This Shabbat, we’ll read Terumah (“gift”), which details what’s necessary for the building of the mishkan. The mishkan, or tabernacle, is the Israelite’s traveling sanctuary, dwelling place for God, as they travel through the desert post-Egypt, post-slavery.

More than 13 chapters of Torah are devoted to mishkan details (so many details!), compared to one chapter on the creation of the world and three to revelation on Mount Sinai, which is kind of astounding. One of the interpretations or explanations of this parsha that I read said that the creation of the mishkan, that people could create space on Earth for holiness and divinity to have a place, is the whole reason for creation, hence the importance.

The line from this parsha that gets all the songs and featured text studies is this one (Exodus 25:8): “They shall make a sanctuary [mishkan] for Me – so that I may dwell among them.” This line is awesome, because logically, it should read “so that I may dwell in it,” but it doesn’t. In this line, God says that the people need to build a sanctuary so that God may dwell with the people. So, what about the sanctuary? It just stays empty?

There are so many details (13 chapters worth!) about how to build the mishkan, what kinds of materials, how many decorative goblets, how many cubits long each panel should be, layers on layers on layers, all surrounding and protecting this empty space.

If our lives are mishkans, what are the layers and what is the empty space?

Parsha Terumah begins with Moses calling on the community and asking everyone with an open and willing heart to bring gifts to build the mishkan. People donated materials and skills. The text is super clear that the gifts were not to be given out of obligation but from an open heart.

As I read this parsha, I kept thinking about the time, empty space, that I carve out of each day for my meditation practice. I think a lot about how just making time for spiritual practice is a practice in itself. Sometimes just showing up is enough. But, to bring a willing heart to my practice and to my life, that feels inspired.

My kavanah for this week: as we build our own lives and communities as mishkans, as sanctuaries in time and space for holiness, let’s open and bring our willing hearts.

A quick exercise that you can try right now (really, just try): with an inhale, say “open” or “p’tach” and with an exhale, “my heart” or “libi. Breathing in, “p’tach” and breathing out, “libi.” Open my heart, so that I may be a mishkan. Open your heart to create space for divinity to dwell, to make time for peace, so that you can be a source of blessings for the world.

Tao Te Ching: Chapter 11, translated by Stephen Mitchell

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being
but non-being is what we use.

I am currently reading Robert Thurman’s book, “Infinite Life.” I’m still very early in the book, but one of the first things he talks about is the myth of “beginnings” – the myth of seeing anything as coming from nowhere, rather than from the general soup of all other things. He writes, “when we say ‘in the beginning,’ we implicitly assume that there is an absolute beginning behind us in time, as if our being and doings were pushing off a back boundary…but if life is indeed beginningless, this means my past has, in fact, been infinite.”[1]

It made me think of a panel I attended a few weeks ago at the World Science Festival in New York. The panel was called “Nothing: The Subtle Science of Emptiness,” and featured four world-renowned scientists – including Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek – talking about the extreme scientific improbability of true emptiness. Depending on the container, depending on the tools we have to measure it, science shows us that each place we think is empty is actually abuzz with activity. I’m not a scientist, but from what I understand, you can go smaller and smaller into nano particles and quarks and stuff, you can go larger and larger into planets and solar systems and big bangs, and big bangs before that – but it seems like any way you go, scientifically, there is no clear evidence of true beginnings or true ends. Everything is just in an unending transformational state.

I first thought that this was directly opposed to the way the Bible is written. The Torah begins with “In the beginning,” after all, meaning that there is a fixed idea of a beginning, even if we are left with the unanswered question of what came before God “created the heaven and the earth.” But then I remembered that there are two “beginnings” to Genesis – there is Genesis 1.1 (the “In the Beginning” one), and there is Genesis 2.4, that begins “These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth when they were created, in the day that HaShem God made earth and heaven.” The different stories each recount the creation, but they conflict. Now lots has been written on this, but my point for this post is that they both survived over the (MANY) years. It’s as if those who compiled and passed on the Torah were saying:

Everything – including this book – starts from somewhere – a beginning – but don’t get too attached to it. Nothing comes from nothing – each beginning is just the shining of a light

at a particular part
of the ongoing story.

As someone who thinks a lot about death, I try to remind myself of this infinite state of affairs as often as possible.