TERUMAH

by Terry Treseder

Shortly before the current intifada began, I was in Jerusalem exploring my favorite place in the whole world -- the Old City. While passing through large corridors of carefully preserved medieval and Roman-era ruins I stopped short in astonishment at the sight of a huge, golden menorah displayed in a shatter-proof glass case. The plaque credited the object to a wealthy patron of the Temple Institute. The Temple Institute? I wondered if this might be an organization within the Reform movement, though a giant golden menorah seemed like an oddly incongruent expenditure of funds. I did not pursue the matter at the time because it was crowded out of my thoughts by other sights and curiosities. Upon returning to Jerusalem this time around, however, I ran across this (hold up “Light of the Temple” book) in Pomerantz, the bookstore where we are urged to buy our textbooks. I recognized the publisher -- the Temple Institute -- and so decided to have a look. Basically, it illustrates and describes the mishkan and the two temples in very nostalgic terms. Having spent most of my adult life in the publishing business, the first observation I made while flipping through its pages is how expensive it must have been to produce. Every page is illustrated by commissioned artists and photographers in full color, its text typeset in an elaborate script. The cover is decorated by a round-punched gold-trimmed window and raised letters of gold-leaf ... a fool-hardy project for any publisher. To break even you would have to sell millions of these books at $100 apiece. The people who produced this book are obviously not interested in making a financial profit. They are motivated by something else. The second thing that struck my eye were the photographs of musical instruments and implements being crafted by commissioned artisans even as we speak. It seemed like an odd thing in which to invest so heavily -- accoutrements for a building and a cult that no longer exists. This was no mere artistic nostalgia for a glorious past. So I went to the introductory remarks at the front of the book, and learned that the mission of the Temple Institute is to prepare for the building of the Third Temple -- both in making the items as described in our parasha this week -- Terumah -- and next week -- Titsaveh, and in stimulating a desire among Jews -- particularly Israeli Jews -- for this temple to be built. You may be relieved and happy to learn that I finally figured out that this is not exactly an organization within the Reform movement.

How big is the push for a third temple? I began researching this question well before ulpan ended this past summer, the best resource being a book published last year by a Jerusalem Report journalist named Gershon Gorenberg called The End of Days. If you liked From Beirut to Jerusalem, you will be impressed by The End of Days, which is thoroughly researched, much of it from first-hand interviews with both Jewish and Christian Messianic groups in and out of Israel supporting organizations like the Temple Institute and others far less benign -- notably the Temple Mount Faithful and Gush Emunim. You’d be surprised how successfully this dream is being promoted among Israeli school children, and the growing number of organizations and individuals bent on fulfilling the dream through violence. Gorenberg documents in chilling detail the connection between this dream and the infamous massacre in Hebron of 27 Arabs at prayer by Baruch Goldstein, as well as the assasination of Yitzhak Rabin. I am certain that even if the Palestinians were to wise-up and come back to the negotiating table on a peaceful basis, we would then have to deal with Jewish terrorism -- a terrorism based on religious fervor every bit as dangerous and irrational as any jihad.

Gorenberg worries about the reintroduction of animal sacrifice and the war and violence that would follow the construction of a Third Temple. Talmudic sages, however, had an entirely different concern. While researching source texts assigned to us for a project in Marc Bregman’s midrashic literature class on Jerusalem last term -- a project which I thoroughly enjoyed, by the way -- I “eavesdropped” on a number of arguments over which direction one should face when praying the Amidah. Of course we all know the final consensus -- we all pray towards the temple mount in Jerusalem. Not everybody likes that idea today, nor did everybody like it during talmudic times. One talmudic argument proved particularly fascinating to me. Its assumption is that we ought to pray towards the shekina -- the maternal aspect of Adonai who dwells among us. The argument is over the location of the shekina. After numerous voices advocate eastward -- the place of the temple -- three heavy-weight rabbis declare that the shekina is "everywhere”, b’kol makom: Rabbi Oshaia, Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Sheseth. Rabbi Sheseth, in fact, made it a point to pray facing anywhere but east. These three tanaim viewed halakha regarding physical orientation during prayer as misleading, ignoring as it does the permeating nature of the Divine Presence. In the same vein, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, in writing about spirituality, put time over space:

“Where is God found?

God is no less here than there. It is the sacred moment in which His

presence is disclosed. We meet God in time rather than space, in moments of faith rather than in a piece of space.”

The concern here is one of distraction. If you are intent on some physical place, your attention is deflected from your Creator. The place of the temple can easily become an idol, an object of worship in and of itself.

If there is this danger of place-worship over god-worship, why did Adonai command Moses in our Parasha, v’asu li miqdash v’shakanti b’tukam “and let them make for me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them"? What was the underlying purpose of the miskan in the first place? If we understand the answer to this last question, we can better understand how to utilize the temple-concept in our personal lives, as well as leaders in the Jewish community. The answer appears to be included in the source of my question. “Let them make for me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them”. But as noted by our scholars, the Shekina already dwells among us -- everywhere.

Both Rashi and the midrash Tanhuma assert that the commandment to build a sacred sanctuary is a concession to the human need for a tangible manifestation of God’s presence in our lives. The sin of the Golden Calf -- coming up soon -- would confirm that drive within us tto seek tangible symbols of the Divine. The ancient Israelites were unable to grasp an abstract monotheism, and in light of the temple mount movement today, I would say that this problem has not vanished into modernity. There is something in the human spirit which longs for God-encounter -- a place between earth and heaven, a time that is timeless, an elevated realm beyond the cares of this mortal existence. We cannot teach this instinct away, nor should we. We must instead direct these motives in ways that satisfy the need without creating a dangerous counterfeit to the real thing.

Our predecessors have already done the most difficult work for us, by creating temples of time for our people. Ironically, this building process began with the destruction of the Second Temple, and continued for hundreds of years. Beginning with Rabbi Johanan Ben Zakkai, the cultic elements of the temple were reintegrated into Jewish homes and synagogues, essentially transforming every home and meeting place into a sacred sanctuary. They developed the formula of sanctifying ordinary objects and acts of living. A kitchen table became an altar. Food and discussion around this table became holy offerings. Parents and rabbis became high priests. Prayers replaced sacrifices. Havadalah spices replaced burning incense. The light of the Shekina shines from every set of Shabbat candles. Every loaf of Challah is a shewbread. Every Torah scroll placed in the Ark of a sanctuary is a witness placed in the Aron haQodesh. Every week, hundreds of people across the globe are transformed into angels when they stand on either side of their community ark of covenant. The list could go on, and in fact, incompasses the whole of Jewish tradition. For this monumental work alone, our sages deserve our love and respect, for they managed to create a tradition in which sacred symbols of the divine are dispersed wide and far among our people, and if practiced diligently, integrated within our hearts.

The commandment we just read in our parasha -- v’asu li miqdash v’shakanti b’tukam -- contains an interesting grammatical anomoly. Tsedah La Derekh, a 16th-century Italian commentator, notes the use of the plural noun b’tukam “among them” instead of b’tuko “in it” -- “it” referring to the sanctuary itself -- teaching that what God is seeking here is not entering into the sanctuary, but into our hearts. Tsedah suggests that, “The Divine Presence does not rest in the sanctuary on account of the sanctuary, but on account of Israel, for they constitute the Temple of God.” This is a critical concept to understand and teach. It is not a place which makes a holy people, it is a holy people which makes a place holy. kidoshim t’hiu ki kadosh ani ii eloheikem “You shall be holy, for Adonai your God is holy”. v’atem t’hiu li mamleket kohanim v’goi qadosh “You shall be a holy nation, a nation of priests.” These words embody both the promise and the condition for its fulfillment. No place is a holy place unless the people in it make it so by their own acts of sanctification. By that same reasoning, any place -- any place at all -- can be a holy sanctuary by how we conduct ourselves there ... or here ... here, where we stand.

The most effective thing you and I can do to counteract Third Temple movements is to teach our people how to build their own temples -- within their homes and within their community spaces -- not only by utilizing the full array of rich metaphoric transformations of ordinary life into the realm of holiness offered by our tradition, but with God-like behavior, with love and justice and elevated deeds of loving kindness. Potentially every place we stand is a sacred place. We don’t have to wait for the construction of a physical building at a particular site currently occupied by a sanctuary sacred to another people. We have something much better. Each of us has the power of our tradition, the building materials of everything around us, the sanctification of our daily lives and relationships with which to erect our personal and communal mishkan. Longings for the third temple are based on the assumption that building it will bring a messianic age of peace, justice and redemption. Although I believe that building a physical temple where the current Al-Aksa mosque resides will bring the opposite -- war, oppression and degradation, I also believe that a nation of people engaged in the process of building temples of time and moral character will ultimately bring that longed-for age of human redemption and intimate relationship with the Divine.