While undergoing a major construction project at our house about a year ago, I found myself enthralled with the way things were taken apart and put back together. I watched as they tore the roof off of our garage, and then from scratch put together framing for new rooms, a new roof, electrical, HVAC, plumbing, walls, flooring, paint. Every day I’d come home and see another change in what they’d done, and my house slowly but surely came back together as a seamless unit. If I’m really looking for it, I can still feel the spot in the floor where the original build connects with the new build, but for the most part, anyone walking into our home for the first time probably wouldn’t know there only used to be three bedrooms instead of four. It feels like one complete entity, even though I know it is all held together with wood and metal joints.
This was perhaps the closest I’ll get to experiencing what it might have felt like to build the Tabernacle. We read Parshat Vayakhel this week, where the narrative continues with the requirement to observe Shabbat and then includes the request to bring gifts to build the Mishkan. After that, Betzalel and Ohilav are appointed as the taskmasters of the construction project, and we hear about the abundance of gifts the Israelites brought to the Tabernacle. But within the construction are very specific details of how everything should fit together.
In particular, there are many sockets necessary for the poles and arms to attach. The Hebrew word for sockets is adanim, which sounds similar to the name we use in prayer for God, Adonai. Rabbi Menachem Nochum Twersky of Chernobyl comments that just as those sockets served to hold the upper and the lower sections of the Tabernacle together, the divine presence holds the upper and lower worlds together. Our spiritual “upper” world and the material “lower” world are held together through our faith in God and the glue of our society.
The moral of the story? We’re all a little screwy. And by that, I mean we are like the screws that hold the pieces of our tradition and our community in place. As we read this text, we are reminded that just as there are so many little bits and pieces that go into creating a structure, there are so many different individual people that go into creating the Jewish people.
