places, you note the same constancy in décor and
furnishing even though styles differ. If
you attend their worship services, you’ll note the similarities in the service
from place to place. A Pentacostal
service in the USA, Australia, or Mali is going to be pretty much the same
allowing for differences of language.
Likewise, our neighbours – the Latter Day Saints. Look at their synagogue architecture from
place to place, and attend services here and there, and you’ll definitely see
the constancy.
So what about the non-religious?
Well, the non-religious person looks for this constancy in other facets
of life and lifestyle, because it is a human need that transcends the
differences between the religious and the non-religious.
This need for an anchor in life’s vagaries, and the account of how
the people Israel achieved it, is for me a key lesson in these pages. God’s instruction through Moses, and the
people’s carrying out that instruction, provides them with the sense of place
necessary to endure the wilderness. They
still find their sojourn difficult, and they still complain and rebel. Resistance is part of the process. That, plus we’re often stubborn in various
ways. But that doesn’t negate the
reality that we need, and we seek constancy in our lives. We build structure and stubbornly defend it. And we should, because it matters. The Tabernacle matters, and not just because
it chronicles the activities of our distant ancestors. It matters because of the lessons into our
nature and needs as human beings, that it holds. Shabbat shalom.
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