Torah Portion Exodus 25.1-27.19 Terumah

Torah Portion Exodus 25.1-27.19 Terumah


The study materials for this parsha: JPS Tanakh, Etz Hayim, The Midrash Says: S'mos. I did not go to TBI Torah Study this week.

Terumah (t'rumah) means gifts, especially goods set aside specifically for sacred purpose. Etz Hayim says t'rumah comes from the root for elevate. When one gives to God, one not only physically lifts the object up in offering, but also lifts oneself up to a higher level. (Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev). This parsha begins with God telling Moses the types of contributions the Israelites should bring to Moses, who will accept them on God's behalf. With these articles, the people were to build a sanctuary, "that I may dwell among them." Then specific directions follow for the size and ornamentation of the ark that will hold the Ten Commandment tablets, the cherubim, a table, a lampstand, etc. The word for dwell shakhan, literally means to rest rather than to live within.

When I first read this parsha, I was fascinated by the descriptions given. The sanctuary materials were very expensive items, and God wanted them used in very specific ways. One of the items God required was dolphin skins. In the desert? Etz Hayim says, however, that the Hebrew word t'hashim means dyed sheep or goat skins, which is certainly more reasonable! (So now the mystery is not why God would expect the people to be carrying dolphin skins with them in their desert wanderings, but why the Bible says He expected dolphin skins! I wonder if perhaps the dyed goat and sheep skins were a bluish gray, and were given a colloquial name that remained past our understanding of it, or if this were simply a poor translation. Midrash, however, says that these were unicorn skins.) The enormity of the physical labor demanded of vagabond people also amazed me.

Once I read this parsha once, I didn't feel a particular need to do anything other than skim it again. Then I read Kugel's Being a Jew, a conversation between a Sephardic Orthodox banker and his totally (at first) secular American nephew. When the nephew complained that he did not feel anything spiritual, The uncle said he needed to build a mishkan within his heart, to make space for God, before God would come in. How to do this? By saying the prayers, even before you understand them, by following halacha as much as possible. Thus, through action, you open a space to let God in. Rabbi Mendele Kotzker said The Shema says to place the words upon your heart because God recognizes that our hearts are not always open. But when we open our hearts, the words there will be able to drop in.

Armed with this understanding, I was able to read again with full kavanah.

One of the things that bothered me upon an earlier reading of Exodus is how people could receive the mind-blowing revelation at Sinai and then make and bow down to the Golden Calf! I'm sure I am not the only person whose jaw dropped in "how-could-they-be so-dumb" disbelief! With the reminder that even pious hearts are not always open, I was able to reach into myself to try to imagine the hearts of the Israelites.

These were people adrift a long, long time. Yes, they were redeemed from slavery. Yes, the received the grandest of revelations, a definitive proof of God's existence that so many long for. However, then they went back to their wandering. How anticlimatic could that have been! They were again hungry, thirsty, tired and dirty. Although they had Aaron and Miriam to help, they relied greatly on Moses... who left them to sit alone atop a mountain for 40 days, without even one phone call or text. Could some of them been whispering that Moses was dead? Or had abandoned them? What, then, would they do, a huge band of hungry and thirsty vagabonds?

Perhaps the incident of the Golden Calf has already happened; some rabbis argued that the order of the Torah was not necessarily chronological. (Midrash says the building of the Mishkan was presented before the sin of the Golden Calf to teach us that we must prepare in advance to rectify any sin we might do.) In any case, God recognized that the people were restless and that he was going to take Moses away. Without a spiritual leader among them, they might falter. So he gave them a project that would make them feel like active participants in their worship. The people responded with great generosity - giving not only valuables, but also their time and talents.

This was genius - not only occupying them while Moses was gone, but also giving them a structure that would be a source of great pride to them whenever they worshipped. Each Israelite family could say they donated something - gold jewelry, perhaps, their carving skill, or woven wool dyed in the rare colors blue, purple and crimson. (Remember, they had only natural sources for dye at that time. The rarity may also be why the corner fringes on prayer shawls are to be blue. The best blue at that time was produced by marine snails, which were of course difficult to obtain in the desert!)

What if every time I went in Temple Beth Israel, I saw something I had myself made? How could I not feel a sense of ownership as well as a sense of belonging?

The Rabbis said the mishkan was the reason the Israelites were instructed to take gold and other precious metals and stones from the Egyptians. God never intended these to be used by the Israelites for vain purposes such as their own personal ornamentation. Midrash says that the vast quantity of gold required is to atone for using gold to make the golden calf. It says that if not for the golden calf, a simple altar would have sufficed.

To show how important the tablets were, God required the ark to be made first. It contained three chests, with the inner and outer being made of gold and the middle, of wood. It had two long poles on each side to allow people to move it without touching it. These poles were slid through four rings, which Midrash says represent the four habits of a true Torah scholar: Torah study, mitzvos, good deeds and modesty. The rods were never to be removed from the rings, not even in camp. God asked for the people to make the ark, but only for the priestly class to make the menorah.. Midrash says this is because Torah study is available to all, but the priestly duties, symbolized by the menorah, were only available to a few. There is a nice drawing of the ark on page 245 of The Midrash Says: S'mos. The drawing includes the cherubim on top of the ark; they are not the fat little boy angels we are accustomed to seeing in paintings. The cherubim here do look young, maybe preteen, but they are not babies. Midrash says when God is pleased with us, they don't just merely look at each other, but embrace. When He is displeased, they turn their heads away from each other. When He speaks to the Israelites, His voice rises from between the cherubim.

The Midrash Says also has an illustration of the holder for the twelve loaves of bread to be offered to God (p. 257). It has removable loaf holder drawers, one atop another, and somewhat resembles and apothecary cabinet except the drawers are not covered. One family of kohanim was in charge of baking the bread every Friday and refilling the drawers, which were never to be empty. Of course, the Israelites were responsible for bringing the grain that would be baked.

The details here and later, in descriptions of the Temple, have been used in the creation of Jewish ceremonial objects ever since. The description of the menorah in Exodus 25:20 makes it clear that this is to be a very important ceremonial object, made of pure gold, most of it comprised of one piece of hammered work, not pieced together. I have earlier mentioned a special type of sage that looks like a candelabra. It is called Salvia Judaica - literally Save Jews. Here is a good picture of it: http://www.holidayinisrael.com/ViewPage.asp?lid=1&pid=289. Aaron and his sons only were to be in charge of lighting the menorah, again showing the importance of it. There were no candles of that time, so I assume that woven thread was used for wicks and needed to be replaced regularly. I am allergic to candle smoke, so maybe the answer to the candle lighting at home is not the battery operated candles we have now, but lamps with wicks, lit with a lighter rather than a match.

Midrash says that after God caused an ark and a bread offering table to descend from Heaven, Moses understood his directions and was able to copy them here on earth. However, the precision of the Menorah was too much for him, even after seeing one made in Heaven. So God allowed him to cast a brick of gold into a fire and from this, the Menorah emerged fully formed. This reminds me of the Golden Calf, which Aaron insisted sprang from the fire already made.

There is an illustration of the layout of the completed mishkan on 267, which disproves my belief that this was a small building, big enough for only three priests at a time, close up. This is a big affair, with a courtyard/tent of meeting as well as the inner chambers for the offerings and the ark. Although it had walls of woven cloth and leather, the frame was cedar wood. I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to move it with them so many years. I don't recall reading about it's being on skids anywhere, but as a farm girl, I can tell you empirically that a very long hoop house (frame and cloth building) can be pulled by two draft horses if it is on skids (long wooden poles that are angled up so they don't dig into the soil and run lengthwise below any other piece of the building). I wonder if they removed the skins to lighten the load before pulling the building? And this leads me to a long daydream of how the entire party travelled; they must have taken apart their tents in the morning and laid components on the backs of horses and oxen, much as the American Indians did, stopping just before dark to set up their shelters again.

I moved across country once, camping every night. It sounds like a big hassle, but it was fun, even if we got stung by mosquitos in the few warm dusk hours, right before we froze in New Mexico, the state in which my wallet was stolen. Even if we got pulled over twice by cops who thought we might be hiding illegal aliens. I will never forget it. But then again, I only had to pack a small amount of water and food with me because I always knew I could get more.