When the call goes out for donations to the Mishkan, the list of needed materials shows a lot of emphasis on bling -- silver and gold are high on the list. This is mitigated by two things. For one, if one is making a home for an exalted guest, it makes sense to invest in the nicest materials. That’s the way one expresses honor for the guest. The other mitigating factor is that there were no plaques. None of the objects was marred by a plaque. [It’s a separate point but EB takes pride in locating its plaques in one place instead of all over the building.] In the Mishkan, no matter who gave what, the donation was always in the name of “the people”
But these points only point to another: In what way can a building -- no matter how much bling it contains -- encompass a guest like Hashem? This is a question Shlomo HaMelech asked as well (Melachim I, 8:27) -- “even the Heavens cannot contain You -- and surely not this house that I’ve built.”
But if it’s not built for Hashem, or (what would be even worse) as a monument to Hashem, then what is it? There’s a clue to be found in the recurring poetic use of personification. The parts of the Mishkan are referred to over and over as parts of the body. There are skins (Orot), arms (Amot), legs (Raglav), thighs (Yarcha), lips (Al Sfat), faces (Peneihem), and heads (Rosho).
Carpenters also refer to the “legs” of a table and the “arms” of a chair, but when this happens over and over, it becomes a clue to something larger. It tells us that the Mishkan has a human aspect. It is a living thing.
What kind of a living thing comes in a hint in one particular body part, what it calls the Tzela. R’ Yitzchak Twersky zeroes in on this body part in order to make a bigger point. There are only two places in the Torah that this word is used, and Rashi connects them.
In the description of the Mishkan, it refers to the “sides” of the courtyard. This word with the Mishkan is the prooftext that Rashi uses in the beginning of the Torah to define the word the first time it is used, in the creation of male and female. Many of us are used to translating this word at the beginning of the Torah as “rib.” We translate this crucial moment to mean that Hashem took the rib from Adam and built it up into the first woman.
But Rashi says that it is not a rib, just like it does not mean “rib” in reference to the Mishkan. It is instead the “side” of Adam. Rashi says that the original Man had two faces and that Hashem split him into two sides, a male side and a female side. What was subsequently “built” was whatever went into making her the female side. So there was a human at the beginning of Creation and that human was divided into two humans who complete one another when they come together.
There is no one other mention of this word in the Chumash. The connection seems to be that the building of the Mishkan is the building of something like the coming together of male and female. It completes the Jewish people and affords them an encounter with Hashem that would not be possible otherwise.
When the verse in the beginning of the Parasha says that Hashem commanded them to “make a Mishkan and I will dwell in them,” He is alluding to this. He does not say that He will dwell in “it” -- he won’t be a guest or a host in the Mishkan. The building of the Mishkan will transform them into something they could not be otherwise. The Ramban says at the beginning of the Parasha that the Mishkan was a continuation of what happened at Har Sinai. It makes that experience mobile. That encounter with Hashem will now be a continuing possibility.
A Shul is called a Mikdash Me’at, a miniature Temple. It too is supposed to help those who associate it with it to encounter Hashem in a way that is not possible otherwise. The Mishkan’s living quality came out first in its cadence. Like every living organism, it worked both continuously -- uninterrupted -- and continually, It had a regular cadence, which was first and foremost daily. The Menora was lit daily, the offerings were daily. The bread was changed weekly but it was fresh every day. That is the way we have to think about our encounter -- as at least daily, in addition to weekly, or monthly or on the Chagim.
Congregation Emek Beracha 4102 El Camino Real Palo Alto, CA 94306
