I have to reveal a little secret, I am a
Cantor want-a-be. The Rabbinical school I went to had a Cantorial
department, and I can recall walking through the halls stopping to listen to
their singing, but more than that their voices. Today, many of those
same people are in their respective synagogues, and thanks to the ability to
stream or join via Zoom I can still enjoy listening and praying with
them. But this is the neat part, yes they sing traditional melodies
that touch the Jewish neshama, but they also create new ones, new
tunes that make those all too familiar prayers and songs creative,
exciting and fresh. They use their creative abilities to build a
sense of the holy as they lead us in prayer, thank you my friends!
We find the idea of creativity in this week’s parasha, T’rumah,
regarding the acts of this people who left Egypt. It was the people
who were self motivated to gave gifts (t’rumah) from their own
wealth, albeit wealth they took from Egypt, to provide the needed materials to
build the Mishkan, or the Tabernacle that traveled with them in the wilderness.
The Mishkan would stand in the midst of the people, the place where they would
gather together for worship and prayer, the place of sacrifice and ritual, a
place where the mundane of daily living was held in contrast to the beauty and
holiness of this sacred space; part of their transformation was about
understanding the God in their midst differently from the gods of their
past. But we also read in a parasha two weeks from now that
individual human creativity was part of this creative process. Here
we find that Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur and Oholiab son of Ahisamach were
both endowed with the ability to create, both also being accredited for
making designs from precious metals and woods; making everything from the Aron,
the ark that carried the Ten Commandments, to the golden Menorah
and the vestments the Priests would wear. Human partnership
with God and creative abilities were central to the building of this sacred
space that traveled with them throughout the next forty years.
As to the purpose of the Mishkan itself, the first thing we must notice is the
words. It says of God in Exodus 25:8, “Make me a sanctuary and I will
dwell in YOUR midst,” when really it should say “ITS
midst.” The Mishkan is not a them, it is an it so
what gives? Avigdor Shinan, who wrote “A New Israeli Commentary on
Pirkei Avot,” writes that it is about the people not the
place, where the Shekinah, the presence of the Divine, binds
people to God “in times of joy’ (Sota 11a) but also “in times of crisis”
(Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael, 12:13). In the same way, Aviah
Gottlieb Zornberg writes that the Mishkan is “a bayit (a house) that,
ultimately, God and Moses are building” (in partnership, my words),
teaching that it is “God’s desire to live among these Israelites, in
their midst, within them.” It should be mentioned that the Mishkan Shinan
and Zornberg reflect on is mentioned seventeen times alone in this parasha
whereas the word sanctuary (mikdash) from the verse above,
Exodus. 25:8, is only mentioned once. Looking at the Classical commentary
of Ibn Ezra he provides the answer; "the Mishkan is called
a mikdash (a sanctuary) because it is the tabernacle of the
holy God." In other words, it was not just an
ordinary structure but a sacred space created by the
people, a sanctuary (mikdash), where the community would connect with
God.
But it has further been pointed out that the Mishkan is more so the backdrop
for the modern day synagogue after the fall of Jerusalem in 70CE as
opposed to the Beit Hamikdash, the Temple that stood in Jerusalem; not once but
twice. We read in 1 Kings 8:27, “But will God really dwell on
earth? Even the heavens to their uttermost reaches cannot contain You, how much
less this House that I have built,” meaning can God really be confined to
a single location? There is a Jewish saying that comes to mind
here that is helpful, that saying being “ita’ruta d’letata,” which is
commonly translated as an arousal from below. Nowhere
in Torah do we find a commandment to build individual Jewish houses of worship
that we call synagogues more so than the synagogues are the creative response
to the human longing for sacred space that was epitomized with the
Temple. One description of the synagogue is that it became
“Jerusalem in exile, the home of the Jewish heart,” thus; the arousal of the
Jewish heart fueled the building of the synagogues that we have
today. Why is it like the Mishkan and not the Beit
Hamikdash? The Beit Hamikdash was not mobile; it was confined to
Jerusalem whereas the Mishkan, and later the synagogues (and temples), remind
us that the presence of God can be found anywhere.
Back to my Cantor friends, I know it says do not covet, but hey, what can I
say! But really it is just not them, it’s the nature of Jewish communities. The
synagogues, or our temples, are gathering places where we can reflect
on sacred moments and set the regularities of life aside for a
bit. This is why our synagogues must be sacred spaces with good
and meaningful worship, not to mention places of learning and understanding,
but they also must be places of Tikkun Olam, places that seek to
better the world around us, places that stand as beacons of light and
hope to the greater community in general, for members or not. The synagogue
must be a place where families can instill Jewish values into their
children, a place where our teenagers can grow together and young adults
will find support as they venture into the world after College. The
synagogue is also a place to learn about spiritual things, be
educated about the role of Judaism in our ever changing world, and to
share the joys and unpredictability in life together as opposed to
alone, a place where our seniors can continue to learn, contribute and
feel valued as they age. Whatever our communities are WE get to
build them and use OUR creative talents and means along the
way. We all have a little bit of Bezalel and Oholiab in us, and
even if our gifts are not the same, we all have a creative melody within
whether we can sing like a Cantor or not.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Adam
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