Our guest this week is Rabbi David Singer, Associate Rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas Texas. Rabbi Singer was raised in San Diego and received his BA in History with honors from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. After graduating from the Zeigler School of Rabbinic studies at American Jewish University, he trained as a chaplain in the Pediatric Oncology Unit of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York from 2007-2008. He has written for American Jewish World Service's Dvar Tzedek Torah Commentary and is the author of “Yisrael Sheli; My Israel: People and Places” a religious school textbook about Israel. He is the recipient of the 2012 Whizin Prize in Jewish Ethics.
This week's Torah portion – Parashat Pekudei (Exodus 38:21-40:38) – features the completion of the work on the Tabernacle, after describing the contributions used to build it. It then tells us about the glory of the Lord filling the Mishkan. Our discussion focuses on the enigmatic notion of God's presence filling one confined designated space, on the the people of Israel's need for a holy Tabernacle, and on the reason why even Moses was not able to enter the Mishkan.
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