Ok, let’s play a quick game of word association. I’ll give you a list of words, and you tell me how they are all related. Ready? Let’s begin:
-Despair, Miracles, Redemption, Revelation, Human Frailty, Sin, Contribution, Construction, Communion.
Maybe one more time, huh?
-Despair, Miracles, Redemption, Revelation, Human Frailty, Sin, Contribution, Construction, Communion.
Any ideas? That’s right; when you put these words together you get Sefer Sh’mot, the Book of Exodus. Follow me: Sh’mot starts with the despair of slavery, followed by the experience of divine redemption at the hands of miracles such as the Ten Plagues and the Splitting of the Sea. Then we transition into the experience of Revelation, which while spectacular, nonetheless unveils the unfortunate fact that the Israelites (like all of us) are frail, and our frailty leads us to sin; namely Heyt HaEigel, the Sin of the Golden Calf. Finally, as a remedy for this human frailty the Israelites are given a new prescription: namely they are asked to contribute together to the construction of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, which leads to the culminating event in Sefer Sh’mot, Communion with God, which we read aloud from the Torah this morning:
: וַיְכַס הֶעָנָן אֶת-אהֶל מוֹעֵד וּכְבוֹד יְהוָה מָלֵא אֶת-הַמִּשְׁכָּן
And the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the LORD’s glorious presence filled the Tabernacle.
-Despair, Miracles, Redemption, Revelation, Human Frailty, Sin, Contribution, Construction, Communion.
Sefer Sh’mot in a nutshell.
But what I want to talk about this morning is not the structure of the sefer, nor the architecture of the tabernacle; but rather how we can use these different themes found in the Book of Exodus as paradigms for our personal relationship with God. It is my belief that this ancient Book somehow manages to perfectly capture the many nuanced ways we as moderns experience God in our world.
As we will read in the Haggadah in a few weeks: Matchilin b’g’nut u’m’sayimim b’shevech; when we tell our stories we begin with degradation and we conclude with praise. So let us begin at the beginning, the depressing degradation of slavery.
When Sefer Sh’mot begins, the Israelites are embitterly enslaved in Egypt. In fact, it seems as though they have absolutely no conception of the God of their ancestors; the oppressive darkness of slavery has removed all awareness of God from them; that is until, from the depths, they issue a collective cry.
וַיֵּאָנְחוּ בְנֵי-יִשְרָאֵל מִן-הָעֲבדָה וַיִּזְעָקוּ וַתַּעַל שַׁוְעָתָם אֶל-הָאֱלהִים מִן-הָעֲבדָה:
“The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out; and their cry for help from the bondage rose up to God. God heard their crying, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.”
This is our first paradigm for our modern relationships with God. It is a natural human impulse to cry out to God from the depths. Psalm 130 begins: מִמַּעֲמַקִּים קְרָאתִיךָ יְהוָה: out of the depths I cry out to you Adonai. For many, this is the first impulse towards a relationship with God. It comes from a cry, a confrontation with terror, a brush with tragedy; when all we can do is cry out to God from within the darkness of our degradation.
And sometimes, though certainly not always, we feel like that cry is answered. Sometimes we receive strength from within these moments of crisis, we feel supported, listened to, noticed by our God. For some, there have been moments of miracles which have brought us closer to God; likely not in the sense of the supernatural, but rather in the context of serendipity. What if I hadn’t slept in, what if I had been on that plane? What if I hadn’t had the courage to ask that girl what her name was? For some of us, these moments of modern miracles lead us to the conclusion that indeed God has noticed us; and this feeling is nothing short of what our ancestors experienced: Redemption.
Next comes Revelation, the revealing of God’s will to humanity, which in many ways has been the dominant conversation of the Mitzvah initiative. Chancellor Arnie Eisen argues that the experience of Mt. Sinai exists every day, in the tiny moments of choice; those experiences of obligation in our lives. These are the moments when we choose right from within a sea of wrong, when we choose morality from within the dominance of the immoral. This is Sinai for Chancellor Eisen, and I think many of us can agree. We can sometimes find God from within our choices. When we do the right thing, when we make choices which bring God into the world, or perhaps when we allow ourselves to experience moments of disquieting thought; such as: am I being the person that God wants me to be, am I living up to my obligations to my religious tradition and to humankind? This is revelation.
But, and this is a big but, I think the Book of Exodus teaches us that while we can sometimes find God in the depths of degradation, or in the redemptive power of the miraculous, or in the wisdom of our moral choices, the fact is that sometimes this is still not enough. We human beings crave the material, we long for the tangible, and so an invisible God who only appears in fleeting moments of experience is unfortunately unsatisfying. For as Chancellor Eisen writes in his book Taking Hold of Torah, these moments of connection with God can all too often be “snuffed out by counter-experiences of meaninglessness or by rational analysis that explains them away.” This is our human frailty, our inability to hold on to our God experiences indefinitely.
This is the sin of the Golden Calf, a sin we commit in our modern lives as well. Despite the miracles they witnessed, despite their experience of redemption, despite the intimacy of Revelation, the Children of Israel couldn’t help but sin in the creation of the Golden Calf. They wanted; they needed something tangible, something material, something lasting. And so do we.
And in what is one of the most inspiring examples of God’s ability to adapt to human beings and our spiritual needs, God decides to meet us, and our frailties, halfway. The Israelites are asked to contribute of their talents and of their means towards the construction of the Mishkan, the tabernacle, a tangible and permanent home for communion with God. God says:
וְעָשוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם:
“Build me a sanctuary that I may dwell among you.”
In our parasha this morning, God keeps this promise.
I want to argue that this is perhaps the most compelling paradigm of our modern relationships with God that Sefer Sh’mot has to offer us. Here there is a seemingly simple formula that we can employ to feel God’s presence in our lives. The first step requires us to act: we are implored to contribute.
כָּל-אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבּוֹ
“Every person whose heart so moves them should contribute,”
In other words, the path towards experiencing God in our lives is not built by scattered experiences of the divine, but rather by action on our part towards contributing to a more Godly world. We are asked to give of our time, our energy, and our talents towards the construction of institutions, buildings and communities which hold God at their center. We moderns are no different than our ancient Israelite ancestors in our human frailties. We too long for God experiences which are based in something tangible, something we can touch and feel, something which will last against the unstoppable tide of cynicism. But unlike the Israelites we must not let our frailties win. We must not build Golden Calves, lest we find ourselves worshiping the false gods of materialism.
No, instead I am arguing that we should follow the path of the Mishkan: That through the power of collective contribution toward the construction of God-centered institutions, synagogues, schools and philanthropies; we have been given the path towards communion with God in the modern world. In our world meaningful experiences of Adonai, lasting communion with God in our lives can best be found from within the power of God-centered communities. In a world where increasingly, we do not even know our neighbors, we must work tirelessly to ensure the incredible opportunity of community.
More powerful that scattered miraculous moments, more lasting than fleeting experiences of revelation, is the enduring power of creating a community which can serve as a home for God in our lives:
: וַיְכַס הֶעָנָן אֶת-אהֶל מוֹעֵד וּכְבוֹד יְהוָה מָלֵא אֶת-הַמִּשְׁכָּן
And the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the LORD’s glorious presence filled the Tabernacle.
Hazak, Hazak v’Nithazek
Strength, Strength and let us strengthen one another.
Shabbat Shalom.
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