2 Adar, 5775
Reading through Parsha T'rumah - a.k.a. "The Ikea Portion of the Torah" - in prep for today's Trah study, some questions emerge, like:
- just a few weeks ago, the Israelites built another in/famous structure, The Golden Calf, ostensibly to make a distant invisible God (connected to this new nation by a suddenly disappeared Moses) more visible and present in their lives. results were disastrous. (Anger management much, Moses and God? - although arguably we could not have expected more from a society Durkheim would have labeled as mechanic.) Is it coincidence then that a short time later, God instructs Moses to have the Israelites build a structure that would visibly represent God's presence in their midst? Leading one to ponder if the Tabernacle would have been built had the whole 'Golden Calf Incident' not have happened.
- And just to be sure we're all clear which object God and the Torah prefer, we get elaborate instructions for the Mishkan, down to how the angels' wings on the lid of the Ark should be made, while we get no real details about Aaron's calf. (Yep, dude, totally throwing you under the bus here.) Also, please note that no Israelites were slaughtered in the aftermath of the Mishkan. (Whew!)
- the dolphin skins, the dolphin skins, exactly how do dolphin skins make an appearance in The Torah? Ram skins, I get. Acacia wood? Absolutely. Dolphin skins?
- "everyone...whose heart was so moved..." (Exodus 25:2) So yeah, I understand from a literary p.o.v. why it's important to add this, to show motivation. I think it's worth noting its inclusion inside a society that is clearly forming around mechanical solidarity. What I find so fascinating is that this one line did not need to be included - how many of us would have said, "Wow, if only those Israelites had volunteered their goods, that would have proved their devotion!" What are the Torah's writers'redactors trying to say here to their three-thousand year old audience? While Denise Eger in "The Women's Commentary" offers some compelling thoughts on the questions (470) they are written to a modern readership. What might the Babylonian exile have made of this passage?
- In case you were wondering what a cubit is...
- not a question but being very appreciative of the Golden Calf/Mishkan comparison. In the former, the Israelites construct a visual representation of (a?) God, while in the latter God calls for a dwelling so that God may still exist among them - invisible and nebulous as always. Remaining beyond the constructs of imagination is prioritized here (indeed, unto the death). What does it mean to be imagined by another, and how is that constraining to the one being imagined?
- Finally, as one of my rabbis 'drashed: all the Israelites brought something to this project of God-dwelling construction - which leaves us with the question of what do we bring to our communities so that (our version of) God may find God's place among us?
