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| "The erection of the Tabernacle and Sacred Vessels lllustration from the 1728 Figures de la Bible; illustrated by Gerard Hoet (1648–1733) and others, and published by P. de Hondt in The Hague; |
The 1728 depiction of the construction of the ancient Tabernacle on your handout was an attempt to imagine what the Israelite center for worship must have looked like. You can see Moses in the drawing with rays of light coming off of his head. That would be Aaron next to him, already wearing the breastplate with stones signifying the 12 tribes of Israel. All of the furnishings for the Tabernacle appear ready to be moved to their designated spots. What this drawing illustrates is the nearly finished product. The question is….how did that project get that far? How would the Israelites in the wilderness have had anything with them that could have been used in constructing even a portable holy place?
One
answer to those questions might be, “Don’t ask! It’s there in the text – it happened – the people must have
had something with them to make it happen!” Some scholars have suggested that there was no
Tabernacle in the wilderness, but that it was imagined by later generations of
the people of Israel who worshipped regularly at the Temple in Jerusalem. They likely thought that their
ancestors who had left Egypt must have created a portable version of a
forerunner of the Temple.
From those notions may have come the detailed descriptions contained in
the Torah which were distinctively portrayed in the drawing before us from
1728.
Whether the
Tabernacle and Sanctuary were real or not may not matter. Any community has to
start somewhere. Last Sunday, our
4th-5th grade class went into the storage room behind the
sanctuary that houses prayerbooks that we used to use, prayerbooks we use now,
old copies of the Hertz Pentateuch, and, unexpectedly, a collection of
scrapbooks, photo albums, and envelopes with photos from past events at Temple
Beth-El. We are talking
about 60 years of history being depicted in those photos, from the time when
this community was just getting started in creating the foundations of its
organizational structure and in developing relationships among leaders and
members that would make all future growth of Temple Beth-El possible. Newspaper clippings in the scrapbooks
go back to the 1950s. The photos
encompass a time before there was a building, to many events in the building on
Parker Road, to photos of the groundbreaking at this location. Every article, every face in those
photos, bears significance to the legacies created in this congregation over
the decades. What our
current Religious School students uncovered was a treasure-trove of images and
stories that have contributed to making Temple Beth-El what it is today.
What we have here now, this
building and our community, have their roots in the gathering and wanderings of
the ancient Israelites. Whatever
their actual history, they were creating memories all their own. For the moment, let’s assume that the Tabernacle in the
wilderness did exist in some form.
What is crucial is the message contained at the beginning of this week’s
Torah reading, which is on the handout. While Moses was on Mount Sinai, God instructed him to
command the Israelites to bring gifts that would be used to make the Tabernacle,
its furnishings, and the sacred garments for the priests. To do that would take many,
many gifts of raw materials.
So how did the Israelites come to have all that was needed for the
project? Commentators assert
that they did have some possessions while they lived in Egypt. And when they
left, as we are told in Exodus Chapter 12, the Egyptians urged the Israelites
to keep objects of silver and gold as well as clothing that they had loaned to
them.
So that is how the large quantity of
materials for the project came to be in the possession of this formerly
enslaved people.
What was more important than the contributions themselves of the items
listed in this week’s Torah reading was the requested attitude that would
motivate the giving. God
told Moses, “You shall accept gifts FOR Me from every person whose heart moves
him/her to do so.” The
donations had to be voluntary, coming from the deepest desires of the
people. It didn’t matter how
much they gave, as long as the sum total of the gifts would make the completion
of the Tabernacle possible.
Giving willingly and with humility was all that was asked of the
Israelites. The word for
gifts, TERUMAH, means something that was “elevated,” “exalted” or “lifted up.” Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev (as
noted in the Etz Hayim Torah commentary) explained that offering any gift to
God takes the donor to a higher level, no matter what his or her motivation.
The Biblical
garden project that we are now witnessing come to fruition outside Temple also
has required donations from community members. Every brick, every gift, every idea, and every
inspiration related to this effort is like the materials that the Israelites
were commanded to bring. One
goal for the Biblical garden outside is that it will offer a special site for
meditation – much like the Tabernacle, which was mostly an outdoor space for
worship. That area
outside our building will carry with it the sentiment expressed in God’s
command to Moses, “Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.” Rabbi Kerry Olitzky noted in a
recent post online that he retranslates that phrase in this way: “Let them make
me a sanctuary…but I will dwell among them.” In other words, our efforts at creating sacred space
offer us tangible reminders of what is intangible in life that comprises our
foundation of central Jewish values, such as love, connection, caring, support, faith, hope, goodness,
kindness, and peace.
Creating holiness in space can continue to inspire us to infuse holy
principles into our character, which can elevate all that we give to each other
to a higher level. They can lead
us to fashion a legacy of holiness that will strengthen who we are as a community,
a people, and as members of the human family. May the gifts we bring, and the spaces we create, add
quality and meaning to every day of our lives.
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