The Heart of the Matter & T’rumah

Recently, I had an intense conversation with my younger daughter about the climate crisis.

She’s taking a class called Eco-Spirituality in college, and she loves it.

She shares the belief with indigenous peoples that the Earth is a living being.

She also believes that the Earth is incredibly forgiving, and that using the pronoun “it” when referring to the Earth denotes lack of respect.

As a live being, the Earth has agency, and holds us.

She recognizes the Earth’s regenerative powers, and that even if humanity were to go extinct, the Earth would recover her balance.

But she needs to believe that there is a God who wants us to live, and therefore won’t let us die—or will at least hold and help us.

I wondered out loud about “overpopulation,” to which she responded emphatically, “I refuse to accept overpopulation as the problem; that’s eugenics.”

Which would mean that it’s okay for the poorest of the world to die as a way of depopulating an “overcrowded world”—for the sake of the privileged few who have access to clean water, air conditioning, and air filters.

Not only is there enough abundance on Earth to support and hold all of us, we should be unwilling to sacrifice some for the sake of others.

She is frustrated and disheartened by her generation, many of whom despair, believing the world is doomed.

In this week’s Parsha, Moses is given instructions by God to build a mobile home—for God.

וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃

V’asuli mikdash v’shakhanti b’tokham;

Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.

The instructions are specific, with very precise measurements.

The Israelites are to bring gifts with the willingness of the heart—things such as gold, silver, fine wool and linen of particular vibrant colors, precious stones, tanned skins, a certain type of wood, oil.

At the core of the sanctuary is the Holy of Holies, with an Ark that holds “the Torah,” the teachings for future generations.

This is the innermost chamber where the high priest is the only one ever to enter—and only once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Guarding the Holy of Holies are two cherubim, or large scary looking winged things.

It is from between the cherubim that God will speak to Moses.

And God says the plan must be carried out exactly as God shows Moses:

כְּכֹ֗ל אֲשֶׁ֤ר אֲנִי֙ מַרְאֶ֣ה אוֹתְךָ֔… תַּעֲשֽׂוּ׃        

k’chol asher ani marey ot’kha…ta’asu.

Just as I show you…you shall do.

But the rabbis infer that Moses had trouble translating the plan into action.

It’s hard for us to understand the plan as well; it doesn’t really make sense if we look carefully at it.

But maybe that doesn’t matter.

What is implied in “Just as I show you,” is an unbending, unchanging quality.

And the rabbis said, no, this is a mobile home for God, not a stationary, unchanging home, like a Temple.

Because every generation will have its own way of doing things—its own voices, its own prophets—to reinterpret Torah according to the needs of the time.

This is illustrated by the Hassidic story of the rabbi who took over for his father. The congregation complained, “Why don’t you do things like your father did?” to which the younger rabbi replied, “I do things exactly as my father did. He didn’t do things the way his father did, either.”

In addition, it important to note that a different translation is possible for that verse, “Make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.”

Instead, we could say, “that I may dwell within them.”

When the priest enters the Holy of Holies once a year, he is going to the inner chamber—meaning the very heart.

Because where is “God” to “dwell” if not within the very heart of each of us?

Yet it is up to us to do the work of making, and opening, space for the holy, the sacred, to dwell within us: within our very hearts.

In The Particulars of Rapture, Avivah Zorberg says we as humans have the need to contain God. Thus, we build buildings to house God.

We also have the need to be held, as my daughter expressed.

And that which we might call “God” is speaking to us from the midst of scary things happening all around us.

Whether there is a “God” or not, whether “he” can control or influence or help, whether “he” cares about saving humanity or not, is not the heart of the matter.

The heart of the matter is that young people need us to hold them with steadfast faith in their voices of prophesy, and our belief in their strength and power—the power of human innovation, resilience, and the ability to effect real change in the way we live—so the Earth can, in fact, hold all of us.

They need us to pass on our wisdom and hope—to translate the voice of “God” that has spoken through us and past generations, the voice of resilience and strength through extreme hardship, the one that holds and heartens, just as our ancestors did for us, so they can translate the voice of God—God’s “plan”—into action for these times.

May it be so.