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.
No comments:
Post a Comment