My youngest son Asher, upon being asked what materials he thought would be necessary for the building of the Tabernacle described in this week’s parsha, replied: “Cement.”
It’s true. One would have expected the building of a house of God to require cement, something to hold the pieces together in a permanent way. But no, it turns out that the building of this temple was to be more like building a Lego structure, something that could be easily disassembled and reassembled. This was to be a mobile house of God and its entire structure was determined by this fact, its walls built with detachable nuts and bolts and its major appurtenances constructed with attached poles for carrying. Concerning the Aron, the ark which housed the Torah tablets, the Torah says specifically, as if to emphasize how essential mobility is to its very nature: “The poles shall remain in the rings of the Ark: they shall not be removed from it” (25:15).
Eventually, of course, many years later, in the time of King Solomon, the Israelites did build a permanent Temple, based upon the model of this Tabernacle. Why, then, does the Torah bother to describe this mobile one? Why not merely wait till the Israelites get to the land, and deal with (permanent) Temple building then? Why is the whole prototype of a house of God given here as a mobile one?
The Israelites knew from cement. Not long ago, they had been slaves working with “mortar and bricks” for Pharaoh’s great building projects. What God was offering them here was an alternative type of building project, one which, like the outstretched wings of the cherubs atop the Ark, was meant to have a kind of lightness and mobility, to be untied to any specific place.
Untied to place, and also, untied to time. Concerning both the bread and the light of the Tabernacle, the Torah uses the word tamid, “always.” The connection to God established at Mount Sinai was meant to be something that can be carried on wherever and whenever one exists. Ironically, by creating a structure that was, unlike Egypt’s mortar and bricks, impermanent, something truly permanent and eternal was established.
Permanent? Eternal? But here we are, in 2011, without a Temple. Maybe the message of this mobile Temple, the message of this Tabernacle, this Mishkan, is that one is never really without a Mishkan, never really without God’s presence. The rabbis say that if one studies the Torah portions concerning the Tabernacle, God considers it as if one has actually brought sacrifices. No, we have no actual building structure, but we do still read the words describing that structure – they are eternal. It is through them and through all the words of the Torah that we do have a kind of Mishkan, a portable entryway to connecting to God.
Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels
