Now to this week’s Torah portion, Trumah, in which we begin to read the description of the Tabernacle and its vessels. The laws of the Tabernacle take up an enormous amount of space in the Torah. Is the Tabernacle really so central to Jewish life that it should occupy more space than any other mitzvah? What is the purpose of the Tabernacle?
The answers to this are varied.. On one extreme is Maimonides’ view in the Guide to the Perplexed, which states that the sacrifices had no intrinsic religious meaning but were given to the Jewish people as an educational tool to bring them slowly toward more ideal forms of worship, such as prayer. Here is Maimonides’ well known rationalist view (Guide for the Perplexed 3:32):
“It is impossible to go from one extreme to the other suddenly. Therefore man – according to his nature – is not capable of suddenly abandoning that to which he was deeply accustomed…. As it was then the deeply ingrained and universal practice with which people were brought up to conduct religious worship with animal sacrifices in temples… G-d in His wisdom did not see fit to command us to completely reject all these practices – something that man could not conceive of accepting, according to human nature which inclines to habit. It would have been comparable to a prophet appearing today, calling for the service of G-d, declaring that G-d now commands you not to pray to Him, not to fast and not to seek His help in time of distress, but your service of Him should be in meditation without any deeds whatsoever. He therefore allowed these practices to continue but transformed them from idolatrous associations… that their purpose should be directed toward Him. Thus, He commanded us to build a sanctuary for Him with an altar to His name and offer sacrifices to Him…. In this way idolatry was blotted out and the great foundation of our faith – the existence and oneness of G-d – was established. This was accomplished without confusing people’s minds by prohibiting the worship they were accustomed to and with which alone they were familiar…. G-d does not choose to change man’s nature with a miracle.… As sacrificial worship is not a primary intention… only one Temple has been ordained… and in no other place is it allowed to sacrifice… to limit such worship within bounds that G-d did not deem it necessary to abolish it…. because of this the prophets often declared that the object of sacrifices is not very essential and that G-d can dispense with them…. “
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the view of the mystics, that the Temple is the most important religious thing due to the Kabbalisic secrets which it contains. Here is an example from this camp given by the Slonimer Rebbe: “The tabernacle hints at the upper worlds, and is like a map to all of these worlds. The holy of Holies parallels all the great lights in the worlds above, which we are not able to fathom at all…The Tabernacle parallels not only the secrets of the universe but the human being also who is made in the image of God….God desired to have a dwelling place below, but how can God dwell in the physical world? Therefore God made a place below and brought the light from above into it, so that the Tabernacle could be a place of dwelling for the Divine. Thus, all of the details of the Tabernacle are hints at the secret foundations of the creation…(Nitivot Shalom, Terumah).”
I am both a skeptic and a believer, a rationalist who is relieved to have the Rambam to rely on to come to terms with the Tabernacle and its sacrifices, which seem so unjewish, so unspiritual, and so wasteful. On the other hand I believe if the Torah, which is Divine, spends as much space as it does on the Tabernacle there must be more to it. We live in a world of mystery and perhaps if we were able to tune into the notion of sacrifices we would indeed be moved by its secrets and it’s Divine spirit, as the prophet Isaiah puts it, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways, says God.”
The Torah speaks to me in a variety of ways, like, lihavdil, a great play, in which one can analyze the language, focus on the actiging, be moved emotionally, or see it psychoanalytically or historically. So it is for me with mitzvot such as the Tabernacle, I am happy at time times to take the Maimodian perspective and write it off as less than a “real” aspect of what Jewish life should be and assume that when the Messiah we will not need sacrifices since we are not people who relate to them. But I also see life and Judaism as mystical, containing messages beyond reason which tie us to something much higher, offering us a link to more Divine realms and thereby imbuing our spiritual lives with ultimate meaning.