Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom. I have been rereading the young adult novel I Was A Teenage Fairy by Francesca Lia Block with a group of people I met through the Harry Potter and the Sacred Text community. We are applying the skills of deep and sacred reading practices to this short work of magical realism. It has been very enriching. This past week, the sentence we focused on in our close reading was, “I only wish my mother had taken the time to do this with me when I was your age,” said to the main character by her mother, as she is being forced to prepare for a beauty pageant and modeling career she doesn’t want. It made me think of the distinction between this week’s Torah and Haftarah portions, and the difference between doing something because you are moved to do so versus being forced into something from a top-down leadership. 

This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Terumah, begins the telling of the building of the Mishkan. Over the next several weeks, the Torah will tell us how people brought gifts, how a master builder and artisan was chosen to construct the project, and how the whole Tabernacle was built, sanctified, and the camp arranged around it. It is a central piece to our post-Exodus Torah. This week, though, we just get the first set of instructions. God tells Moses to tell the Israelites to bring the materials forward, materials which are fully enumerated, and gives Moses some basic blueprints. Later we see that the people do indeed bring the gifts, as their “hearts so moved them,” as the beginning of this parasha says. 

By contrast, this week’s haftarah, from I Kings 5:26-6:13, is about King Solomon building the Temple in Jerusalem. Solomon buys materials from another kingdom, and inflicts a heavy tax on the Israelites to pay for them. Then he forces the Israelites into hard labor, whether or not their hearts so moved them. In the end, the Temple was built, and it was beautiful, and it was used. But the stress Solomon put on the people, and the precedent he set in abusing his constituents paved the way for the Kingdom of Israel to split in two after his death. 

As with Mrs. Marks in I Was a Teenage Fairy, who put herself on diets and through ridiculous exercises because she wanted to succeed in the modeling and pageant circuit, the Israelites in the wilderness brought the gifts to build the tabernacle because they wanted to. When God asks for these gifts, God says, “Let them build me a sanctuary that I may dwell among (within) them.” Rabbi Isaiah HaLevi Horowitz of 16th century Poland commented on this verse, “The verse does not say ‘and I will dwell within it,’ but ‘and I will dwell within them’—within each and every one of them.” By bringing forth the gifts of the heart to build the tabernacle, willingly and communally, the Israelites invite the spirit of the Lord to settle within and among them all. 

However, as with Barbie Marks, who resents the diets and exercises designed to straighten her posture because she does not care about or want the modeling and pageant life, the Israelites living under King Solomon are bitter about their heavy taxes and forced labor. God has foretold that Solomon will build the House of the Lord, but has not specifically commanded Solomon to do so at any particular time, and the message was not well-communicated to the people to allow their ready and enthusiastic participation. While the viewpoint of the TaNaKh is of course inherently in favor of the Temple, it is clear that even Hazal (the ambiguous author/narrator of the text) is aware that this is poor leadership on Solomon’s part. By not including the whole community in the plans and asking them to contribute heartfelt efforts to bring God’s presence to Earth, the Israelites instead face a generation of division and corruption between their kings and priests. Eventually that division and corruption leads all the way to exile and destruction. 

Talmud (Yoma 72b) comments on the Torah verse, “You shall overlay [the ark] with pure gold, inside and outside (25:11)”: Any Torah scholar whose interior is not like his exterior is no Torah scholar. Likewise, any leader who strives toward projects without participating fully in their execution is no leader. Like a gold-painted brass ornament, a leader who does not listen to and fully engage with the community is a falsehood. 

This Shabbat, may we listen to our communities in order to participate in any efforts to make something holy and beautiful within them. May we work together without ego or hierarchy, may we bring gifts of our hearts with which to build this kehillah kedosha, and may we make space for the Divine to dwell among and within each of us. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.