When I was a student in my third year of rabbinical school there was a trip to the Sinai desert which in those days post-1967 war was in Israel’s hands. There were about twenty of us who camped in that wilderness. There were some magnificent natural sites. Probably the most beautiful was Dahab on the coast of the Red Sea.
In Hebrew the word Dahab is Zahav, as in Yerushalayim shel Zahav, Jerusalem the Golden. It was a perfect name for this location because when the sun rose and when it set a golden glow came over the sand.
There were interesting rock formations and other attractions that I’ve never seen before or since, for that matter, but the one thing I looked for and couldn’t find were dolphins. Yes, dolphins. Heck, when we read today’s sedra we find God suggesting dolphin skins as a suitable gift to bring for the wilderness tabernacle that would be constructed. I put two and two together and got five. Yes, we were in the Sinai, but we saw no dolphins. How did they get there in the time of Moses?
Now there’s a question that could stump just about anybody, but our rabbis of old had answers to everything. No, dolphins didn’t exist on desert soil. I mean what would be the porpoise? Indeed, one has to go back to the crossing of the Red Sea for the answer. It’s obvious when one does that. The power of the splitting sea created two tremendous waves on either side of the fleeing Israelites. When the sea parted those waves tossed dolphins onto the Sinai desert. Voila…dolphin skins.
But wait! Where did the Israelites get all that gold and silver and copper; the blue- purple- and red-dyed wool; the flax, goat hair, wood, olive oil, spices and gems. I mean we’re told to have a safe box that holds just the priceless items we want saved in case there’s a fire in our homes. We’d never be able to fill those boxes if we listened to the firefighters, and if we filled them, how could we lift them as we made our escape?
The Israelites had to make a quick exit, but the Torah being the Torah, and our rabbis being our rabbis, there’s an answer for everything. The gold? If you recall, we got the gold from our Egyptian neighbors; that’s written right in the text. Yes, we might have swiped other things but we don’t know that.
We don’t know a lot of things but there’s an answer. It says “TAKE” a donation, not “GIVE” a donation. The sages said, if the materials weren’t available we’d have to find them. In that case the verb “give” would be used. But we use “take” as if to say, “go head, take it; we’ve got plenty.” Let’s take the cedar wood for example. Jacob had a premonition that his descendants would build a tabernacle in the wilderness one day, so when he came to Egypt he took with him cedar trees and planted them. Therefore it was easy for his sons to take the wood with them when they left Egypt.
And then there’s the more modern midrash. A skinny guy applies to be a lumberjack in the forests of Canada. The foreman looks at him and says, “You’re scrawny. What kind of experience did a little squirt like you have cutting down trees?” The guy responds, “In the Sinai forest.” “Excuse me, you mean the Sinai desert.” The guy replies, “Yeah, NOW!”
Great story. I’m not sure my favorite saying fits…”Never let the facts interfere with the truth.” But, hey, they’re midrashim, rabbinic legends, and one account is as good as any other (I happen to like mine the best). And the other material? It was available. How so? Another legend has it that God took them from the Garden of Eden and hid them in the wilderness telling only Moses where he could find them.
But the essence of the portion is the phrase “Whose heart shall move them.” Assuming that the Israelites had something of their own – not something they found from the Garden of Eden, or stolen from the Egyptians, or flung from the Red Sea when it parted – the only thing each had to give was a half-shekel per individual. It was, shall we say, a cover charge. Everything else was from the heart.
Now there’s a more important question: why build a “home” for God? Isn’t God everywhere? You know, one of my most unfavorite
phrases is when someone says, “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual.” If I were a cynic, I’d say, “The difference is the religious person pays dues to a synagogue while the spiritual person does not.” But I’m no cynic…much.
We need to see a place. We put up plaques in our synagogues to honor the dead; seeing their name gives us grounding in who they were. Anybody know what a cenotaph is? If someone is not found but presumed dead, or if ashes of a cremated person were scattered, loved ones will often build a monument in a cemetery with as much information as the usual cemetery gravestones have. That way they can “visit” their loved one. It’s a place to focus.
It’s not that God needs the mishkan, the portable tabernacle; it’s that the Israelites needed it. From the rituals surrounding the tabernacle and later the Temples, more and more rituals were developed. We needed a place to perform them.
One more point about this. In Exodus we’re told that sacrifices surrounding Passover took place in the home, but not in Deuteronomy. There it says, “at the place where I will show you.” That was the tabernacle then the Temples. The reason? In their own private places our people – and all people – can do creative things. That was not to be. We needed a regimen, and the Temples with their priests and levites prevented such individual acts that, they felt, could lead to the end of monotheism.
Terumah, it is said, has more commentary than any other sedra…and I can understand why.