Reading Parshat Terumah is like reading
a furniture assembly manual
in the original Swedish.
It contains very technical instructions
on how to construct God’s sanctuary
and unless you took woodshop
in elementary school, it gets confusing.
The parsha begins with the Jewish people
encamped in the middle of the desert.
Moses goes up Mount Sinai
and God instructs Moses
on a number of things.
First, the Jewish people are to give gifts
of gold, silver, exotic linens, and jewels.
With those exotic materials,
they are to build a holy sanctuary.
And Moses stood there on Mount Sinai,
and God instructed him further, saying,
SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.
So check out the overall layout:
build an ark of gold with two cherubs on top.
Add a menorah, mini-altar,
and offering table, all in gold.
Place these in a house called a mishkan,
aka divine dwelling place, aka tabernacle,
out of wood and silver,
and cover it in expensive fabric.
Zoom out to the sacrificial altar
and utensils, all made in copper.
Add a huge outer perimeter,
made of linen curtains
between large wood posts.
Now let’s zoom in
to the complicated part of this project:
the mishkan, aka dwelling place,
aka tabernacle.
Besides the pyramids,
this is the most solid building
the Jewish people have made in awhile.
And this building was going
to have to be portable.
And not portable like iPod portable,
more like 10 guys on either side
lifting each piece on rods
through the desert portable.
To make a wall,
they line up large planks of acacia wood,
and connect them with larger than life versions
of those little wood pegs you use
when assembling a bedroom set
from Ikea or Target.
But oops! We have a problem!
Because even though you’ve aligned the planks,
they’ll still move around like a Slinky
in the event of a sandstorm, earthquake,
or any other unforeseen act of God,
which, as we’ve seen,
the Israelites are getting used to.
To solve this, they push long rods
through the entire wall,
preventing this “Slinky effect.”
Now we’ve got everything aligned,
but the planks can still pull apart.
So each plank has tenons
on the top and bottom.
Tenons are basically wooden fingers
extending from the ends of each plank.
To secure one plank to the next,
they place huge solid silver rings
over adjoining tenons,
locking them together.
This technique not only makes
for a secure wall,
but also for a beautiful silver foundation
and crown.
And God said to Moses,
"Form follows function."
Now that this ready-to-assemble dwelling place
of the Lord is put together, zoom out.
Inside everything is gold, then silver,
and then copper as you reach the outside.
The Torah is not being very subtle
with the symbolism here!
The most precious thing
the Jewish people have is God’s presence.
How do you house and keep the things
that are most precious to you?
In two weeks, the Torah flashes back
to the story of the golden calf,
when the Israelites build an idol
out of gold and precious jewelry.
The Jewish people took many precious things
with them out of Egypt.
And the first thing they did with them
was to build a false idol to worship.
Does this mean that gold, jewels,
and beautiful, luxurious things are evil?
Not quite; in this parsha the Jewish people
take those exact same materials
and build an ark, a menorah, a mishkan.
They used the very same materials
to house and protect
the deepest, most precious things we have.
Just as the Israelites took many valuable
things on their journey, during our lifetime
we also take with us many wonderful things,
both physical and spiritual.
It is up to us to decide how to treat
what is most valuable.
We have the choice to build
either a golden calf, or a mishkan.
Producer: Sarah Lefton
Animation Director: Nick Fox-Gieg
Animation: Jeanne Stern
Editorial Director: Matthue Roth
Theme Music: Tim Cosgrove
Written and Narrated by Rafael Kushick
Sound Recording: Sarah Lefton