Have you heard of The Torah Studio? If you haven’t, you should. In a sentence, “The Torah Studio is an accessible and empowering online Jewish learning center made for people who want to learn by people who want to learn.” And here at Turn It, Turn It, we love everything about that. So, this week, we are learning from Liana Wertman, the founder of The Torah Studio.
Liana, thank you for your Torah!
Shabbat sh’almost, friends.
Love, Meg.
In this week’s Parsha, Parsat Terumah, God asks us to build God a house. This house is cute with beautiful exposed beams, real wood flooring, gold covered everything, and wondrous tapestries showing images of Cherubim and fruits. This house is full of incense, of wonder, of secrets, of blessings. And this house is next door to all of us. God wants to be our neighbor.
This house is shocking because the God of Judaism, of Torah, is so difficult to hold onto. We can’t see our God. Our God is not a person. Our God doesn’t have a face or a body or one voice. We’re not allowed to try to make an image of our God to pray to because to imagine God as an image is to make God an idol. To attempt to see God puts one in mortal danger. This all seems to be by design, a fundamental part of our religious structure and law. Why it’s so fundamental is a book of its own. But it means that the only thing we have to hold onto in our relationship with the divine is trust.
The Israelites immediately struggled with this conception of God as they entered the Wilderness after Egypt. They struggled to trust something they couldn’t see. And so they sought comfort in what they knew: in Moses. In the scene that immediately follows the parting of the Sea of Reeds, which ends our miraculous removal by God from slavery in Egypt, we read the story of the Israelites blaming Moses for bringing them out of Egypt and into danger. Aaron and Moses try so hard to remind the people that God, not humans, has the real power. “For who are we that you should grumble against us? [...] What is our part? Your grumbling is not against us, but against HaShem!” (Exodus 16:7-8) But even with these reminders, the constant mini miracles of fresh water, winning wars, and accessible food, Moses is always the physical and present intermediary between the people and God. Who needs to draw God when you’ve got Moses right there?
We know this ends poorly. In a few weeks, we’ll read Parshat Ki Tisa, when Moses returns down the mountain with the tablets and sees that the people, in a panic without him, have smelted their gold earrings into an idol, a Golden Calf who they claim has brought them out of Egypt. Without Moses, they had nothing to hold onto. They had no way to imagine God, no way to imagine being able to communicate with the cloud sitting at the top of the mountain just above them. They needed something, anything, to trust.
So what does this have to do with God’ house?
This week’s parsha is three chapters full of very specific and focused instructions on how to build God a home right alongside the people. All the jewels, leathers, incense, metals, and materials will come from donations and offerings by the Israelites, who will also help build this home. This home is covered in gold, filled with beautiful images, even statues of Cherubim. This home is way cooler than a Golden Calf. Because I believe that this Mishkan is not just a ritual space for God. It’s God’s way of giving us something concrete to hold our trust in. A constant reminder that God is right there.
I like to imagine that God saw all of the Israelites' complaints, saw their uncertainty, maybe even literally saw them building a Golden Calf at the same time that Torah was being revealed, and that these instructions were the response. The Mishkan isn’t actually for God, but for the Israelites. “And let them make Me a sanctuary so I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8) God says to Moses. Among them, the Israelites, not simply in the Mishkan. This reminder of God traveled with the Israelites wherever they went. It didn’t belong to one tribe. It was built with the materials of the community, by the community, for the community. The gift was not the space, but the act of building it together.
From this act of care and compassion by God I think we learn an important lesson about how to find holiness today. Holiness of space is not a given, but something a community creates together. This Mishkan doesn’t work without collaboration, and it means nothing if it’s hidden away from the people. And the Mishkan is not itself the holy thing, it is not static. The movable Mishkan asks us to think of holiness as mobile and changing. Finding trust in God isn’t about miracles or apparitions, but that trust lives in the places we create to come together and seek the divine.