Parashat Terumah Begins with a Description of the Terumah (Gift Or

Terumah Exodus 25:1-27:19 Parashat Terumah begins with a description of the terumah (gift or offering) that G-d requires from the Israelites to build the mishkan, the portable tabernacle that they will carry on their travels through the desert. The gifts are plentiful and varied: precious metals, precious stones, various kinds of wool, animal skins, acacia wood, spices, oil, incense. The sages have gone to great lengths to explain just how they came by all those materials. Rashi, for example, says that Jacob planted acacia trees in Egypt, having been told by G-d they would be needed for this purpose, and the Israelites chopped them down and brought them with them to the desert. Still, it stretches modern credulity to think that the Israelites, while escaping too quickly to let their bread rise, were nonetheless able to collect a long list of building materials and then transport them with them on foot.

An alternate midrashic translation/explanation in Exodus Rabbah reads verse 25:2 Vayik’khu li terumah not as “Take for Me an offering” but “Take Me as an offering” indicating that G-d is telling the people that by creating the mishkan they are taking and taken by G-d. This is consistent with a longstanding Jewish tradition, dating back to the prophets, of viewing the Jewish people as married to G-d.

The instructions for the mishkan are very detailed, including the size of the curtains and exactly what they should be made of and what they must be decorated with. The curtains are to have loops dyed with tekhelet, the blue dye that is mentioned multiple times in the Torah. Tekhelet is to be used in the tabernacle, in the priestly garments, and in the tzitzit on a tallit. After the destruction of the Second Temple, the only use of tekhelet was on tzitzit. Over time, the source of the dye was lost. The Talmud says that it comes from a sea snail, but the exact animal was unknown. In recent years, scientific analysis of 2000-year-old fabric found at Masada has led to the conclusion that it is the Murex trunculus snail, still plentiful in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic coasts of parts of Europe and Africa. After a very long hiatus, tekhelet dye is once again being produced.

Later on, in Exodus 36, there are very similar passages describing the actual construction of the mishkan. The repetition of all the detail suggests that it was very important to get it just right. G-d will dwell among the people in the mishkan, but G-d has very specific ideas about home décor.

Why such emphasis on the details of the mishkan? Many scholars believe that the sections about the mishkan were written by members of the priestly class, and the emphasis on details reflects their concerns about ritual exactness. If the priests did write about the mishkan during the time of the Temple, they would have written about it while looking at the contents of the Temple. Then they would have taken the ritual objects and decorations and retrojected them onto the mishkan.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks has a more spiritual explanation for this attention to detail. He says that working hard at this task, taking exacting care to build to the specifications, was a way to help the Israelites move away from a slave mentality. This project was divinely designed to teach them to care about the work they did, and to care to do right for G-d. Rabbi Sacks says that being released from slavery was not enough for transformation, that they needed to take that process literally into their own hands. “It is not what G-d does for us that transforms us,” he says. “It is what we do for G-d.”

Haftarah 1 Kings 5:26-6:13 The haftarah concerns the building of Solomon’s Temple. Later it was also called the First Temple, but – like World War I – it only got a number once there were two. The passage begins with the statement that G-d gave King Solomon wisdom, something which is said repeatedly in the book of Kings. Solomon makes a peace treaty with King Hiram of Tyre and then proceeds to build the Temple.

The building of the Temple in the haftarah parallels the building of the mishkan in this week’s Torah reading. In both cases the specifics of the dimensions and of the materials used are delineated. And in both cases the structure is described as a place for G-d to dwell among the Israelite people.

King David, Solomon’s father, was deemed unworthy to build the Temple because he was a man of war. And Solomon, whose name comes from the same root as shalom – peace – only builds the Temple after he makes peace with his neighbor. Perhaps this is a message that those who speak of building a Third Temple should heed: peace first, then the building of a place for G-d to dwell among our people.