Near the beginning of this Parashah [Ex 25:8] God says to Moses: Let
them [the Israelites] make for Me a Sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them.
The people have just witnessed God's
appearance on Mt. Sinai; why does there now need to be a Sanctuary for God to
"dwell" among the people?
Some reasons given:
Despite the wonders of Revelation
and the manifestations of God that the people have witnessed, such as the
pillar of fire and of cloud, they still need a concrete symbol. The people's memories of these miracles will
fade, and the abstract notion of monotheism will not sustain their faith for
many years without a tangible structure.
God realizes that this concession must be made, like other concessions
like allowing humans to eat meat after the Flood.
We have the saying that In the Torah
there is no before or after [Pesachim 6b].
An important example of this is the story of the Golden Calf, which
appears in Exodus 32 but according to most of the commentators actually occurs
just after the time of the Ten Commandments back in Exodus 20. So the order to make the Sanctuary comes
after the sin of the Calf, and the Sanctuary becomes a tangible reminder that
God has forgiven the people for that sin.
The calculators among the ancient Rabbis figure out that Make for Me
a Sanctuary is said by God on Yom Kippur, which supports the forgiveness
theme. A view that reinforces this idea:
When God says: Make for Me a Sanctuary, that I may dwell among them -
God's "dwelling" means in their hearts, not in a physical space. The people's commitment to build the
Sanctuary shows their reconciliation with God in their hearts after the
estrangement brought on by the Golden Calf.
There is another view of why making the
Sanctuary appears in the Torah before the sin of the Golden Calf - [Bachya ibn
Pakuda]: The Sanctuary, which is reconciliation, comes before the estranging
sin of the Calf because of the principle that God prepares the cure before the
disease. This is meant to be comforting
- whatever suffering we encounter, we can be assured that God has already
planned for a remedy.
The ancient Israelites had the
Sanctuary as a tangible Presence of God.
Today, we don't have the Sanctuary, and we don't have the Temple either
which replaced it. So how do we have a
sense of God's Presence?
Here are some ideas:
In place of asking "Where is God?" we should ask "When is
God?" Being in God's presence is not a
matter of being in the right place, but of doing the right things.
Securing
justice is a divine act, a manifestation of God's presence in human
activity. So is feeding the hungry,
supporting the poor, comforting the sick and the lonely. They are not things that God does; they are
things that we do, and when we do them, God is present in our lives.
In congregational worship...the
congregating is more important than the words we speak. Something miraculous happens....In our
coming together, we create the mood and the moment in which God is present.
- Rabbi
Harold Kushner [~1935 - ]
God is more
immediately found in the Bible as well as acts of kindness and worship than in
the mountains and forests. It is more
meaningful for us to believe in the immanence of God in deeds than in
the immanence of God in nature. Indeed,
the concern of Judaism is primarily not how to find the presence of God in the
world of things but how to let Him enter the ways in which we deal with things;
how to be with Him in time, not only in space.
When we
turn to the Bible with an empty spirit, moved by intellectual vanity...we
discover the shells but miss the core....To sense the presence ofGod
in the Bible, one must learn to be present to God in the Bible.
Just as
clairvoyants may see the future, the religious man comes to sense the
present moment. And this is an extreme
achievement. For the present is the
presence of God.
The world is an open house in which the
presence of the owner is so well concealed that we usually mistake His discretion
for nonexistence.
- Rabbi
Abraham Joshua Heschel [1907 - 1972]
How great is work, for even
God (who is everywhere) will not bring the Divine Presence to rest on the
Jewish people until they have done work. As the Torah says, "[They must]
make for me a tabernacle and [then] I will dwell among them." [Or perhaps God can be found in our work.]
- Rabbi
Tarfon [1st Century]
Where is God? God is wherever we allow Him to enter.
- R.
Simcha Bunam of Pshis'cha [1767 - 1827]
Sinai
represents a revelation thrust upon the people from above. God initiated and activated that
encounter...the Jewish people were somewhat passive. The Sanctuary, however, had to be built by the Jews
themselves...everyone rolled up their sleeves...it took months of hard labor...And
thereby, it was the people who brought God down to earth....It is
not good enough to sit around waiting for God's extraordinary revelations....Are
we waiting for God, or is God waiting for us?
- Rabbi
Yossy Goldman [~1950 - ], Chabad
"Make for Me a
Sanctuary, that I may dwell within them."
Each individual should make himself a Sanctuary in which the
Divine Presence can rest.
- R.
Chaim Soloveitchik [1853 - 1918]
He commanded that each individual
should build him a sanctuary in the recesses of his heart, that he should
prepare himself to be a dwelling place for the Lord and a stronghold for the
excellency of His Presence, as well as an altar on which to offer up every
portion of his soul to the Lord, until he gives himself for His glory at all
times.
A place to
"dwell among them" means: Make a "home" for God in the
material world. God is already in our
material world; but God can be in the world without being at home in it. Being at home means being in a place
receptive to your presence, a place devoted to serving your needs and
desires. It means being in a place
where you are your true, private self, as opposed to your public self you
assume in other environments. The
material world, in its natural state, has an intrinsic egotism. The stone, the tree, the animal, the human,
all proclaim: "I am." So to
make our world a home for God, we must transform its very nature. Every time we take a material object or
resource and enlist it in the service of God, we are effecting such a
transformation. When we take a piece of
leather and make tefillin, or give a
dollar bill to charity, or employ our minds to study Torah - we are transforming
a self-oriented material object to somethinggreater than itself, to a
spiritual purpose. God could have
created a spiritual world; but God prefers to give us the job of transforming
the world from material to spiritual.
- Rabbi
Schneur Zalman of Liadi [1745 - 1813]
Three
heathens came before Shammai and Hillel, each with an impertinent
question. Shammai drove each of them
away; Hillel answered them kindly, in a way which demonstrated to each of them
their folly of their questions, The
three heathens said: "Shammai's severity nearly drove us from the world
(-to-come); but Hillel's gentleness brought us under the wings of the Presence."
- Talmud:
Shabbat 31a
If
relationship with God is more like breaking down a wall (or seeing through a
veil) than it is like building a bridge across a chasm, covenant, too, becomes
a commitment to keeping faith with the
deepest Self that is manifest within us. It is a decision to live in such a way that allows this One to
be revealedto others through us.
Covenant is our willingness to be a channel, to serve as a conduit of
God's presence to those with whom we live.
- Rabbi
Arthur Green [~1950 - ]
This is
what I attained in the Land of Israel.
When I see a bundle of straw lying in the street, it seems to me a
sign of the presence of God that it lies there lengthwise and not
crosswise.
- Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk [1730
- 1788]
The act of
sexual union is holy and pure.... When a man is in union with his wife in a
spirit of holiness and purity, the Divine Presence is with them.
