(Delivered February 28, 2025)

Shabbat shalom!

In the rush and swirl of life, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. We get so wrapped up in the details of life—in the worries large and small, in the file folders and sewing kits and gas pumps of our everyday world—that we forget to look up and around and notice the bigger patterns and themes. Of course, Shabbat offers us a chance to reflect more deeply, but even still, we tend to think of each Shabbat as having one parsha, one scriptural statement, to hold our attention. We can too easily forget that the Torah is a continuous scroll, from

 בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ׃
At first God created the heavens and the earth

to 

וּלְכֹל הַיָּד הַחֲזָקָה וּלְכֹל הַמּוֹרָא הַגָּדוֹל אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה מֹשֶׁה לְעֵינֵי כּל־יִשְׂרָאֵל׃
And to all the strength of hand and the great teaching
which Moses had displayed to the entire Jewish people

The sweep of it is so much bigger than we can hold at once: from nothingness to this whole world to the ache of bittersweet anticipation underneath that final verse, as one generation fades and the new generation is poised to enter the Promised Land.

I have big sweeps on the brain tonight.

I’m thinking of the long arc of the past few weeks of Torah: from Yitro to Mishpatim to Terumah. When we zoom out, this narrative line articulates the journey of that first seismic encounter with God and the giving over of the ten commandments, followed by the more mundane and detailed laws of Mishpatim. And then, this week in Terumah, we receive the building instructions for the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary that draws the divine presence into the physical world. The progression of these three parshiot is from anticipation—even dread—to planning, and then to setting about doing the work. 

Twenty-one years ago tonight, Bill and I were just home from the Cambridge Birth Center with our brand-new first born, our sweet (now-no-longer) little Akiva. So this narrative of anticipatory excitement and mild dread, followed by planning, followed by settling in and making a life, maps powerfully onto my memories tonight. 

When we realize a baby is coming, everything begins to change: in our bodies, in our relationships, in our lives. We make room for a new way of being, and little by little we groove into that new rhythm, surrendering to its pleasures and challenges, until the day comes when we can’t remember how it used to be. 

Making room for a new way of being is the essence of Parshat Terumah. The parsha is almost entirely made up of highly detailed instructions for building the Mishkan: what color threads and how many poles and what they should be made of and how they should be joined together with golden or copper hooks. 

For all its apparently tedious detail, though, which I’ll say more about tomorrow morning, our parsha contains one of my favorite psukim, one I return to often and will probably never not want to write about whenever we study Terumah. 

Chapter 25, verse 8 says: וְעָשׂוּ לִי מִקְדָש וְשַכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם

The first half of the verse translates pretty easily: and they shall build Me a holy space. The second half is the subject of endless contemplation because of its ambiguity. It reads either and I will dwell within them; or and I will dwell among them.

בְּדִיבּוּר אֶחַד—in a single word—we have the notion that when we create a holy container together, God will be within us individually and also among us as a community. What we build together becomes a home for divinity. I can think of no better, or sweeter, metaphor for what happens when a couple becomes a family, and for the ways in which a community opens up a little more with each new person who arrives. We make the space, and holiness can’t help but enter.

The Mishkan we build in Terumah has enough gravitational pull to provide a ritual anchor for the Israelites, but still it’s flexible enough to move as we grow. Just like the grounding we hope to give our children. Like a parent’s love, the Mishkan is a sanctuary for the journey. We build it together, this beautiful space, and then… the presence of God joins us here, as we go from nothingness to creation to the bittersweet ache of watching the next generation soar. 

Shabbat shalom!