It Was All By Design: Terumah 5784

The divine presence requires precious materials. As the Israeli biblical scholar Menahem Haran (1924-2015) noted, the description of the tabernacle conveys a clear sense of hierarchy: the outer courts are built of plain materials like wood and flax, and the materials become gradually more and more expensive until the inner sanctum is reached, where the items are primarily of gold.^[3]
--Dr. Jonathan Ben Dov

Shortly after we encounter any text, we often form an opinion about the genre we are dealing with, and that opinion carries with it a set of expectations for how the text will unfold. Is this a poem or a narrative? Historical fiction or a fable? The tabernacle text is commonly understood as instructional text, and for good reason – the explicit content contains instructions to Moses. We don’t tend to engage instructions as we might a novel or a poem, we just try to wring the information out and get on with things. Instructions are organized and efficient; they move in a predictable fashion; they are complete. When any aspect of the writing gets in the way of imparting the information, we get annoyed – and there is much in Terumah to annoy us if we read in this mode. But I propose that if we stop responding to this text as instructions and allow it the subtleties of literature, the very features that frustrated us can implicitly communicate beliefs about God that are as important as any we find in the Torah.
--Dr. Amy Cooper Robertson

Ritual theorists have identified invariant repetition as one of several characteristics that are common to ritual acts across cultures.^[7] They have observed that one function of such invariance is to foster experiences that are holistic and integrated, observing that when a ritual act is familiar enough that you can not only anticipate what comes next, but this is the only thing that feels right, the deed becomes existentially linked to the doer. This ability to anticipate the next part of an experience can make it feel so intimately known it is experienced as intuitive rather than learned.
--Dr. Amy Cooper Robertson

Arguably, if there is anything missing from the Exodus narrative to this point, it is familiarity (everything is new!) and eternity (everything has changed!). As Israel’s story quickly unfolds, the tabernacle texts use repetition (and other literary forms common to ritualized activity) to communicate on a level other than plot, balancing out the excitement with a sense of intimacy, eternity, and stability. It is undeniable that our ancestors’ lives are changing quickly, but the story of Exodus is not only a story of change. Through this change, our ancestors are discovering and connecting to an underlying truth that is timeless – an underlying truth that speaks to us still, all these many generations (and many changes) later.
--Dr. Amy Cooper Robertson