In the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Terumah, Moses has just ascended Mount Sinai after the saying of the aseret hadibrot, Ten Commandments, and God now commands Moses to tell the Jewish people to collect funds for the building of the Mishkan, (Tabernacle), a moving temple the Jewish people traveled with in the desert. This Torah portion and several subsequent to it then continue to describe the details of the Mishkan’s construction. Why do the commandments for building a Tabernacle follow so soon on the heels of the revelation at Mount Sinai? Indeed, why do the Jewish people, a nation that our rabbis say saw God face-to-face at the Red Sea and at Mount Sinai, require a Tabernacle at all for relating to the divine? Furthermore, isn’t it a dangerous proposition for a people so soon redeemed from a land of idolaters to have a concrete place and gold vessels for worshiping an infinite God?
Rash’i, the great medieval French Torah commentator, was perplexed by the same questions. He answers that the Torah here is in the wrong chronological order. In reality, says Rash’i, the Tabernacle was given to the Jews only after they had worshipped the golden calf and God realized their need for a more concrete form of worship. Maimonides in his book, The Guide to the Perplexed, says a similar thing, that prayer and personal interaction are a higher form of connection with God than Temple sacrifices and communal service, but that the Jews, a nation 50 days from slavery, could not relate to things so abstract.
The Midrash, though, sees the Mishkan in a more positive light. The Midrash says Moses was quite perplexed when God gave the commandments for the building of the Tabernacle and said, “Will You who even the whole universe cannot contain, constrict Yourself in the Mishkan?”
The Midrash, Yalkut Shimoni, offers the following parable as God’s answer to Moses. There was a king who had a young daughter. When she was a little girl she would run to the king in the market place and he would pick her up, he was always available to play with her and talk to her. When she grew up the king said, “It is not fitting for us to talk in the market place; I will make a special personal room for us to talk in.” So it is with Israel, says God. When she was young, I interacted with her everywhere face to face; at the Sea, in the Exodus and at Mount Sinai. But now that she has grown up, received the Torah and become a complete nation, it is not polite (or profound enough) for me to talk to her in public like a child, rather let her make for me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.
Do we have a Mishkan due to our lack of ability to interact intimately and maturely with God or because we have an even greater ability to do so? Though growing up often changes the parent-child relationship into one that at first may seem less intimate, the potential exists, if we can mature enough, to have a relationship that is ever so much more deep and complex.