One of the things that makes biblical literature unique is the mix of genres and styles that it encompasses. I don’t just mean the difference between Prophets and Psalms or Proverbs, but even within one book, there are sudden shifts. Over the last weeks, we have heard dramatic narrative, grand laws and details, but now, this week’s portion shifts suddenly to something different again.
Take Exodus 25:25-27 for example: You shall make a table of acacia wood, two cubits long, one cubit wide, and a cubit and a half high. Overlay it with pure gold, and make a gold moulding around it. Make a rim of a hand’s breadth around it, and make a gold moulding for its rim round about.
But to translate properly, keeping with the spirit of the Hebrew text, perhaps it should be something more along the lines of: Assemble the acacia wood table, length 900mm, width 450mm, height 675mm. Affix pure gold overlay and wrap gold moulding (marked M1) around it. Attach 80mm rim (marked R) and wrap in gold moulding (M2).
And so it continues… The Exodus narrative, the story of the escape from Egypt and then the revelation at Mount Sinai, is interrupted by a kind of biblical DIY self-assembly manual. In fact, of the 94 verses in the portion of Terumah, 84 are of this kind of detailed assembly instruction for the tabernacle and its religious furniture, and next week the portion of Tetzavveh offers more detail still. The centrality of such a text in the book of Exodus – in between the Revelation at Sinai and the episode of the Golden Calf – is somewhat puzzling to us; why the interruption in the story and why such obsessive detail? But the inclusion of these instructions and their precision and detail reflect the importance of the tabernacle. On the one hand the tabernacle was just a tent; but on the other hand it was a mobile sanctuary that served as the symbol of God’s continual Presence in the midst of Israel. It housed the Ark containing the two stone tablets with the Ten Commandments just received at Sinai, and was the forerunner of the Temple.
In amongst all the details are the assembly instructions for a menorah. It is likely that, ornate as it was, the purpose of the menorah was actually purely functional, to illuminate that part of the tabernacle at night. The detailed description here, of the menorah in the tabernacle, is the first mention in the Bible of any menorah; it is the first occurrence of the word in this form, derived from the word ‘or’ meaning ‘light’. But the menorah, of course, is also a persistent Jewish symbol, famously found on the Arch of Titus in Rome, and in more modern times adopted as the emblem of the State of Israel. The menorah is more than a lamp, more than a just a symbol of light: it is symbolic because these meanings are attached to it.
Perhaps more important for us today than the detailed dimensions and instructions describing how it was to be constructed is the description of where all the materials would come from. The whole tabernacle-building enterprise was a collaborative one and the precious materials were all voluntary contributions from the community, ‘from anyone whose heart so moved them.’
We might understand from this that important projects need collaboration; or put the other way round, it’s the collaborative projects that turn out to be the most important. As a Jewish people, one of our tasks is to be an Or la-goyyim, a light to the nations, whatever we understand that to mean. How we do that may be an individual task for each of us, but the effect is collaborative.
To shine in the world, to be a menorah, is not easy, but there are many ways to do it; in fact each of us must find our own way, but shine we must. The following words are often attributed to Nelson Mandela at his Inauguration Speech in 1994, but it turns out (I confess, a little disappointingly) that they are by an American self-help guru called Marianne Williamson. I still hear Nelson Mandela’s voice speaking them!
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us. It’s in everyone, and, as we let our light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Together, let’s shine!