Building Builders

As soon as we read the opening lines of Terumah we begin the massive shift from the intense drama of the Exodus with its signs and wonders and epic events, to the long, detailed narrative of how the Israelites constructed the Tabernacle, the portable sanctuary that they carried with them through the desert.

By any standards it is a part of the Torah that cries out for explanation. The first thing that strikes us is the sheer length of the account: one third of the book of Shemot, five parshiyot – Terumah, Tetzaveh, half of Ki Tissa, Vayakhel and Pekudei, interrupted only by the story of the Golden Calf.

This becomes even more perplexing when we compare it with another act of creation, namely God’s creation of the universe. That story is told with the utmost brevity: a mere thirty-four verses. Why take fifteen times as long to tell the story of constructing the Sanctuary?

The question becomes harder still when we recall that the Mishkan was not a permanent feature of the spiritual life of the Children of Israel. It was specifically designed to be carried on their journey through the wilderness. Later, in the days of Solomon, it would be replaced by the Temple in Jerusalem. What enduring message are we supposed to learn from the construction of a travelling Sanctuary that was not even designed to endure?

Even more puzzling is that fact that the story is part of the book of Shemot. Shemot is about the birth of a nation. Hence Egypt, slavery, Pharaoh, the Ten Plagues, the Exodus, the journey through the sea, and the covenant at Mount Sinai. All these things would become part of the people’s collective memory. But the Sanctuary, where sacrifices were offered, surely belongs to Vayikra, otherwise known as Torat Kohanim, Leviticus, the book of priestly things. It seems to have no connection with Exodus whatsoever.

The answer, I believe, is profound.

The transition from Bereishit to Shemot, Genesis to Exodus, is about the change from family to nation. When the Israelites entered Egypt, they were a single extended family. By the time they left they had become a sizeable people, divided into twelve tribes plus an amorphous collection of fellow travellers known as the erev rav, the “mixed multitude.”

What united them was a fate. They were the people whom the Egyptians distrusted and enslaved. The Israelites had a common enemy. Beyond that they had a memory of the patriarchs and their God. They shared a past. What was to prove difficult, almost impossible, was to get them to share responsibility for the future.

Everything we read in Shemot tells us that, as is so often the case among people long deprived of freedom, they were passive and they were easily moved to complain. The two often go together. They expected someone else, Moses or God Himself, to provide them with food and water, lead them to safety, and take them to the Promised Land.

At every setback, they complained. They complained when Moses’ first intervention failed:

“May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.” Ex. 5:21

At the Red Sea they complained again. They said to Moses:

“Was it because there were no graves in Egypt, that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” Ex. 14:11-12

After the division of the Red Sea, the Torah says:

“When the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and believed in Him and in Moses His servant.” Ex. 14:31

But after a mere three days they were complaining again. There was no water. Then there was water but it was bitter. Then there was no food.

The Israelites said, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” Ex. 16:3

Soon Moses himself is saying:

“What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.” Ex. 17:4

By now God has performed signs and wonders on the people’s behalf, taken them out of Egypt, divided the sea for them, given them water from a rock and manna from heaven, and still they do not cohere as a nation. They are a group of individuals, unwilling or unable to take responsibility, to act collectively. Their first response is always to complain.

And now God does the single greatest act in history. He appears in a revelation at Mount Sinai, the only time in history that God has appeared to an entire people, and the people tremble. There never was anything like it before; there never will be again.

How long does this last? A mere forty days. Then the people make a Golden Calf. If miracles, the division of the sea, and the Revelation at Mount Sinai fail to transform the Israelites, what will? There are no greater miracles than these.

That is when God does the most unexpected thing. He says to Moses: speak to the people and tell them to contribute, to give something of their own, be it gold or silver or bronze, be it wool or animal skin, be it oil or incense, or their skill or their time, and get them to build something together – a symbolic home for My Presence, a Tabernacle. It doesn’t need to be large or grand or permanent. Get them to make something, to become builders. Get them to give.

Moses does so. And the people respond. They respond so generously that Moses is told, “The people are bringing more than enough for doing the work the Lord commanded to be done” (Ex. 36:5), and Moses has to ask them to stop giving.

During the whole time the Tabernacle was being constructed, there were no complaints, no rebellions, no dissension. What all the signs and wonders failed to do, the construction of the Tabernacle succeeded in doing. It transformed the people. It turned them into a cohesive group. It gave them a sense of responsibility and identity.

Seen in this context, the story of the Tabernacle was the essential element in the birth of a nation. No wonder it is told at length; no surprise that it belongs to the book of Exodus; and there is nothing ephemeral about it.

The Tabernacle did not last forever, but the lesson it taught did. It is not what God does for us that transforms us, but what we do for God. A free society is best symbolised by the Tabernacle. It is the home we build together. It is only by becoming builders that we turn from subjects to citizens. We have to earn our freedom by what we give. It cannot be given to us as an unearned gift.

It is what we do, not what is done to us, that makes us free. That is a lesson as true today as it was then.