February 26, 2009
This week we begin to read about the construction of the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary the Jews carried in the wilderness. In fact, we’ll spend the next several weeks on this topic — first, the detailed instructions for making the Mishkan and then, after a break for the episode of the Golden Calf, an equally detailed description of how those instructions were carried out.
Parshat Teruma begins with instructions to collect materials — gold, silver, and brass; richly dyed fibers, linen, and skins; fine wood, fragrant oils and spices, and gems. And the people give generously — both precious materials and the skills of their best craftsmen and craftswomen — so they can carry out God’s commandment to create the place that will house the tablets of the Ten Commandments, the tangible evidence of the brit, and become the center of worship. The best of what they possess, both materials and skills, will be used to make a place truly worthy of being the house of God.
But pay close attention to God’s instruction to Moses: V’asu li mikdash v’shahanti b’toham, “And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” The Torah says “b’toham,” “among them,” not “b’toho,” “within it.” Even with all this detail — spelled out in some 400 verses — describing the Mishkan and its furnishings, the dwelling place of God is not a building, but a people.
The Jewish world has many beautiful synagogues built with care and piety and devotion, but for us Jews, the people and not any physical place is the locus of holiness. Both the First and Second Temples were destroyed, we were exiled from our land and scattered to the four corners of the Earth — but the Jewish people never abandoned God, nor did God abandon us.
What makes a synagogue — a place of prayer and holiness — is a minyan (traditionally 10 adult males, today often 10 adult Jews), not a building. If you have a minyan, you can daven almost anywhere. Jews hold services in hotel meeting rooms, corporate conference rooms, retail store stockrooms, and the back of airplanes. Teens pray at camp by the lake and on tour by the edge of the Grand Canyon. The New York State Thruway even has a designated “Minha Area” at the Sloatsburg rest stop so that men who work in the city all week can find a minyan on their way to join their families in the Catskills on summer Fridays.
The sad reality is that many of the beautiful synagogue buildings are empty. In sanctuaries built to hold 400 or 500 people, no more than 15 or 20 gather on Shabbat. Sometimes, of course, this is the result of demographics — the community has changed, and most Jews have moved away. But often the Jews are on the membership roster; they’re just not in the pews.
Why? They’ll tell you: “I don’t like the rabbi.” “My kids are done with bar mitzva.” “I’m not really that religious.” “I work hard all week, and I need a day off.” “The people there are too snobbish.” There are as many excuses as there are people. And so the building — whether it’s an elaborate affair of daring architecture, stained glass, and the latest electronics or a simple room with an ark and a reading table — sits nearly empty. But God said, v’shahanti b’toham, not b’toho. That building cannot be a place of God, a place of holiness, without Jews.
God said to Moses, “Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him.” God wanted not only materials and workmanship — God wanted, and wants, the hearts and minds of His people. To made a mikdash a place of holiness, we need more than a building, for God dwells only b’toham — in the heart of His people.
Rabbi Joyce Newmark, a resident of Teaneck, is a former religious leader of congregations in Leonia and Lancaster, Pa.
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