What We Build

Letting it fall

*This will be delivered as the sermon at Temple Israel Center on 2/17/2024

Lately, I have been doing more building around our home as Cal’s ever growing bin of toys gets raided early every morning. I’m not the most handy person when it comes to real building, so as I put together his rudimentary set of blocks, boards, or tiles, my confidence grows. One of the things I have learned from Lauren as we partake in these adventures is that as we’re building towers that grow increasingly fraught with height and lack of structural integrity, I shouldn’t intervene to help stabilize it but rather let it fall and see what happens. Because when we build, it need not always be linear because, well, look around you.

It’s noteworthy that Cal’s initial reactions to towers falling doesn’t result in being crestfallen. Usually, a smirk or a chuckle and then right back to it. It’s something that happens over and over again and takes about a second, but I find it deeply instructive. When we’re constructing things, there are valuable lessons to be learned from those micro moments of getting off track.

 We find ourselves again reading the picayune instructions in our Torah reading cycle as the Israelites prepare to construct the tabernacle. On the surface level, it seems like a long list of materials, but there’s more hidden there. The one that jumped out at me comes in Exodus 26:15, where we read the following 

וְעָשִׂ֥יתָ אֶת־הַקְּרָשִׁ֖ים לַמִּשְׁכָּ֑ן עֲצֵ֥י שִׁטִּ֖ים עֹמְדִֽים׃

You shall make the planks for the Tabernacle of acacia wood, upright.

If you looked at the tabernacle from above, you would see a symbol that resembles the pie shape that we all know from math class, with one opening facing east. Forming those three different sides were 46 planks, introduced here as krashim. Each plank was 10 cubits high, 1.5 cubits wide which in modern measurement equals about 15 feet high and 2ish feet long. They probably each weighed around 30 pounds. I tell you these measurements because it gets us to our first tricky situation with this construction project and specifically these planks. Where in the world did they come from? Do acacia trees grow in deserts? I’m no arborist although it seems the answer may actually be yes. 

Nonetheless, we’re not the first ones to ask that question. Rashi is bothered by this appearance of trees so he highlights the fact that these planks aren’t called krashim-planks but rather, ha’krashim the planks. That definite article points Rashi in the direction of an earlier midrashic teaching:

 For our father Jacob had planted cedars (shittim-trees) in Egypt and when he died be bade his sons carry them up with them when they would leave Egypt. He told them that God would once command them to erect a dwelling of shittim-trees in the wilderness.-Genesis Rabbah 94

Way back in the stories of Genesis, Abraham planted acacia trees in Be’er Sheva. When Jacob made his way down to Egypt in Genesis 46, we read that “he took everything that he had.” The Midrash combines those two narratives to argue that Jacob, with his special relationship to God and insights therein knew that those acacia trees would one day be needed for the holy task of building the tabernacle. 

Let that sink in for a second. An act from two generations before, supplemented by the previous generation is now bearing fruit for the desert generation. One might scoff at the fantastical nature of this story and perhaps rationally, one may be right. After all, it’s a flight of fancy type of tale.

If we go beyond that feeling though, the meaning behind the story is powerful. Seeds planted many years ago are now ready to bear their fruit. Here the people are ready to dedicate this edifice to God, to house God’s presence, and the only way it can happen is through the dedication of those that came before. 

In and of itself, it’s an impactful lesson. But it’s not enough. Because we also know that lessons from the past, while valuable, need to be adapted, broken down, and sometimes repurposed into totally different forms and structures. The mishkan, this portable sanctuary was a totally innovative creation. That message we get from the Maggid of Sudilkov, the grandson of the Ba’al Shem Tov, better known as the Degel Machane Ephraim. 

He points out a number of things about this verse. The first is that the word for plank, keresh, can be played around with by switching the letter orders to form two different words: kesher-connection and sheker-lie. From the former, he allegorizes this verse to say that these planks serve as a metaphor for human beings.

Just as the planks serve as the base through which this sacred structure is built, so too do we human beings serve as the base through which divinity is brought into this world through the connections we make with one another and with God. But, he notes, we don’t always stay focused. Sometimes we get waylaid with all sorts of frivolous actions and thoughts that come from the world of lies. Think of those things that keep you untethered from your purpose, building positively. 

But don’t fret, he continues, that’s all part of life for all of us. We’re all born with a good inclination and a wayward one. One of our jobs as humans is as the Psalms say “turn away from the wayward and do good.” Much of what we cleave to, those things that serve our material needs have the potential for goodness or waywardness.

Think of eating and drinking, how we tend to our bodies, and our sexual actions. We have the choice to decide how we act in those things. Every opportunity is a chance to elevate something mundane or lower it. He then quotes the rabbinic teaching that “the wisest person is the one who learns from all people” to illustrate that true wisdom is learning from every moment in life, certainly the positive ones but also from the moments of wayward action and thought. 

This gets him back to the original verse. The building of this holy space is done on these planks, which are really about the connections we build in life. Even the connections we make to moments that have the chance to push us off the path are actually opportunities for wisdom and growth. That is why we use atzei shittim-acacia trees for the word for trees, etz, is related to etzah-advice and the word shittim-acacia, has the same numerological value as the word satan, the devil-like force in Judaism that is meant to fuel our evil inclination. That inclination can advise us. In fact, those things that come from the evil inclination are built into the very fabric of our holiest parts. The work of unearthing them is up to us. 

That is our task as human beings in this endeavor of building our worlds. We’re always building internally and externally. Even from our youngest ages, I am learning this from Cal. My instinct is to want to keep things perfect for him and make sure his structures are impervious to waywardness. But that’s not how life goes. 

That’s also not how things go as we build our larger structures in religious communities. We are indebted to the generations that came before us that planted the trees and lugged them from far and wide to help build. But we have to adjust.

We have to remember that ideas that were once frowned upon, looked at with skepticism, or even ideas we’ve thrown out before might now need to be reconsidered. Just as this desert generation was seeking, screwing up, finding God, becoming distant, rinse and repeat, they also built this mishkan, this holy space in which the Divine’s presence resides. We can build the same way, being unafraid to have things fall over because our success is built on our bravery to learn from brokenness.

 V’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham. Make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. Those words are inscribed right above me. That “them” could mean among the people or among the buildings.  Or it could mean that divinity is also found in all the ideas and thoughts, the ones from our good inclination and especially in our not so good inclinations. May we and our institutions find that courage to seek them out once more.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Weekend!