Shabbat Shalom - February 4-5, 2011

I WILL MEET YOU THERE
Parshat Terumah
Rabbi Joshua Hoffman


There’s no place like home. Two or three steps out of the car and I already feel the change taking place. After a long day, it’s respite. After a frustrating day, it’s sanctuary. After a sad and difficult day, it’s comfort. Once the key turns the lock and the eyes turn toward the mezuzah, I’m home. I can walk down the hall without thinking, catching all the irregularities (and with young children, this is manifest in Matchbox cars and Barbie dolls) in a glance. Everything is in its place, more or less. It is familiar.

Details upon details are planned out, drawn up, and crafted with elegant design; each facet and corner of our domicile life is carefully considered. Even the clutter is there by intention, whether we admit it or not. And all this effort we expend is to make certain that when we cross the threshold we enter into a space that is protective and uplifting. The objects that adorn our walls and our living spaces carry a sentimental value that often far outweighs their market value.

Building the Mishkan, the sacred dwelling place of the Divine was much like building a home. Each detail enumerated in the Torah text was impeccably placed. Building God’s home demanded nothing less than flawless design. Given that there is little narrative that spans this section of the Torah, there are mountains of interpretation heaped upon each ring, each curtain, each post, and each ritual object. There is a connection to be found in the details. That is what sentimental value represents.

It’s in this familiarity, this attachment to space that we can be brought closer to God. In the midst of God’s plans for the Ark of the Covenant, God says, “I will meet you there,” “No-dah-tee lekha sham” meaning God’s voice would be heard from the place above the ark, containing the most sentimental object of all, the Torah. The word familiar in Hebrew is “Ya-doo-ah” or “known.”

17th century rabbi Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz, better known as the Kli Yakar (the Precious Vessel), suggests that God chose to meet us above the Ark precisely because it was a familiar place. It was the place where seekers of God’s presence would find uplift and protection, wisdom and strength. It was because God’s presence would be found in the known places of our lives. It is in the Torah that our family – our familiarity is housed.

“God is only found in a place where peace is found,” continues the Kli Yakar, suggesting that a life of Torah, a striving of Torah builds a home of peace. It is as Eli Wiesel once observed, “I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.” He suggests that making our homes a place of Torah, a place where Torah is familiar, is the place where God meets us even today. We should merit such presence and peace in our lives too.

Shabbat Shalom