Parashat Terumah -5786

Facing Each Other

A D’var Torah for Parashat Terumah

Rabbi Dr. Rachel Posner (AJR ’25)

 

This week the Israelites are given instructions for a monumental building project:

וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃

And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. (Exodus 25:8)

The story of the Mishkan – our portable container for holiness – is told twice in the Bible: first as a set of instructions, a kind of how-to guide, and later as a description of how the Israelites carried the instructions out. This building project is the key element to becoming a community, not a disparate group of people but A People that beats with one heart.

What makes a project sacred? Sure, assembling those Kallax shelves or Kivik sofa might bring you closer together (or result in filing for divorce) – but is it holy work?  Some building projects are ordinary. A few are holy. And some turn out to be sinful. In a few weeks, the Israelites will build the Golden Calf—a project born out of anxiety and misplaced desire. The distinction between building a golden calf and building a Mishkan can be quite subtle. How do we know if we are building to serve a sacred purpose – or to worship our own creation?

One way to understand this distinction is by comparing the golden calf to one of the Mishkan’s central elements in this week’s parashah: the golden cherubim.

Both the golden calf and the golden cherubim are fashioned by melting down the donations of the people’s jewelry. Both are sculpted images created for a religious purpose. But whereas the calf is a singular object of worship, the cherubim form a pair that frame and draw attention to the center. These mysterious figures gaze towards each other and downwards at the same time. And what is at the center, flanked by the cherubim? Emptiness. Space for God. Whereas the calf is made of solid gold, “full of itself,”[1] the Mishkan is empty, hollowed out to invite God’s presence in.   This reminds us: that which is most important can never be completely seen, understood or possessed.  The calf stands alone. The cherubim exist only in relationship. God, this suggests, dwells in the space between us.

Who or what are the cherubim? These strange creatures appear once before in the Bible, when Adam and Eve are expelled from Eden, the entrance to the garden is guarded by the cherubim and the fiery, ever-turning sword (Genesis 3:24). What is the role of the cherubim? Hizkuni comments (on Genesis 3:24) that their appearance frightened everyone who saw them.  Are the cherubim guardians of the Sacred? Are they greeters at the door to the Divine? Readers over the ages have imagined the cherubim as babies, angels, lovers, frightening beasts, or even havruta partners studying together.

I like to think that the cherubim are human like you and me (minus the wings). Perhaps they are a shiny, gold-plated metaphor reminding us that we need one another, that we become fully ourselves only through sacred relationship. As Frederick Buechner said, “You can survive on your own. You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.”[2]

Martin Buber’s teaching about relationship—his distinction between I/Thou and I/It—helps illuminate the role of the cherubim in our lives and in our sacred building projects. I/It relationships are functional and necessary for survival. I/Thou relationships are encounters of presence and mutuality—and they are why we survive.

Buber believed that God participates in every I/Thou relationship. Though he was a mystic, he came to distrust spiritual paths that draw people away from others. Instead, he taught that we encounter God most deeply through relationship. In other words, Martin Buber believed in finding God in the person in front of you. [3] Like the cherubim, we must turn towards one another. Our parashah describes the cherubim confronting each other (Exodus 25:20). Perhaps the cherubim remind us how holiness grows in the space between us, whether that space is filled with love or conflict, or both.

God is in the space in between us: In a gaze of lovers under the huppah becoming a family. In a parent and child bent over a tough math problem. In a hard, honest conversation.

Holiness grows when we refuse to turn away from each other. Recently, Haviv Rettig Gur described his experience confronting protestors in masks and keffiyehs who disrupted his lecture at a college. In facing these disrupters, Gur found himself softening. He began to see not assailants, but confused young people. Instead of disengaging, Gur confronted the protestors – not in combative or conciliatory way, but with directness. Without minimizing the harm of their actions, he insisted on their humanity—and his own.

Something shifted. The protestors stayed in the room, took seats, and even asked some questions.

So how do we learn to turn toward one another?

Perhaps we start by building sacred space. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks taught that the final third of Exodus is devoted to teaching us our primary task: to build a home for the Divine Presence.[4] God’s ability to create a home for us is one thing – but the real challenge, the challenge of the Book of Exodus, is for human beings to create a home for God.

What do the instructions for the Mishkan teach us about healing the fractures of our time?

They teach that we cannot build sacred space alone. We must never lose sight of our holy purpose, and we must remember to leave emptiness at the center.  Above all, let us face each other, because God speaks from the gap between us.

[1] Shefa Gold, Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land. Ben Yehuda Press, 2006, 91.

[2] Buechner quoted in Anne Lamott, Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Riverhead Books, 2024. 112.

[3] Martin Buber, I and Thou, Simon & Shuster, 1970 (original 1923).

[4] Jonathan Sacks, Exodus: The Book of Redemption, in Covenant and Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible. Maggid Books and The Orthodox Union, 2010, 291.