Sitting Together Intentionally - Parashat Trumah 2021

Vasu li Mikdash Vschochanti Btocham-Make me a sanctuary that I, God, might dwell amongst them. 

This is probably one of the most famous lines in our torah. This verse has been broken down to think about God and spirituality and what it means for God to dwell. But, I would imagine that the word most rarely focused on was the word Mikdash-sanctuary.

Often, we glossed over it-it meant tabernacle and now it means shul but we wanted to get to the essence of the rest of the verse.

But today, this word stops me in my tracks. What does this word “MIKDASH” mean? 

It has the root “holiness”-so for sure it is a place of great sanctity

It is a noun-a gathering place-something special and distinct

What has this word, mikdash, or sanctuary, come to mean this year? It was a year ago this shabbat (though Feb 29 2020) where Danna Levine became bat mitzvah. The country was just beginning to try to understand what Covid was. We were talking about “an abundance of caution.” We started using a phrase called “social distancing.” But we had no idea what we were about to be in for…

And yet, we never stopped gathering. So what is the essence of this word and why, later on throughout the parasha, do we talk about the mishkan, the tabernacle, and we don’t use the other word, mikidash, sanctuary. 

Let’s start at the beginning: Why does there need to be a physical place for God to dwell? Isn’t god everywhere? 

Rabbi Robbie Harries wrote:

Many of our rabbis have sought to understand why God would have needed any kind of earthly “dwelling.” The 15th-century Spanish commentator Rabbi Isaac Abravanel raised some of these questions at the beginning of his commentary on the parashah:

Why did [God] command the erection of the tabernacle, when [God] said “that I may dwell among them,” as if God were an object demarcated and limited in space—which is the opposite of the truth!... After all, God himself spoke these words through the prophet Isaiah (66:1): “The heavens are my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what kind of house can you build for me?”

One answer, suggested by commentators both ancient and modern, is that the purpose of the Tabernacle is to be understood not in the context of God’s needs, as it were, but in Israel’s. Thus, the Sefer Ha-hinukh, a work which reflects Maimonides’s attempt to count and explain the 613 commandments of the Torah, begins its explanation of the Tabernacle with the following exhortation:

God’s command to build the Tabernacle, for us to offer therein our prayers and sacrifices, comes not out of God’s needs to dwell in an earthly dwelling among humankind, but rather [out of God’s awareness that we need] train our own selves . . . .

So: What was the purpose of the Tabernacle within the context of the biblical narrative and ancient Israelite understandings of worship? Let us turn to the explanation offered by a more recent commentator, Moshe David (Umberto) Cassuto, late Professor of Bible at Hebrew University in Jerusalem:

In order to understand the significance and purpose of the Tabernacle, we must realize that the children of Israel, after they had been privileged to witness the Revelation of God on Mount Sinai, were about to journey from there and thus draw away from the site of the theophany. So long as they were encamped in the place, they were conscious of God’s nearness; but once they set out on their journey, it seemed to them as though the link had been broken, unless there were in their midst a tangible symbol of God’s presence among them. It was the function of the Tabernacle (literally, ‘Dwelling’) to serve as such a symbol. 

OK, but this still doesn't answer why we need two words, Mikdash and Mishkan. I reached out to Robbie Harris, a JTS Bible professor of mine and he reminded me of a “simple” answer-that there are various traditions that wrote different parts of the torah and different words were mean to reflect different ideologies. 

The torah that we inherited is a sacred, yet redacted document. 

The word משכן is P ( aka תורת הכהנים-the laws regarding the priestly class)’s word to describe the place in which the Divine Presence inheres in a physical space within the Israelite community. The related concept מקדש is also found in other contexts and sources (ie not just P, eg, see exodus 15:17) to denote the “sanctum” where God abides (whether in heaven or on earth).

Ok, so we can appreciate that but i want to go a step further-the modern translation of the word synagogue is Bet Knesset-What does that mean?As Robbie Harris shared, 

Bet hakenesset (like the Latin eccleseum) references a human gathering which is itself constructed as a social vehicle through the Human might welcome/touch the divine. So similar in purpose but it does not require a building. 

Ahhh, so this brings us to today, 2021-a moment where we wonder, what does gathering look like? 

First, let me be clear, I believe in buildings and cannot wait until we return. But what I have been thinking about for the past several years, is what does space look like and feel like?

In many ways, this parasha asks us to be intentional about prayer. When we gather, we are bringing God in. 

SO, how do we help us be intentional? 

I would argue that how we set up our prayer experiences can contribute to how we experience those moments. We at SPS spent a lot of time thinking about seating, and the height of the bimah, and the role of the rabbi and the cantor and so on. But we also thought about the words that adorn our space.

And of course this year we have had to be even more intentional .What do we wear to shul when we don’t need to leave our homes? How do we set up our screens? How will we create a space that is sacred when some start to return but not all?

I word argue that one way to do that is by thinking about what is important. On Rosh Hashanah I spoke about having a spiritual intention-the idea of using verses to meditate on-I spoke about Shivit Adonia Knegdi Tamid-I place God before me, always.

That is one way. Another way is by thinking about what are the words that adorn so many sanctuaries. Ours is, Hinei Mah TOv Umanayim Shevet Achim Gam Yachad. We have learned this year that how we sit together has shifted, but being together, seeing each other, is crucial to allow others to dwell.

IN conclusion, I reached out to my colleagues to ask them what is on their walls: I feel like a book could be written with all the verses, but allow me to share some, as it will allow us to see how davening with intention and purposes can created spaces of sanctity. 

דע לפני מי אתה עומד- Know before whom you stand

עבדו את הי בשמחה-worship God in Gladness

נר ה״ נשמת אדם

אשרי יושבי ביתיך-Happy is the One who sits in God’s house

After children and the elderly, we will go

We have a window above the ark. So the quote on the wall is: יאר ה׳ פניו אליך ויחנך

שבתי בבית ה׳ כל ימי חיי

ופרוש עלינו סכת שלומך

קדושים תהיו כי קדוש אני ה אלקיכם

All of these are meaningful. All of these give purpose. These all “work.” 

So, as we prepare to mark the year anniversary of “going inside” use this as a time to recommit to the essence of why you show up-is it to be with one another? TO be with God? To feel a sense of the divine? To build an altar.

Whatever it is, know, that we are all sitting, together.

Shabbat shalom