Listen to tonight's class on Parashot Terumah, "The Purpose of the Mishkan," here.
Follow along with the sources here.
Showing posts with label Terumah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terumah. Show all posts
Monday, February 24, 2020
Parashat Terumah: The Purpose of the Mishkan
Listen to tonight's class on Parashot Terumah, "The Purpose of the Mishkan," here.
Follow along with the sources here.
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Friday, February 16, 2018
Parashat Terumah: Mystery
Mystery
A Message for Parashat Terumah 2018
Click here to view as PDF
Parashat Terumah is the
first of several parashot that describe the construction of the Mishkan.
Ramban (R. Moshe b. Nahman) suggested that the Mishkan was meant to
shift the public manifestation of God’s glory at Sinai into the private domain
of a sanctuary. He noted the similar descriptions of Sinai – “And God’s glory
abode on Har Sinai” (24:16), and the Mishkan – “And the glory of God
filled the Mishkan” (40:34), and pointed to the similar restrictions of
entrance and required purity of each.[1]
Why did God shift from an open exposure at
Har Sinai to a hidden presence at the Mishkan? Although the grand
revelation at Sinai would certainly lose its effect if consistently repeated,
the Mishkan seemingly introduced an entirely opposite extreme. It represented
God’s unexplainable “contraction” into an enclosed area where He would now “abide.”
Consider, for example, the fact that the luhot – the very symbol of
God’s covenant with Am Yisrael at Har Sinai – were hidden inside an ark
which was nestled away in a chamber (kodesh ha-kodashim) which was only
entered by a single person (the cohen gadol) on a single day of the year
(Yom Kippur). What was the reason for this extreme shift from revelation
at Har Sinai to concealment at the Mishkan?
The psychoanalyst and author Stephen Mitchell
described a tension that lies at the core of our human needs. He referred to
the dialectic between love and desire. Mitchell wrote:
Love seeks control,
stability, continuity, certainty. Desire seeks surrender adventure, the
unknown. In love we are searching for points of attachment, anchoring,
something we know we can count on. In desire we are searching both for missing,
disowned pieces of ourselves and for something beyond ourselves, outside the
borders of self-recognition that, under ordinary circumstances, we protect so
fiercely.[2]
Psychotherapist and spiritual advisor Estelle
Frankel explained that mystery and knowledge play equal roles in
our relationships with one another. She wrote: “No matter how much we strive to
know those whom we love, we can never fully plumb the depths of their innermost
being, for, at our core, each of us is an unfathomable mystery.” Frankel
posited that the challenge of long-term love is to strike a careful balance
between a sense of mystery and adventure with an emotional intimacy.[3]
Our relationship with God must similarly
exhibit an interplay between knowledge and mystery. HaRambam famously opened
his Mishneh Torah with the fundamental principle to “know that there is
a First Being who brought every existing thing into being.”[4]
R. Hayim Soloveitchik z”l explained that the missvah to “know
God” mandates that we stretch our cognitive capacity to its limits of
understanding. Our cognitive breadth, however, is limited. In contrast to God’s
infinite existence, our minds are confined by space and time, so a complete
knowledge of God is impossible. R. Hayim nonetheless suggested that we are
commanded to stretch beyond the realm of knowledge into that of belief. [5]
He referred to the “unknowable” realm of God’s existence, and described
it too is a necessary component of our relationship with Him. [6]
Prof. David Weiss Halivni introduced a
similar dialectic in his analysis of the philosophical implications of the
Holocaust. He cautioned philosophers and theologians from seeking its root cause
or rationale, and claimed that the question of “Why did the Holocaust happen?”
diminishes the uniqueness of the event by rendering it a basic “answerable
question.”. He likened its reality to a historic encounter between God and
Moshe, following het ha-egel. Moshe then requested to “know God’s ways,”
and God responded, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest”
(Shemot 33:13-14). When Moshe pushed
further and asked, “Show me, pray, your glory” (18), however, God responded,
“You shall not be able to see My face, for no human can see Me and live” (20).
Halivni explained: “One can know God’s ways, but not his reasons…There is no
explanation.”[7]
Ma’amad Har Sinai
introduced Am Yisrael to an integral aspect of their relationship with
God. God then exposed himself in an unprecedentedly open fashion. A
relationship built merely upon revealed knowledge, however, is shallow.
Without the appeal of an “unknown,” the bond will weaken and lose its passion.
God’s transition to the Mishkan therefore set the stage for a
side-by-side world of “belief.” It opened the gates of mystery and adventure, deepening
Am Yisrael’s connection to the incomprehensible “Ein Sof.”
Shabbat shalom!
Rabbi Avi Harari
[1] Commentary of Ramban
to the Torah, Shemot 25:1, and his Introduction to Vayikra and Bemidbar.
See, as well, e.g., Nahum M. Sarna’s Exploring Exodus (New York, 1996), pg. 203-4.
[2] Stephen A. Mitchell, Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance Over Time (New York, NY, 2002), pg. 91-2.
[3] Estelle Frankel, The Wisdom of Not Knowing: Discovering a Life of Wonder by Embracing Uncertainty
(Boulder, CO, 2017), pg. 142-4.
[4] Hil. Yesodei HaTorah
1:1.
[6] The kabbalists often
refer to this “unknowable” realm as the “ayin.” See, e.g., Daniel C. Matt, “Ayin:
The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism,” in Essential Papers on Kabbalah (New York, NY, 2000), pg. 67-108.
[7] David Weiss Halivni, The Book and the Sword (New York, NY, 1996), pg. 156.
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Parashat Terumah: A Dynamic Relationship
A Dynamic Relationship
A Message for Parashat Terumah 2017
Click here to view as PDF
Parashat Terumah is the
first of several parashot that describe the Mishkan. What was the
purpose of the Mishkan? R. Moshe b. Nahman (Ramban) suggested that it
was meant to shift the public manifestation of God’s glory at Sinai into the
private domain of a sanctuary. He noted the similar descriptions of Sinai –
“And God’s glory abode on Har Sinai” (24:16), and the Mishkan – “And the
glory of God filled the Mishkan” (40:34),[1]
and pointed to the similar restrictions of entrance and prerequisite
purification of each.[2]
Building upon Ramban’s explanation while
viewing the command to build the Mishkan in its broader context may shed
light on its vital role in the developing relationship of God and Am Yisrael
at that time. Whereas Ma’amad Har Sinai ended with fear and recoil, the
command to build the Mishkan encouraged approach. The end of Parashat
Yitro described the shaken nation’s request of Moshe, “Speak you with us
that we may hear, and let not God speak with us lest we die” (20:19). The
distance then intensified with the description of a cloud-covered mountain, at
the end of Parashat Mishpatim.[3]
But God then turned to Moshe and demanded, “And they shall make Me a Mikdash,
that I may abide in their midst” (25:9). By continuing His presence in the Mishkan,
God was setting the stage for resumption of a forward-moving relationship with
the nation.
Ha-Rambam famously located this “back and
forth” relationship with God in the precepts of love and fear of God. He first
wrote:
And what is the way to the
love of Him and the fear of Him? At the hour that man contemplates His great
and wondrous works and creatures, and from them obtains a glimpse of His wisdom
which is incomparable and infinite, he will straightaway love Him, praise Him,
glorify Him, and desire with an exceeding desire to know His great name, even
as David said, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Tehillim 42:3).[4]
The approach of God, an appreciation of His
might, and the desire to know His great name was intensely experienced during
the theophany at Sinai.
Ha-Rambam then continued:
And when he ponders these
very matters, he will straightaway recoil and be frightened, and realize that
he is a small creature, lowly and obscure, endowed with slight and slender
intelligence, standing in the presence of Him who is perfect in knowledge. And
so David said, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers – what
is man that You are mindful of him?” (Tehillim 8:4-5)[5]
The fear of God and recoil from His
overwhelming presence was Am Yisrael’s immediate reaction to Ma’amad
Har Sinai.
Seeking God’s presence in the Mishkan
represented the next step in a relationship best defined as a continuous
“approach and recoil.” Ha-Rambam later delineated this condition, and wrote:
When
one reflects on these things and comes to know all created beings…and sees His
wisdom in all created things – his love for God will increase, his sould will
thirst, his very flesh will yearn to love God. He will be filled with fear and
trembling because of his lowly condition, his poverty, his insignificance…[6]
The Torah’s description of Ma’amad Har
Sinai, its aftermath, and the Mishkan are representative of our own
relationships with God. They are far more complicated than a one-word
description and instead exist as a constant flux between love and fear, back
and forth, and approach and recoil.
[1] Commentary of Ramban
to the Torah, Shemot 25:1.
[2] Ibid.,
Introduction to Vayikra and Introduction to Bemidbar. See, as well, e.g., Nahum
M. Sarna’s Exploring Exodus (New
York, 1996), 203-4.
[3] See last week’s devar
Torah, “Boundaries.”
[4] Mishneh Torah, Hil. Yesodei ha-Torah 2:1.
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