Two Minute Torah Podcast

Terumah 5771 by Rabbi Charles Savenor

When Rabbi Naphtali of Rhopshitz, a Hasidic master, was a young boy, his father said to him: "I will give you a prize, a coin, if you tell me where to find God."

This child replied on the spot, "I will give you two coins if you can tell me where God is not found."

What was so clear to this child is that God is everywhere. But if God is everywhere, then why go to the trouble of building God a home on earth?

During the 40 years in the wilderness, the Israelites worshipped God in the Mishkan, the traveling Tabernacle, and as soon as the Jewish people began living in Jerusalem, the appointed home for God was the Beit Hamikdash, the Temple.

I think God's command to build the Mishkan fills a human need.

Since it can be overwhelming to grasp that God is everywhere, the Mishkan serves as a spiritual focal point for our ancestors. In this sacred space they built together, they prayed, mourned and celebrated as one people. In essence, how the Israelites use this spiritual space teach us about the meaning of community.

The Mishkan became a paradigm for any and every house of God, like the ones we will sit in this coming Shabbat. Our spiritual homes then and now enable us to feel God's presence and remind us that we are not alone in the universe.

Winston Churchill once said, "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us." After the Israelites built the Mishkan and later the Temple, they began to understand what it means to be a community. These institutions shaped how we Jews interact with one another and the world.

Thankfully, the imprint these spiritual institutions made was so deep into the Jewish soul that when the Temple was destroyed (twice), we continued to live as a people with the same values and sense of community. Our spiritual tradition is dynamic and powerful enough that it can be expressed in multiple settings and with different interpretations.

Synagogues serve as valuable vehicles to create community. Equally important, our spiritual centers are incubators of ethical and spiritual values we can practice and share anywhere God can be found.

Shabbat Shalom!