This week’s portion of Vayakhel
continues a theme that dominates the second half of the book of Exodus,
describing in vivid detail the construction of the tabernacle (Mishkan) in the
wilderness. The placement of the
prohibition of work on Shabbat immediately before the Mishkan passages led the
rabbis to draw a connection between. The
Mishna lists 39 basic
categories of work (Melacha), based on kinds of work done on the Mishkan, from
which are derived many other Shabbat prohibitions.
The connections between
the tabernacle and Shabbat point to a much broader link. The tabernacle was constructed
with such great care because, in the biblical imagination, it was to be a place
where God would dwell – in other words, a microcosm of the universe
itself. The blueprint for the Mishkan
parallels the blueprint devised for the Creation – a Creation that culminated
in, you guessed it, the first Shabbat.
A deeper message here is
that Judaism’s goal is to take what is beyond our grasp, the magnitude of
the entire universe, and bring it down to earth – to make it real and
palatable, to take God out of some celestial ivory tower and bring sanctity
down to the muck and mud of every day existence. The sowing and winnowing and
threshing and writing and igniting in flame, the tent pegs and curtains and
dyes – all these are holy. God dwells
among us, and within us.
Sanctity is what takes
place in our daily lives, our real lives. To be relevant, then, Judaism must speak to
those daily realities, the tears and laughter, the small victories and crushing
defeats. The TV networks long ago
understood that the key to making the Olympics a ratings hit was to make them
“up close and personal.” We can’t get enough of those portraits of athletes who
have overcome severe setbacks, who bring out the best in the human spirit.
For Judaism to speak to
us, it’s got to speak to what’s real in our lives, to tap into age old
wellsprings of wisdom and the love of a caring community. It’s got to uplift us by reaching us where we
are, hitting us in the gut.
So that’s why we have been
bringing the stories of TBE congregants front and center this year. “This American (Jewish) Life” is the
series, and thus far we’ve heard from congregants who have confronted real life
crises, like the murder of a father and a descent into the disease of
addiction, who somehow have found the strength and hope not only to live on,
but to transcend the pain. In both
cases, the love of a Jewish community and relevance of the Jewish message were
instrumental to that healing process.
This Shabbat morning, we’ll hear the next in that series, as Brett
Goldberg will describe his years of living in Israel, serving literally on
the front lines of Jewish destiny during a turbulent era.
Right now, congregants Suzanne
and Norman Stone are touching lives in Israel and you can read Suzanne’s
latest
dispatch here. Suzanne describes a wonderful encounter with an
Ethiopian immigrant, a 12th grader.
And also see a dispatch received just
today from TBE’s Jan Gaines, also in Netanya, describing a 20 minute
walk along the beach that she calls “Israel in miniature.” Just like the Mishkan – it’s all brought down
to earth. And this coming Thursday, see the
local premier of a film entitled “Next Year Jerusalem” that
will touch you to the core, about a group of nonagenarians who visit Israel,
many for the first time.
And the heroic story of
TBE’s Eli Schwartz, as detailed in
a recent article by his mom Deborah, is one that impacts us all deeply,
reminding us of the power that each of us has to bring a sublime healing to all
whom we touch – right here, right now. We gain great strength from their
courage, which in turn enables us to help them when things get tough. You can
also see this week’s ADL feature on ADL
feature about TBE teen Melanie Roloff, who was victimized by
classroom bullying and turned that experience into a way to make our world
safer.
Getting Real
For Judaism to be relevant,
it must pass the smell test. When panicking pundits speak of the Jewish
condition following the Pew report, we hear suggestions that simply aren’t
helpful. A well-known demographer came to
our community a few weeks ago and said it is incumbent on Jews to have more
babies. Now I’m a great fan of both Jews
and babies, but when you look at the consequences of humanity’s planetary
presence, our dwindling resources and all the consequences of the earth’s
population’s having exploded in one century from
2 billion people to 7 billion people, it’s hard to make the case that people
should be having have more babies.
Not everyone is thinking
of the impact of global population growth, but Jewish newlyweds are thinking of
the economic strain of large families. So this message, that they need to have
oodles more kids, is not one that passes the smell test.
In addition, any message
that flies against accepted scientific fact does not pass the smell test for
the vast majority of Jews. The fastest way to fly into the trash bin of irrelevance is to try to convince Jews that the Creation occurred in six 24-hour days. With very few exceptions (one of them notably the Lubavitcher
Rebbe), Jews
across the spectrum do not see evolution as incompatible with Jewish belief. We do not have any theological issues with
evolution because, in part, Jews don’t read the Creation account as literal
history and also because we don’t need to read “Original Sin” into the Garden
of Eden account.
The recent HBO special “Questioning
Darwin” demonstrates how Darwin’s theories pose a threat to Christian
literalists that simply does not apply to Judaism. The sad fact is that many Jews don’t
realize that. When people blur the
lines between literalist Christianity and mainstream Judaism, they turn away
from their own faith tradition, assuming that “they’re all then same.” Jews need to understand that there is a far
greater compatibility between mainstream Judaism and the views of such modern
spiritual luminaries as Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin, a Catholic, along with the many faith traditions that perceive
God’s presence within an infinitely complex universe as being consistent with
evolutionary theory and modern science. A new Creation ethos is fast coming into
being; one reflected in
the film and book, “Journey of the Universe” that we recently showed here. This emerging Creation ethos passes the smell
test. It speaks to our real lives.
Down-to-Earth Judaism has
never thrived when it’s been insular – what has been “good for the Jews” has
always been when Jews have been good for the world. The miracle of Israel’s rebirth and growth
touches us most deeply when we read of how Israelis are creating
the world’s first insulin pill for diabetes, or the breakthrough Israeli ‘Wrapping Paper’ that will make bones
heal faster and better.
The Jewish story is the
human story writ small, just as the Mishkan is God’s universe in
microcosm. We celebrate our small but
significant contribution to the healing of our world, one tent peg at a time, and
that begins with the sacred work (Melacha) we are doing here down in the mud,
the work of Eli and Melanie and Suzanne and Jan, of Rachael and Dana and Brett
– of each of us.
We are bringing God back
down to earth, as together we construct that Mishkan, one tent peg at a time.
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