nothingtoseshere
(206) 527-9399

Mishpatim

Exodus 25:1 – 27:19

Temples Within Temples Within Temples

We find, in this week’s Parashah the Divine injunction that adorns Bet Alef’s new ark: “V’asu Li Mik’dash, v’Shachan’ti b’tocham – Let them make Me a Sanctuary that I might dwell among them.” [Exod. 25:8] Following this verse and for the rest of the Torah portion, the Eternal communicates to Moses the detailed plans of how to build and assemble such a Sanctuary — also called a Tabernacle (Mish’kan in Hebrew) — in the wilderness. The Mish’kan was to be placed at the center of the traveling twelve tribes, a reflection of what the newly freed Israelites held sacred, of what defined their way of worship, and what united them as a nation.

We too, as a nation, have created temples that are a reflection of what we worship. As a society, we have built at great expense our temples of sports in so many big arenas and gigantic stadiums. We have our temple of money in Wall Street, our temples of political power in the White House and Congress. The temple of our military power is the Pentagon, and Corporate America’s temples are all the skyscrapers that make up the skyline of our cities. And let’s not forget our shopping malls.

What about our own lives? What are our temples and how do they reflect what it is we worship? Our TV sets, our American Idols and those who walk the red carpets? Our technology? Abundant are the means of distraction that keep our ego busy with preferences, opinions and fears. But these temples, rather than uplifting us, tend to close us in. Rather than connecting us, they divide and alienate us from one another and from our Self. Where are the temples reflecting our basic goodness, the holiness we embody, the compassionate heart within or the love we yearn to express through our lives? The issue might be that our focus is outwardly rather than inwardly directed. We have built so many temples out there in our lives that we are no longer able to recognize the Temple that is our life.

A Midrash relates that the Torah is like a king’s daughter who was about to be wedded to a far away prince. Her father said that he could not keep her from marrying, nor could he live without her. So he asked her to make a small room for him in her new home, so that wherever she might go, he could come and dwell with her. For the rabbis of the Midrash, the Torah and Israel were one; and wherever she went in her Diaspora, whatever foreign nation she was to espouse, she was to make her home, her community, her life, a Tabernacle. Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel explains that Israel’s steadfast sanctification of Shabbat was her way to make room in her life for her King, replacing the burned-down Temple in space by building a Mish’kan in time.

Taking it one step further, the Torah injunction — read slightly differently — calls us to remember the Sacred Space within ourselves where the Presence of the One already dwells: “They will make Me a Holy Place, I will dwell within them.” Holy space, Sanctuary, is to be awakened to, realized, as our inherent nature; what we are. We are to recognize that each of us is the indwelling Presence of God, that every fiber of our being is God’s Temple. Not only my being but all sentient beings, all of nature, the entire universe, Temples within Temples within Temples, all the way up and all the way down.