The Torah as Time-Share
Terumah: The Giver as Gift
“Tell the Israelite people to take Me a gift.” (Exodus 25:2)
Another matter: “They shall take Me a gift” – that is what is written: “For a good lesson [lekaḥ] I have given you (Proverbs 4:2). Rabbi Berekhya HaKohen ben Rabbi said: The way of the world is that when a person sells an object from his house, he is sad over it. But the Holy One blessed be He gave the Torah to Israel and is joyful; that is, “a good acquisition [lekaḥ].” The way of the world is that when a person acquires an object he exerts himself to protect it, but the Torah protects its owners, as it is stated: “When you walk it will guide you; [when you lie down, it will protect you]” (Proverbs 6:22). The way of the world is that when a person acquires an object from the marketplace, can he perhaps acquire its owner? But the Holy One blessed be He gave the Torah to Israel and says to them, as it were: It is I that you are acquiring. That is, “they shall take Me a gift.” (Exodus Rabbah 33)
Parashat Terumah begins with the command to bring gifts to the sanctuary. The language, however, is odd. God commands that gifts be taken (lakach), not brought (l’havi). Moreover, we don’t typically expect a gift to be commanded at all—gifts are given freely. Otherwise they are obligations. Ordinarily, a gift giver has the right, but not the obligation, to give. The Midrashic tradition picks up on the linguistic oddity and has a field day. Perhaps God is saying that God Godself is the gift. The people are to take God as their gift in the very moment that they bestow gifts upon the Temple. Don’t read it as “Take gifts to me,” but “Take me as a gift.” Besides the poetic wordplay why would the Midrash offer this reading?
One answer is that we are dealing with a complex love triangle, one in which God is at risk of being sidelined. Will the people come to revel in the material delights of the Tabernacle so much that they forget the transcendent element? Will they worship the Temple rather than God? Will religion become more about about the Kiddush than the davening, or more about the beautiful melodies than the service of the heart, or more about the comforts of routine and ritual rather than a real sense of awe at the presence of God? Build me a Sanctuary, but remember that its sanctity requires me to dwell in it; otherwise it’s just a facade.
Another Midrash suggests that God remains attached to the Torah even after God gives it to the people. Having given the Torah to the people in the previous parasha, God worries that the people may no longer need God. In an odd metaphor, God is likened to the father of the Torah and the Torah is likened to the bride of Israel. “Build me a Mishkan so that I may dwell in it” means “Make me a guest house so that I can visit.” Here too, the Midrash positions Torah without God as a kind of temptation—that one might worship intellectualism at the expense of piety, that one might delight in the aesthetics of Torah study but neglect the source of the Torah. While God recognizes the need for Torah and Israel to join forces—and even reproduce—the Mishkan serves to remind us that Torah study is not enough. We continue to need God even as we moderns think we have outgrown God.
What ties the two Midrashim together is the idea that God is not just the giver of gifts, but is Godself a gift. Were God but a giver of gifts we could take the gift and be free. But if God is Godself the gift then Revelation is not a “one and done” event. Ditto the construction of the Tabernacle.
Jewish theologians suggest that we can understand the will of God through three paths: Reason (Chochma), tradition (Mesorah), and revelation (Torah). All of these may be conceived as divine gifts. In fact, in the Amidah we thank God for gracing us with knowledge (chonen ha’daat). But all three are vulnerable to hubris. All three might lead one to remove God from the picture by saying “I have the gift, why do I need the giver?” The Mishkan represents not a physical place, only, but the home we must make for God in all of our endeavors. While engaging in rational enquiry, build a Tabernacle for God. While engaging in tradition, build a tabernacle for God. While studying and observing Torah, build a Tabernacle for God.
We can think of idolatry not just as the worship of many gods but as the over-focus on God’s gifts to the detriment of God as the gift. In philosophical terms, we can think of it as an attraction to beings to the detriment of Being, a love of the empirical and tangible to the detriment of the transcendent and intangible, an obsession with the measurable to the detriment of the infinite. The decorativeness of the historical Mishkan serves as a kind of koan, expressing the absurdity of trying to match divine creation or accommodate the glory of God with human tools. To riff on Lao Tzu, “The Temple that can be made is not the Eternal Temple.”
Coming back to the distinction between God as giver and God as gift, we can speculate that God wants to give Torah, reason, and tradition to us, but also does not want to part with them. The Mishkan, then, is not just for us, but, radically, for God. We should appreciate the gifts God gives to us knowing how much God loves them.
Now we can appreciate the texture of God’s command to “take” the gift. It’s saturated with both generosity and reluctance. “Take my Torah, but don’t take it away from me.” By acknowledging how much God loves the Torah we will love it that much more. God’s love of Torah can be contagious. In the Mishkan we can meet God in our mutual love of Torah. The Mishkan, if you will, becomes the place where we meet God in shared love of Torah. Sinai marked a moment of transfer and acquisition. The Mishkan marks a moment of sharing and reciprocity. The Mishkan transforms Torah, as it were, into a time-share.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins