Letting God In: Parshat T'rumah

 

 

When you long for God, what's the relationship between failing and succeeding? This past week's parshah, T'rumah, offers an answer.

"And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell [shachanti] among them. Exactly as I show you--the pattern of the Tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings--so shall you make it." (Exodus 25: 8-9)

The Mishkan is what often gets called the Tabernacle, which (besides being a swear word in French!) is a wholly inadequate translation of an amazing concept. Mishkan is from the same root as Shekhinah, and that root means to be present, to dwell...even, to be a neighbor. 

The Shekhinah is God's indwelling presence on Earth. The Mishkan is its mailing address.

But the people of Israel sent a letter to the wrong address before!

Golden Calves and Golden Earrings Cannot Mend This Love of Mine

According to Rashi, the great medieval Biblical scholar, the story of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32) is out of chronological order in the text. It actually occurred before this week's instructions on how to build the Mishkan. In some ways, it's a failed attempt to do the same thing.

Why did the Israelites build the Golden Calf? 

Not because they had suddenly become idol worshippers! They didn't think God was the statue, or was captured in the statue. Rather, they build the Calf as a throne for God's presence to descend upon and live among them. 

(Building, as my friends in #ParshaChat on Twitter have pointed out, is what Israelites do. In Egypt, they built entire store cities for Pharaoh. It's tribute, and it's putting their talents into action.)

And why did they need reassurance that God was in their midst?  

Because after Sinai, they had been overawed by God's voice, to the point where they implored Moses to listen to God for them and bring back the message. And at this point in the story, Moses had gone up Mount Sinai and hadn't been seen for forty days and forty nights (the biblical expresssion for "it seemed like forever").

So, on this reading, the Israelites built the Golden Calf out of the same longing for God that would later lead to their building the Mishkan. What's more they build it out of one of the key ingredients called for in this week's parshah: gold, taken out of Egypt. In their eagerness to feel God's presence among them, they rip off their gold earrings and tell Aaron to melt them down to make a place for God.

It doesn't work. It's a disaster. Moses, when he comes back down the mountain, ends up grinding the Golden Calf to powder and making them drink it--like a colonoscopy prep--to flush the impulse out of their system.

No Calf, No Mishkan?

Why does Rashi rearrange the order of the stories? It's not necessary: as Avivah Zornberg points out, other commentators like Nachmanides see the sequence in the text as just right. What's the point of saying that first the Israelites built the Calf and only later the Mishkan?

Sometimes, it seems, it's necessary to try what doesn't work in order to attempt what does.

Sometimes, we aim to slake our longings by having a Lover we can control, who will always be there for us even when we are not ecstatic about them. We build the image of our Lover out of our own imaginings and not what pleases them. But that is self-love, born of fear, and we grow up: we learn better.

A wonderful midrash says that when God commands "And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them," those words among them don't mean in the midst of the camp. The words mean in the midst of each person. 

Building the Mishkan according to instructions means taking the same longing for God and fulfilling it in a way that doesn't try to keep God there, but rather, lets God in.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm reading through Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's amazing commentary on the biblical Book of Exodus, The Particulars of Rapture. Each chapter expounds one of the portions we read in the synagogue weekly. It's slow going because it is so rich with insights. To keep on track, I will post at least one insight weekly between now and mid-March, when (God willing) I finish the book.

We will do what? And hear what?

One of the most famous quotations from the Torah comes up in this week's parshah, Mishpatim. Most of the parshah focuses on the follow-up to the Ten Commandments, the nitty-gritty of what God wants the Israelites to do in everyday life. Toward the end, though, we read in Exodus 24:7:

Then he [Moses] took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, "All that the Lord has spoken we will faithfully do!"

The Hebrew here is na'aseh v'nishma: literally, "we will do and we will hear." You can see that the translation I quoted chose not to give us the word-for-word meaning, and I can't blame them. Because honestly, what does that mean, "We will do and we will hear"? And why in that order?

Bring it on!

One answer might be that the Israelites have heard the commandments and they're all fired up to do them. Hearing from God face to face at Mount Sinai just blew them away. If that was the end of the conversation...it might have been the end. 

 

But hearing from Moses, in detail, how they could act from day to day in a way that pleased God--that excited them. It made them feel it was humanly possible.

On this reading, "We will do" all of the commandments given us in parshat Mishpatim. But is that all? Does God want more from us? We're ready for more: "we will hear" whatever God still wants to require from us. Bring it on!

We've been doing what good people do. We want to do what good Jews do.

Rashi, the great medieval commentator, interprets Exodus 24 in a surprisingly different way. He says it's out of chronological order and that it actually happened before the revelation at Sinai. 

In that case, what covenant did Moses read to the people? His answer: the books of Genesis and Exodus, up to that present day. And what covenant? The Noachide Laws that (according to Jewish tradition) apply to all human beings, Jewish or not. (This is the Jewish idea of Natural Law, by the way: deduced not by logic but from the text!)

So, on Rashi's reading, na'aseh means that we will keep on doing those things that were a normal part of being a decent person before. V'nishma means that we, the Jewish people, will do those things that make us distinctive, too, which are just about to be revealed to us at Sinai, in last week's parshah and in this.

First we commit, then we understand.

There's yet one more reading, and this one appeals to me. Imagine that Rashi is right, and the conversation between Moses and the people takes place before they stand at Sinai, not after. Then "We will do" is a pledge for an uncertain future. Before we hear what God wants us to do, we commit to the relationship with God. Only then are we in the right state of mind to hear and appreciate it.

What's more, "we will hear" is not a one-time event. As history goes on, we will continue to hear the word--by studying Torah in light of current circumstances and hearing what it has to command us today.

Whenever Jews gather in synagogue on a Saturday morning and chant the weekly portion from the Torah scroll, one by one, seven of us come up to say a blessing. That blessing thanks God "who gave us God's Torah and also "who gives the Torah." Right here, right now. Because a committed people cannot let the words lie on the page. Over and over, we must find new ways to understand.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm reading through Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's amazing commentary on the biblical Book of Exodus, The Particulars of Rapture. Each chapter expounds one of the portions we read in the synagogue weekly. It's slow going because it is so rich with insights. To keep on track, I will post at least one insight weekly between now and mid-March, when (God willing) I finish the book.

Loving Words

 

When the Israelites stand before Mount Sinai, in Parshat Yitro, they are attracted and repelled by God's word.

Attracted

"All the people answered as one, saying, 'All that the Lord has spoken we will do!' And Moses brought back the people's words to the Lord." (Exodus 19:8)

It is very strange that the people are so bold, so willing, so eager to be overcome by God's commandments that they send Moses back to accept God's proposal right away. Previously, they doubted Moses. Previously, even in the face of miraculous displays of power, they doubted God. And they will again. 

But in this moment, the Jewish people as a whole commit themselves: not to the commandments, which they have not heard yet, but to the relationship. "Now then, if you will obey me faithfully [literally: listen, listen to my voice!] and keep my covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples." 

God speaks words of love to us, we listen, and we fall in love with God.

Repelled

But when the Israelites get to the foot of the mountain and they hear God's voice, they cannot stand it.

Literally "cannot stand," according to a couple of midrashic interpretations that Avivah Zornberg cites. 

One midrash says that the sound of God's voice actually kills the Jews, and it is only the words of Torah that revive them. (I wryly note how this is the opposite of Christian teaching: it is the Spirit that kills, and the Letter that brings life.)

Another reading (Rashi on Exodus 20:15), says they cannot stand in place, and "they recoiled twelve miles to the rear--the whole length of their camp--and the ministering angels came and helped to restore them to their place." (Zornberg, p. 263)

Longing and running away

And what is it that overpowers them? Another famous midrash answers: they could not stand to hear the entire Decalogue, because God's voice was too much for them. Hearing God say "I" threw them into an abnormal state. Some say they could not hear the whole word anokhi, "I"--only its first letter, aleph. But the aleph is silent!

God's attention to us is overwhelming. We long for it, and we cannot stand it. We say. "All that the Lord has spoken we will do," but God parts God's lips and we begin to quake.

On this midrashic reading, God speaks to us and we must run away, like in the Song of Songs: "I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had turned away, and was gone. My soul failed me when he spoke."

Loving God's Words

What can we do? From Sinai to the present day, the Jewish people are madly, passionately in love with God, but (except for Moses) we cannot listen directly to God's voice. We cannot live without it. We cannot live with it. What can we do?

We listen to God's words, instead.

The very next week after we read the story of standing at Sinai, in Parshat Yitro, we read the many detailed instructions on how to live, in Parshat Mishpatim. 

 

We turn from what Zornberg would call "rapture" to what she would call "particulars."

We listen to Moses listening to God and telling us the story of what God said.

This is how Judaism as we know it came to be: through a sacred obsession with the meaning of God's words, as written in the rest of the book of Exodus and in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, too, until Moses dies. Yes, Judaism has always included mystical experiences as well, but they are not necessary and not desirable for most people, most of the time.

Language is the Jewish love language.

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm reading through Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's amazing commentary on the biblical Book of Exodus, The Particulars of Rapture. Each chapter expounds one of the portions we read in the synagogue weekly. It's slow going because it is so rich with insights. To keep on track, I will post at least one insight weekly between now and mid-March, when (God willing) I finish the book.

The Bigger Miracle (Postscript on Parshat Beshalach)

A couple of months ago, it was Chanukah, and we learned that the bigger miracle in the time of the Maccabees was not that the oil in the menorah lasted for eight days when it was physically only enough to last for one. 

No: the bigger miracle was that someone had the courage and the faith to light it, that first day.

Now, we have just read Shirat ha-Yam, the Song at the Sea. The bigger miracle was not that the waters split open and the Israelites walked through dry-shod, nor (God forbid!) that the Egyptians drowned. The bigger miracle was that someone (Nachshon ben Aminadab, may he be remembered for good) had the courage and the faith to take that first step into the sea, before the waters parted.

I am not Nachshon. I am not a Maccabee. For better and for worse, I think about things before I do them, and if I cannot see a way that rationally leads to success, or even survival, then I choose another course of action.

But my prayer is that when someone takes that first step and the waters split, then I can be one who encourages the crowd to move together, as a group. Singing.