This week’s Torah portion, Terumah, has been near and dear
to my heart for a long time. In the
school year 1991-1992, I was in my first year of rabbinical seminary, in
Israel. One hoop we rabbinical students
had to jump through, was to prepare a drash, a sermonette, on one weekly Torah
portion and deliver it in the college synagogue during a weekday morning
service. My assigned portion was Terumah.
Looking back not
long afterward, the assignment seemed rather silly; we were to prepare a homily
before we’d ever been taught homiletics.
And to comment on a Torah portion before ever being schooled in
commentaries. Of course now, with the passage
of many years, it is possible to see different dimensions to it. Perhaps we were supposed to experience the
process in order to internalise the lesson that it wasn’t quite so simple. But regardless of the thinking behind the
assignment, there is an incontrovertible truth.
And that is that each year, when Terumah is the weekly portion, I
smile to myself about the experience.
And I prepare a drash on Terumah that pretty much says the same
thing that I said on that morning in the seminary synagogue, all those years
ago. And I pray that my accumulated
experience has enabled me to deliver The Message in a way that is more
coherent.
The reading opens
with the Israelites being instructed to bring to Hashem gifts of various materials,
as their hearts might move them. They
were to bring gold, silver, and copper.
Blue, purple, and crimson yarns.
Fine linen and goat’s hair. Ram
and dolphin skins. Acacia wood, oil, and
spices. Various precious stones. And the purpose of all these material gifts? Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I might
dwell amongst them.
It is easy to read
this as saying that, absent the sanctuary that would result from the use of all
these material gifts, Hashem would have no place to dwell. But that would counter the message conveyed
in Psalm 24: The earth of the Lord’s
and the fullness therein. This
sentiment echoes throughout the Psalms; just read your way through the selected
chapters of that book that comprise the preliminaries to the Shabbat evening or
morning service. And then, in the 23rd
Chapter of Jeremiah, Hashem declares: Do
I not fill heaven and earth?
With all this, how
else might we understand the verse, Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I
might dwell amongst them? Well, for
one thing, we might read betocham, often translated amongst them, differently.
The word could easily be translated, inside
them. As in, in their hearts. Viewed this way, the sanctuary’s purpose is
not to provide a dwelling-place for Hashem. Rather, it is to create a visible sign of His
presence, so that we would allow Him to dwell within us.
Most of my life, I
was an iconoclast. The word has its
origin in early Christians who fought against the use of icons, or religious
imagery, to depict G-d. In general use
today, it means someone who minimises the importance of visual symbols. But over the years, experiences have taught me
that symbols are powerful and not to be pooh-poohed.
The day that I
suggested to my colleagues on a multi-faith chaplain staff that their insistence
on erecting a Christmas tree and other Christmas decorations in the chapel was
silly, I began to understand this. My basic
argument was sound: if it was truly a
multi-faith chapel, then to decorate it gaudily for one group’s holiday was not
appropriate. But he way that it came out
of my mouth, suggesting that my colleagues’ communities’ attachment to these
symbols to the point that they would not be able to worship absent them was
silly, was simply wrong. Wrong, because
it did not take into account the power of these symbols.
Symbols are
powerful. They are the visible signs of
things that cannot be seen, that are beyond seeing. We cannot see Hashem. But when we go out of our way to erect a
sanctuary to Him, we create something that we can see, and touch. And when we see and touch that
something, we feel as if we are seeing and touching Hashem Himself.
If that is so, then
why do these visible symbols not bring out the best in us? Why is it that, when we’re in the sanctuary,
or in the building that serves as a sanctuary, that we’re probably as likely to
indulge in gossip, or engage in nasty interactions, as we would elsewhere?
It’s not an easy
question to answer. Perhaps it is
because, in our heart of hearts, many of us simply to not believe that Hashem
is real or cares. Even in the place
dedicated particularly to invoking G-d’s presence, we choose to behave in ways
that the Torah forbids. Ways that are
absolutely intuitive, even if we are not personally so familiar with the
details of what the Torah teaches.
So does that call
into question the enterprise of building ‘sanctuaries’ as symbols of G-d’s
Presence? No, I don’t think so. But when we focus only on the
brick-and-mortar type of ‘sanctuary,’ we limit the totality of what a ‘sanctuary’
might be.
It might be – and in
fact I would argue so – that the ultimate sanctuary for Hashem to be
present, is within us. And when we snipe
at one another, or defame one another, or engage in striving with one another
whose sole purpose can only be seen as wanting to lord it over to one another? Then we make it impossible for Hashem to dwell
among us. This, no matter how much we
will have collectively donated for the erection of edifices to remind us of G-d’s
Presence.
In reality, that’s
why you, who are listening to me speak these words tonight, are here in this
room, and not in temple you-know-what. You
saw that as an empty edifice, as a place full of symbols representing G-d’s
reality, but where G-d is not allowed to dwell.
Because He does not dwell in the hearts of the people leading that
congregation. Instead of a shell serving
to preserve one of the sparks of G-d’s light, that place proved to be an empty
shell.
Often, as I’ve
attested to you from my own experience, the notions we hold prove to be wrong. When they are, it takes a certain honesty and
maturity to admit it to oneself and to change one’s mind. But sometimes we’re correct from the
start. In those cases, the honesty and maturity
that we exercise, helps us to articulate those truths more and more coherently
with the passage of time. Shabbat
shalom.
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