We’ve reached an unusual and fun moment in the annual Torah cycle reading here at TRS, when the Torah portion that we and other Jewish communities around the world will be reading on Shabbat matches the verses of Torah that our Saturday morning Torah Study group will be studying.
The reason this is unusual (for us, here) is that while the Torah chanting cycle that the Jewish world (including us!) follows allows us to get through the entire Torah in a year, our Torah study group reads the Torah chapter by chapter, verse by verse – a process that takes a few years. (With new folks joining all the time – so if you’ve never been to Torah Study and want to come, please feel warmly invited, this week or whenever!)
So the verses we study in Torah study only coincide with the weekly Torah portion once or twice a year – and when they do, it always feels like a fun moment.
If you do attend Torah study this week, or Saturday morning services, you’ll find us in the midst of an incredibly detailed description of the construction of the mishkan, or worship space, that the Ancient Israelites used in the desert. Vayakhel-Pekudei is a double portion, six chapters in length, all of which are devoted to a different aspect of the process of the ancient mishkan’s design and assembly.
One of the striking aspects of Vayakhel-Pekudei is the sheer volume of verses and words it devotes to this topic. Where the Torah frequently tells plot-heavy stories with incredible economy, Vayakhel-Pekudei reads almost like a construction manual, so detailed are its descriptions. (For comparison: Vayakhel-Pekudei is six chapters long … and so is the Torah’s entire description of the four-hundred year enslavement of the Israelites in Ancient Egypt, Moses’ birth, and the first eighty years of his life.)
If I’m being totally honest, the detailed descriptions of construction in Vayakhel-Pekudei (and elsewhere in Exodus! This double portion isn’t even the whole section of the Torah devoted to the topic!) are … something I’ve had to work to develop an appreciation for. Sometimes, when the design of the mishkan comes up, my mind starts to wander. How many times can you possibly mention blue thread? (The answer, for the Torah, is 34 times, usually in conjunction with purple and crimson thread.)
What has helped, a lot, is that in Jewish tradition, learning (and especially Torah study) is not understood to be a solitary pursuit – it’s something done in dialogue with other people. We come together to study, and when we study, we are invited to learn from each other and from the voices of those who came before us.
Classical midrashim (commentaries from roughly 200-1200 CE) on Vayakhel-Pekudei are fascinating. For example, some of the ancient rabbis noticed literary parallels between the Torah’s description of the construction of the ancient mishkan and the Torah’s descriptions of the creation of the world. This lends itself to a lot of interesting explorations of what it means for people to continue the work of creation, even (or especially) when they have been through hard times (as, certainly, the Ancient Israelites, less than two years out of slavery in Egypt, had been through hard times). Sometimes, we might feel like if we have been through the ringer, if we have had wrong done to us and done wrong ourselves, we’re not in any kind of condition to bring beauty or opportunities for positive connection into the world. The midrashim on Vayakhel-Pekudei (and the Torah portions themselves) remind us that we can, especially when we work in community with other people.
My time in the TRS community has also deepened my appreciation for the Torah’s (many) verses on the construction of the mishkan. This is the case for (at least) two reasons. First, it’s always a pleasure to learn from and with other people in our community! Every year, the B’nai Mitzvah students writing divrei torah on these parts of the Torah bring their own thoughtful insights, and adults in our community who study together (as in Torah study) do too.
Second, several of the Torah’s verses on the construction of the mishkan have a prominent place in our community’s life. We named our smaller worship space, the Mishkan, after the mishkan in the Torah. And many of our physical decorations in our main sanctuary parallel those of the ancient mishkan, in striking ways. One of the verses about the logic behind the creation of the ancient mishkan (“make Me a sanctuary that I might dwell among [the people]” (Exodus 25:8)) is engraved in Hebrew above the entrance to our sanctuary. Other related verses, about the way everyone in the community worked together to build the ancient mishkan, decorate our social hall.
At TRS, I think a lot about the many people who made (and make!) it possible for all of us to come together as part of a robust community today, both by adding physical spaces to our building, and by contributing ideas, care, and community spirit. Whenever I see the verses of Torah on our doorways and walls, or the deep blue, purple, and crimson threads on our ark, I also think about the ways that our community’s spirit of volunteerism mirrors that of Jewish communities for millenia, all the way back to ancient times.
In the Torah, as in life, the physical construction of the mishkan was only the beginning. The importance of the mishkan (expanded upon in the book of Leviticus, which we and the whole Jewish world will begin reading next week) was that it was a space for people to connect to God and to each other, and to try to center themselves in their highest ideals. The ancient mishkan was also a space for repair and renewal, a place where individuals and the entire community could experience healing, and new beginnings. May we be so fortunate that our sacred space, that we all work to build together, can afford us some of the same.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alexandra Stein
