This week’s portion – “Trumah” (literally, a donation) – mainly contains God’s decree to Moshe build a Tabernacle (“Mishkan,” literally, place of dwelling) – a portable shrine to accompany the Israelite in their desert travels.
God’s instructions on how precisely to build the Mishkan are extremely detailed, to the point of being tedious at times (see, for example, the ten verses dedicated to the building of the six-branch Menorah alone – Ex. 25:31-40; these verses also demonstrate that the American-Jewish use of the term “Menorah” to describe the eight-branch lighting device for Chanukah is simply misguided.) Yeshayahu Leibovitz, who loves to inquire deeply into such issues, notes that the creation of the entire universe – including all the planetary heavens, the oceans, mountains, living and growing things, and finally humans – had received less than 40 verses in the entire Chumash, while the building of the Mishkan alone has received more than 400 verses (ten times that). Leibovitz sees that as ultimate proof of his view that the Torah is not a book that is meant to provide us with information about the world; rather it is a book about Avo’dat E’lohim - the service of God, and that alone. That is why issues of that nature – as in instructions on how to precisely serve God – receive so much more attention in the text than issues of far less religious significance, such as the creation of the universe.
I would like to make two quick observations on issues raised by this week’s Portion.
I. The Basis of Modern Fund-Raising
(This section is lovingly dedicated to my wife, who taught me everything I know about fund-raising).
Surely God – who just parted the Red Sea, drowned the largest army in the region, provided food and water in the desert, and performed a host of other miracles – could have easily built the Mishkan by Himself. God needs no human assistance. In addition, even if God prefers, for some reason, human participation, He could have simply ordered Betz’al’el Ben-Uri to perform the task on his own. (compare Ex. 31:2).
But God prefers neither to establish the Mishkan on His own, nor to delegate the task to a single chosen architect (today, by the way, the Israeli Academy of Arts and Design is named after this talented artist, “Be’zal’el”). Rather, God preferred a different model altogether. He decides that the building of the Mishkan would become a community effort. In today’s parlance, God decided that “it would take a village” to build His House of Worship. And how may the community participate? Through voluntary donations. The donations are voluntary in two ways: First, there is no duty to participate at all; and second, the sum of the contribution is voluntary – there is neither a minimum nor a maximum amount to be contributed. Each may donate “as their heart orders them.” (Ex. 25:2) The idea here is that the entire community would become partners in working together towards a common project. And this is how the text describes God’s instructions to Moshe in the dramatic opening of this week’s portion: “And God spoke to Moshe and told him: Speak to the People of Israel and they shall provide me donations, from each person whose heart so moves him you shall take my donations; and this is the donation you shall take from them: gold, silver, and copper.” (Ex. 25:1-3). [To those keen-eyed readers who wonder where would the Israelites find gold in the middle of the desert, please refer to the eve of the Exodus, where God – who plans everything in advance – instructed the then-slaves to “borrow” from their neighbors “objects of silver and objects of gold.”(Ex. 11:2)].
And these instructions, believe it or not, form the basis of the entire industry (and science) of fund-raising today. From the suggested donation at the Met Museum to the frequent “please support us” mail solicitation received daily across the United States, from the million-dollar contributions made by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the basket passed every Sunday at churches nationwide – the theoretical basis for all those donations is identical and based on this Week Portion’s portion four tenets: (i) The actual act of donation is voluntary; (ii) If you do choose to donate, the amount is a matter of which “your heart should instruct you” (to be sure, fund-raisers all over the world would try to make sure that “your heart” instructs you the maximum figure, but the principle remains); (iii) The fund-raising person would notify you exactly what type of donation they prefer (“Gold, Silver, Copper”) although today, in the vast majority of cases, the most common form is a gift of money (as opposed to time, talent, or other resources); (iv) The donation is a part of a community effort to built together something that is bigger than any one donor can establish, and therefore beneficial to all – or at least a large part – of the community (if not to the world at large).
And while fund-raising may be used for the noblest of causes, religious or otherwise, they can also be mis-used (or abused) for a variety of purposes – for example, to construct the Golden-Calf against the clear wishes of Moshe (Ex. 32:3 “And the People of Israel took off their gold rings and brought to Aharon.”). Accordingly, one has to be extremely watchful in choosing their fund-raising projects – both then and now.
II. Why Do We Need the Mishkan in the First Place?
Beyond the method in which God preferred to establish the Mishkan, a far deeper question lies: Why do we need the Mishkan at all? Why do we need a House of Worship, when God is all around us, every single day, everywhere? Even more concretely, at times when God was leading us through the desert using a smoke pillar during the days and fire pillar at night, why is there a need for a separate worship structure? And – perhaps the most controversial point – how exactly is this physical worship structure, the Mishkan, different from the Israelites’ “worst religious sin of all times,” the building of the Golden-Calf?
Obviously, this blog post in not the right venue to discuss this extremely deep question in depth. I will provide, however, initial clues for the answer. First, God understands (or, to take an agnostic view, the writers of the text well understood) the need to balance between the “pure” belief in God – that which is correctly based solely on the First Commandment (“I am the Lord Your God”) on the one hand, and the all-too-human demand for actualization of all things transcendental, including God Himself, on the other (hence the so-called “white-bearded Grandpa” image of God, heavily promoted by some Christian sects). This exact balance – between the transcendental and the actual – may also explain more modern events, such as the success of Lance Armstrong’s ingenious “yellow rubber bracelet” invention, which brought cancer-research millions of dollars in donations: Here, Armstrong succeeded in turning a metaphysical subject (the need to promote cancer research due to the actual risk that cancer presents to all of us), and the actualization of that thought through the carrying of a small yellow rubber bracelet reading “live strong.” (Note the fund-raising aspect of the yellow band, to create a perfect match to our Portion of the Week). Turning back to the Mishkan, having an actual place of worship for God – but not an image of God Himself – represents a similar compromise, or balance, between the two extremes (pure transcendental belief versus actual worship of concrete gods).
Second, God is keenly aware of the difference between a House of Worship and the place where He actually dwells. As he instructs Moshe: “And they will make me a shrine, and I will dwell among them” (Ex. 25:8) That is, the fact that a shrine – even if it called “a place of dwelling” – exists, does not suggest that God is actually there, or just there; God is everywhere, but most importantly – in the peoples’ hearts. That is where God resides, and if He is missing from there, then none of the Houses of Worship, as beautiful as they may be, would ever be of help. [Compare to Judge Learned Hand’s beautiful oft-cited quote: “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.”]
Shabbat Shalom,
Doron
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