Terumah
Exodus 25:1-27:19
I Kings 5:26-6:13
This week, we are reading (as we will be for a while) about the embodiment of the covenantal contract between the people and God: the building and function of the nexus between the community and the Divine, the Mishkan (tabernacle) and then the later Temple, which was modeled on it.
The book of Exodus states that the Mishkan had to be mobile, although the amount of work involved to set it up and take it down must have been immense. The importance of the Mishkan is that now, for the first time, God has a place to hang out with us, and a movable one at that — this becomes a great metaphor for the continued caring and presence of God within Jewish communities in the diaspora.
No doubt, God can move freely, and without delving into theology unduly, I would venture to say that there is no place on earth devoid of the Presence (Exodus Rabbah 2.5). But there is a rather special thing that happens when there is a designated place for a meeting; more than just the coffee shop where you might drop in anyhow, here is now a location where you come for the specific purpose of connecting with God.
We know from the story of Laban’s household that this is a theological departure. Previously, some aspect of worship involved you bringing the gods (or representations thereof) into your house — not making a separate place for them.
One of the key aspects of that form of worship seems to have been propitiating those statues/gods with food. This brings us to the center of our Mishkan, wherein are placed a set of objects designed to symbolize the relationship that is celebrated in the making and maintenance of this abode.
We are told in Chapter 25: “You shall make a table of acacia wood, two cubits long, one cubit wide and a cubit and a half high. Overlay it with pure gold and make a gold molding around it … And on the table you shall set the bread of display, to be before Me always.”
Here we have a parallel to the ancient mode of worship — the placement of bread before the (locale of the) Divine. We learn more about the bread itself from Leviticus 24:5: “And you shall take fine flour and bake 12 cakes with it. Two-tenths of an ephah shall be in each cake. You shall set them in two rows, six in a row, on the pure gold table before the Lord.”
I’d like to suggest that there is perhaps here an echo of the manna that the Israelites were eating, presumably still during this time.
We need to remember Exodus, Chapter 16:13-14: “And in the morning there was a layer of dew round about the camp. And when the layer of dew was gone up, behold upon the face of the wilderness a fine, scale-like thing, fine as the hoar-frost on the ground.” There is a thin layer of dew covering the manna — there is a thin layer of gold covering the table. There is a renewal of manna at the beginning of each week — one eats a holier manna (the kind that will keep two days as opposed to one day) on Shabbat, as do the priests eat the bread on Shabbat.
With the manna, God feeds us; with the bread, we feed God — but really, we provide a visual reminder to the Divine that we are all present, and that we are willing to nourish the relationship between us and God.
Just as we stoop to gather the nourishment that God sends, so we elevate that which we bring — saying, in effect, that our hope is to be more than who we are, more than eaters and complainers. The manna inspires us to lift ourselves up, and to place in reverence our creation, our bread in the holy place.
As Moses said, “It is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat,” so we can also say this is the bread of the Presence: the transformation that we can accomplish as we move the blessings and ourselves from the face of the earth and toward the face of the Divine.
Rabbi Elisheva Salamo is the spiritual leader of Keddem Congregation in Palo Alto.