Parashat Trumah

This week’s portion – “Trumah” (literally, a donation) – describes God’s orders to Moshe on the issue of building the Tabernacle (“Mishkan,” literally, place of dwelling), a portable shrine to accompany the People of Israel in their desert travels to the Promised Land.

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 Jewish-American use of the term “Menorah” to describe the eight-branch lighting device for Chanukah is, unfortunately, 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 even the creation of humans – had received less than 40 verses in the entire Chumash, while the building of the Mishkan alone has received more than 400 verses (in other words, the Mishkan occupies ten times the amount of verses than the creation of the universe). 

Leibovitz considers that the ultimate proof of his view that the Torah is not a book designed 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. It is for that reason that the 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.

As usual, I would like to make two quick observations about 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 modern 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. Further, even if God have preferred, for some reason, some human participation He could have easily ordered Bet’zal’el Ben-Uri (or another early Leonardo) to perform the task directly rather than to seek the people’s help. (compare Ex. 31:2).

Yet God preferred neither to establish the Mishkan on His own nor to delegate the task to a single architect (after whom, by the way, the Israel Academy of Arts and Design is still named today - “Bet’zal’el”). Rather, God preferred a different mode altogether. He decreed 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 donate at all – should you decide not to donate you would not be penalized in any way (save, perhaps, some minor social scorn from your peers). Second, should you decide to donate, the measure of each contribution is voluntary – there is neither a minimum nor a maximum amount to the contribution. Each may donate “as generously as their heart allows.” (Ex. 25:2) The idea here is that the entire community would become partners in the erection of this edifice. Rather than a mere religious experience, it would also become a community 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 as generously as their heart allows; and this is the donation you shall take from them: gold, silver, and copper.” (Ex. 25:1-3)

[For those keen-eyed readers who may wonder where would a host of ex-slaves find gold, silver, and copper in the middle of the desert, please refer to the eve of their hurried exit from Egypt, where God instructed the then-slaves to “borrow” from their neighbors “objects of silver and objects of gold.”(Ex. 11:2)].

And these instructions – and that is the thrust of Portion today – form the very basis on which the entire profession (and science) of fund-raising stands today. From the “suggested donation” kindly asked for at the entrance to the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, to the “please support us” mass-mail solicitations received daily by millions across the United States; and from million-dollar contributions made by the likes of 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 is very much based on this Week Portion’s four tenets:

(i) The actual act of donation is voluntary; (ii) If you do choose to donate, the amount is a matter of choice, decided by how much “your generous heart allows” (to be sure, professional fund-raisers all over the world do everything in their power to ensure that your “generous heart” would “allow” you to donate the maximum amount needed for their purposes; still the principle remains the same); (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, it may 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 them 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, always?  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 these extremely serious questions in depth. I can provide, however, some of my thoughts on the matter. First, God fully understands (or, to take an agnostic view, the writers of the text fully understood) the need to balance between the “pure” form of belief in God – one which is correctly based solely on the First Commandment (“I am the Lord Your God”) as well as on the recognition of an omnipresent, though transcendental entity – on the one hand, and the all-too-human quest 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 religious groups both within and outside Judaism). 

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 also the fund-raising aspect of that same yellow band, which brings us back to our Portion of the Week).  Turning back to the Mishkan, having an actual place of worship for God – not just a notion of the image of God – 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 called “a place of dwelling” – exists, does not suggest that God actually resides there, or, more accurately, merely there; God is everywhere, but most importantly – God resides in the peoples’ hearts. That is the only true residence of God, and once God leaves that place none of the Houses of Worship, as beautiful as they may be, would ever be of help. [It was Judge Learned Hand who understood this principle in a different context, when he declared: “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