Unscrolled: A Rabbinical Student’s Take on Parashat Terumah

Jews are called the People of the Book, an epithet which reveals much about our perception of God as an author. Indeed, we apply ourselves diligently to the study of God’s written works — the sacred histories, law codes and poems — but in Parashat Terumah, we are reminded that God is also a practitioner of the plastic arts. God is a designer and an architect — a shaper of material who is shaped by material.

“Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” So speaks God to Moses before delivering elaborately detailed instructions for the construction of the Tabernacle, the portable sanctuary that will accompany the Israelites throughout their sojourn in the wilderness.

For those who seek a philosophically perfect God, this parashah presents a challenge. God, incorporeal, should require no home upon the earth. Such a structure would be an affront to God’s omnipresence — to the idea that God is spread thinly and evenly throughout the universe.

So how are we to understand God’s insistence on a sanctuary? Does it mean that the Infinite One is finite in spacetime? Does it mean that the Creator can be housed by the Created? Does it mean that God is smaller than a breadbox?

Maimonides, steeped in the philosophical framework of Aristotle, would abide by no such notions, and explicated that the commandment to make God a sanctuary was one of purely practical import, addressing the need for a designated space for the offering of sacrifices and the like.

Rashi, meanwhile, taught that the construction of the Tabernacle was only commanded because of the Israelites’ addiction to idolatrous practices. Drawn to idols of gold and silver, God tossed the Israelites a shiny sanctuary to satisfy their cravings. The Tabernacle was thus a transitional item designed to ease the Israelites’ psychic growing pains as their consciousness evolved.

But perhaps God had another angle in commanding the Tabernacle. And perhaps a Maimonidean concept of God is unhelpful when trying to unpack the mystery of this sacred structure. After all, a philosophically perfect God lacks the biblical God’s dynamism, personhood and capacity for intimate contact with human beings. And besides, we know from experience that God is indeed in some places more than others.

Sometimes these places are vast and open — a stretch of plain under a wild sky. Other times they are intimate and portioned off — a forest glen or a quiet room. Often, they are natural places, though they might just as well be sanctuaries, like synagogues or cathedrals. Sometimes the holiness of these places seems attributable to their very hiddenness, to the fact that we alone have stumbled upon them. Other times their holiness seems attributable to the communal and historical bonds that are knotted up within them.

In the same way that the hollow of a drum or the chamber of an acoustic guitar gives shape to the instrument’s sound, the internal architecture of these sacred places determines the way we will experience God within them.

the internal architecture of these sacred places determines the way we will experience God within them.

For this reason, the God of Parashat Terumah seems to be deeply concerned with details of acoustics. In the innermost chamber of the sanctuary, God commands the creation of two golden Cherubim above the ark of the covenant. From between these Cherubim, God will speak to Moses. “Their wings will be spread upward,” God commands. “The Cherubim will shelter the cover of the Ark with their wings.”

We can picture the curvature of those golden wings, forming a miniature bandshell in which the Holy Voice can reverberate. Surrounding this central concavity, the sanctuary spreads outward in concentric layers of enclosure, culminating in the curtains of twisted linen which circumscribe the outer courtyard.

In creating an acoustic chamber for the music of revelation, God is relieved of the need to shout from the mountaintop. He can now speak from within the very midst of the people.

Built in the Sinai wilderness, the Tabernacle will impose a sacred geometry on the undifferentiated and shapeless desert landscape. It will also give shape to the undifferentiated omnipresence of God, providing Him a vessel in which to become a living presence known intimately by His people.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.