Parshah Summary – P’shat
The parshah opens with Hashem calling upon the Children of Israel to contribute thirteen materials toward the building of the Mishkan, the Sanctuary — gold, silver and copper; blue, purple and red-dyed wool; flax, goat hair, animal skins, wood, olive oil, spices and gems. On Mount Sinai, Moses is given detailed instructions on how to construct this Sanctuary so that it could be readily dismantled, transported and reassembled as the people journeyed through the desert. Within the Mishkan’s innermost chamber, behind a woven curtain, the ark containing the tablets of the testimony engraved with the Aseret Hadibrot (the Ten Commandments) would be housed.
Upon the ark’s cover would be two winged keruvim (cherubim) hammered out of pure gold. In the outer chamber would be the seven-branched menorah, and the table upon which the Leḥem haPanim, the “showbread,” literally the “Bread of the Faces,” was arranged. These sacramental loaves were to always be present, and thus might more accurately be translated as “Presence Bread.” The Sanctuary’s three walls would be fitted together from 48 upright wooden boards, each of which was overlaid with gold and held up by a pair of silver foundation sockets. The roof would be formed of three layers of coverings: tapestries of multicolored wool and linen; a covering made of goat hair; a covering of ram and “takhash” skins. Across the front of the Sanctuary would be an embroidered screen held up by five posts. Surrounding the Sanctuary and the copper-plated altar in front of it would be an enclosure of linen hangings, supported by 60 wooden posts with silver hooks and trimmings, and reinforced by copper stakes.
Torah of Awakening | Jewish Meditation Teaching
וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃ Let them make for Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among/within them… - Shemot (Exodus) 25:8, Parshat Terumah
A hasid once came to Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotsk in search of a blessing for his poverty and troubles. “Don’t worry,” the rabbi tried to comfort him, “Pray with all your heart, and surely HaRakhaman – the Merciful One – will have rakhmanus on you.”
“But I don’t know how to pray,” said the hasid. “Well then,” replied the rabbi, “you indeed have much to worry about.” The Kotzker Rebbe’s answer points to the vital practice of prayer in spiritual life. But it leaves us wondering: how can we pray? יהוה מָגֵן בַּעֲדִי כְּבוֹדִי וּמֵרִים רֹאשִׁי... וְאַתָּ֣ה You, Hashem, are a shield for me – My Presence, lifting up my head… - Psalm 3:4 This verse describes the Divine with opposing images: on one hand, God is a magein, a “shield” – something external that can protect against danger. כְּבוֹדִי... – my Presence… On the other hand, God is k’vodi – literally “my Presence,” or “my glory” or “my honor.” In other words, God is a dimention of my own being, not something external. How can we know that? וּמֵרִים רֹאשִׁי... – lifting up my head… In other words, transcending the mind: to the degree we can manage to be aware of our thoughts, rather than become absorbed in them, we can become aware of ourselves as awareness, as k’vodi, “my Presence.” This is meditation. But this experience of our Essence is subtle and fragile. How can this realization become integrated into our lives with people? How can we live in the world of time from this deeper dimension? מָגֵן בַּעֲדִי – a shield for me… For this we need protection from our ordinary conditioning; we need prayer. Prayer is an embodying of our Inner Reality in a palace of words, an expression of the ineffable in the holy sounds of language. This is magein ba-adi – a “shield for me.” Normally, our patterns of thought, feeling, and words tend to conceal the Divine essence; no matter how much we uncover It through meditation, it is doomed to fall back into hiddenness again and again. The remedy is to craft a form that reveals It as well as conceals It. This is the role of prayer and words of Torah in general – to give form to the Formless, to “shield” us against the spirit-deadening powers of the mundane. וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ – Make for me a a Sanctuary… The Exodus from Egypt was an uncovering, a going forth from the familiar and habitual, into the freedom and discomfort of the unknown. Even the receiving of the Torah thus far has been a revelation outdoors, up on a mountaintop, far above the throng of human life. But the content of the revelation always points back to life; it doesn’t emphasize transcendence, but rather the expressing the transcendent in the imminent. This movement is embodied symbolically as the building of the Mikdash. וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃ – and I will dwell within them… Moses leaves the world of form to connect with the transcendent, but it is through the building of sacred form that the transcendent becomes part of communal life. For us, our spiritual practice must contain both of these poles as well. It doesn’t matter so much which pole comes first, as long as the other follows. Our awareness may begin to glow and shine within the silence of meditation, overflowing into the sacred vessels that are the words of prayer, or we may begin with chanting the words, allowing them to draw us back into the majesty of silence. Either way, it is through the interplay of silence and sound, of ayin and yesh, that the transformational power of prayer and meditation work their magic; prayer and meditation are the tones and rhythm of the music of the soul.
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