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We always need to remember that it is what we do, not what we build, which brings divinity into our lives. Lessons for Today
For there I will meet with you, and there I will speak with you, and there I will meet with the Israelites, and it shall be sanctified by My presence. I will sanctify the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and I will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve Me as priests. I will abide among the Israelites, and I will be their God. And they shall know that I the Eternal am their God, who brought them out from the land of Egypt that I might abide among them, I the Eternal their God. (Exodus 29:42-46)
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Yeshayahu Leibowitz reminds us:
The sanctuary and what followed, the glorious temple which came after the portable tent, was not the dwelling place of God. On the contrary, a few hundred years later, [the prophet] Isaiah (66:1) stated: “Thus says God, ‘The heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool; where is a house that you can build for Me? And where the place of My rest?’”
So too, when the Temple was dedicated, King Solomon exclaimed (I Kings 8:27), “The heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain You; how much less this house that I have built?” True believers, who attempted to comprehend God and to understand what the Godhead is, admitted that man cannot build a home and sanctuary for God, but he can accept upon himself to serve God, which he symbolizes in what he does with the intention of serving God.
But one should add something else, and that too is discussed at length in the Midrashic literature. As far as the sanctuary was concerned, when Moses was commanded to build it, the stress - and this is repeated numerous times - was on “they will make...,” “they will make...,” “they will make”: they will make the sanctuary, they will make the curtains, they will make the copper altar, they will make the gold altar, etc.
All of this was made by the hand of man, and there was no Divine intervention in the construction of the sanctuary. Everything was man-made, and we even know which men made it: Bezalel ben Uri and Oholiav ben Ahisamakh, who were craftsmen. The Shekhinah dwelling in Israel came about as a result of the work of men. Inspiration does not come from the outside. Inspiration comes about as a result of what man does in order to receive it. Without man’s actions, it is possible that there will not be any inspiration.
Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Notes and Remarks on the Weekly Parashah (Brooklyn: Chemed Books, 1990), p. 85.
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Sforno notes:
And I will dwell among the Children of Israel... to accept their service with favour and hearken to their prayers.
And I will be their God. To direct their affairs without an intermediary. And they will not need fear the heavenly signs, for they will be more honoured before Me than the heavens whose movement is directed through the angels that move them. As a result, their eternity is ensured.
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After the lengthy presentation that began in last week’s parashah of all the details of the building of the Mishkan - the Tabernacle or portable worship place that the Israelites carried around during their years of wandering in the wilderness - the Torah repeats the assertion that the Mishkan is to be the dwelling place of God: “I will abide among the Israelites, and I will be their God” (Exodus 29:45). This parallels the statement at the beginning of the instructions that explains, “Let them make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8). Clearly, from these types of statements, and the very name of the structure itself (Mishkan, from the root sh-k-n meaning “presence”) that this structure is to be the actual house of God, the very place where the Divine Presence will reside in the midst of the Israelite people.
This concept, however, contains some inherent problems. How can God, who is infinite and boundless, be contained within the boundaries of a humanly-built structure? How can the Eternal One ever be limited to the four walls of a earthly abode, even if it was God who ordained that it be built? Jewish thought has always resisted the notion of restricting the Divine Presence to any one human form or structure. How could God be reduced or contained?
Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz states unequivocally that, “The sanctuary... was not the dwelling place of God.” As he notes earlier, “The sanctuary was not God’s domicile, but expressed the fact that Israel assumed the obligation to serve God. They made a sanctuary in honour of God - and God dwelled among them, not in this house.” As in made clear in the Prophets that he quotes, God cannot be contained, and the “House of God” that the Israelites built on God’s command is not really the home of the Eternal One, but rather simply a symbol of Israel’s commitment to serve God. The Mishkan, and the Temple in Jerusalem that followed it and even our Synagogues today, are Houses of God not in the sense that God lives there, but rather in the sense that these are the places where we as a people gather to “draw closer” to God; to worship and do the work (in Hebrew, the word Avodah means both “work” and “worship”) of connecting with our God. Our sacred spaces are not where God dwells, but rather they remind us that God dwells among us.
Leibowitz, for whom commitment to the fulfilment of mitzvot for their own sake is central to his personal philosophy, takes the symbolism of the Mishkan one step further. He notes the emphasis that the Mishkan was to be built by the people. While God could have easily facilitated its building through Divine intervention, it was the very involvement of the people in its construction that gave the symbolism of the Mishkan its force. As Leibowitz points out, “The Shekhinah dwelling in Israel came about as a result of the work of [humans]”. The building of the Mishkan was, in of itself, the fulfilment of a mitzvah, a commandment from God. It was the people’s of Israel’s willingness to do God’s bidding which allowed the Divine Presence to be apart of them, and not the suitability of the home that they build. As the text states repeatedly. “Let them make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them” - “among (or in) them,” not, “in it”. It is the act of building, and not the building itself, that brings the people closer to God. And, as Sforno adds, Israel’s destiny and fate is linked to the Eternal through their compliance to God’s will.
Lessons for Today
In this day and age, when the popular architects become pop idols in their own right, we often get hung up on structures and the physical environment. Magnificent works of architecture can certainly move us, and to worship in a place that is purpose-built to magnify the glory of God can certainly be inspiring. And there is no question that our natural environment, God’s creation, the greatest work of architecture ever constructed, can help draw us closer to God than any human-built structure. Inspiration (the “spirit-in-us”) is often a result of our relationship to our environment, be it natural or humanly manufactured, and, in a way, we can manipulate our souls through spaces we chose to occupy.
However, as Yeshayahu Leibowitz teaches us, “Inspiration does not come from the outside.” We humans, souls occupying physical form, must remember that what connects us most intimately with God is that which is inside. God dwells among US, within US, not within the buildings we build or the institutions we create. They become holy spaces not through God’s presence, but through our presence. We connect most closely with God, and with others, through our deeds and behaviour, not through any physical medium, human or inanimate. As products of God’s creation, we humans need to build buildings, to meet so many of our human needs. But we always need to remember that it is what we do, not what we build, which brings divinity into our lives, and into our world.
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