A D’var Torah for Parshat Terumah by Rabbi Doug Alpert
I can’t say that this week’s parshah, Terumah, keeps us on the edge of our seats. My rabbi of childhood, Rabbi Morris Margolies z”l, suggested as much at my bar mitzvah. Bible professor Ellen Davis describes the exhaustive detailing of the building of the Mishkan as “arguably the most boring [section] in the whole Bible.” (Opening Israel’s Scriptures)
But there is meaning to be made here. A few weeks from now, when the Mishkan is completed, we will read, “When Moses saw that they had performed all the tasks — as THE ETERNAL had commanded, so they had done — Moses blessed them.” (Exodus 39:43). Not blessed it, the Mishkan; blessed them, the people. Rashi comments that Moses’ blessing is the end of Psalm 90: “May the favor of the ETERNAL, our God, be upon us; let the work of our hands prosper, O prosper the work of our hands!” All of which is to say that, more than all of the materials that went into constructing the Mishkan, what really matters are the hands that built it.
Taking it a step further, Professor Mark George explores the social aspect of the layout of the Mishkan. The Mishkan was a series of “zones of holiness.” According to George, “geographers and sociologists argue that space is not a given [i.e., does not just happen], rather, it is something that societies produce that, in turn, reproduces the social structure and hierarchies of those societies. Space is in fact social space… the organization of the Tabernacle [Mishkan] shows that the Priestly writers of Terumah had a broad, inclusive understanding of Israel in the world.” (Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible) “The social structure and hierarchy organizing Tabernacle space is expansive and inclusive, reflecting the Priestly writers’ ‘democratic’ understanding of Israel’s role in the world.” (Ibid)
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In this democratic understanding, George sees the Mishkan as open and affirming space for anyone who has covenanted with the Divine: “women, men, queers and sojourners alike.” While George in this essay is laudably focused on the queer community, his application of an inclusive Mishkan could and should be applied to other communities as well.
Thinking of this teaching in the context of community organizing, the question that arises for me is: Who gets into the Mishkan? Whose voice and membership in the community are allowed to count?
Recently, we have seen renewed and cruel vigor from those who seek to control that question, in so many arenas. I am now involved in one in particular as one of 13 clergy plaintiffs in a lawsuit, suing the state of Missouri and the state’s abortion bans as unconstitutional pursuant to the Missouri constitution.
With the fall of Roe, we are now faced with a slew of state abortion bans. Women and other pregnant people are denied the basic right to make crucial decisions regarding whether they should have to give birth to a child, as well as other matters affecting their health and future. Healthcare providers are being paralyzed into inaction in delivering vital and even emergency healthcare, fearful of possible criminal prosecution.
These abortion bans are imposed based on a specific religious perspective not our own. In my home state of Missouri, the legislators advocating for these harmful bans continually invoked their own narrow interpretation of God and Bible to assert that life begins at conception and abortion is murder.
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The establishment of this narrow religious view in Missouri comes at my and our expense. In seeking to impose a singular religious dogma in counseling congregants, we are compelled to disclose to them that abortion options that would be available pursuant to halakhah are not available in Missouri. This is not only true for us as rabbis, but for many other religious leaders from many different faith traditions whose teachings are in conflict with Missouri’s abortion bans.
Our basic freedoms are under attack. The authoritarian extremists pushing these laws are saying that only they qualify to be in the Mishkan. Only their narrow (read: white Christian nationalist) religious view is a path toward the Divine presence.
By drawing parallels between the creation story and the building of the Mishkan by human hands, Nehama Leibowitz teaches that it is incumbent upon us to imitate our Creator. We do so when we establish our world as a Mishkan, a broadly inclusive sacred space, welcoming all who are created in the divine image, no matter how they understand God’s wish for how we live our lives.
Rabbi Doug Alpert is the rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami-KC in Kansas City, Missouri. Ordained by the Academy for Jewish Religion-NY, he presently serves on the boards of 10 organizations working for justice, including Planned Parenthood Great Plains, and the Missouri chapter of the NAACP.