What is the point of all the dimensions of the Mishkan and also the utensils and even the aron hakodesh? Given that we have had several updates to our place of worship and dwelling place for God throughout the millennia... the Mishkan, Temple 1, Temple 2, Synagogues, Shtibels, etc, essentially the layout and environment are unchanged. We started off with a blueprint infrastructure but with years of service as precedent we are developing our places of worship into something that we are more comfortable with, where we feel we can better connect with God but still retain ideological historical manifestations that made us what we are in the first place. We are traditional yet mobile and thoughtfully functional at the same time.
And in any case what is the purpose of the building? It is often referred to as a dwelling place for God. But more importantly these days we refer to it as a house of worship. So these two ideas are both correct and yet both are incomplete, each lacking an essential quality. When the idea of Synagogues and a place to read Torah on regular occasions were first developed by Ezra and Nehemiah, they developed what was a Bet Knesset - a house of meeting. This is the essential element. In parshat Terumah, God says to build for me a holy place (mishkan) and I will dwell among them (ve'shachanti betocham). It is not a place for God simply to dwell. It is a place where God and the Jewish people can communicate with each other. Where we can meet with God and have a relationship. All sorts of relationships have all sorts of foundations and structures and it is preferable to start off any relationship with 'the best foot forward', in the right way. So we are given lots of details in the beginning but as we live and learn and grow, our relationship and style of meeting also grows in the right way.
So this is why building the right kind of forum is also important to bring people together. The MCG is a fantastic stadium and spectacle and place for 100,000 people to sit comfortably amongst each other, with everyone safely having their own space. And because of that, Taylor Swift will come and perform in front of them and it will be a place where she can dwell among them (please excuse the comparison) and she can do her act and perform with the best exposure any kind of setting could possibly offer. Likewise the fans in the arena will have a great experience and everyone feeling like they were close to her, feeling a great feeling. The acoustics are good, the visuals are good, the atmosphere is good, so functionally the building and those that are similar should provide a good meeting place for all parties concerned.
On a tangential idea, the idea of Terumah also is the best way forward, 'putting the best foot first'. The Jewish people have come out of centuries of enslavement to a bad culture and are newly embarked on a freedom unlike any which has ever existed in history. A freedom where we are only responsible to God who wants us to have freedom in the correct way. As we know, with all freedom comes responsibility. After catastrophically leaving behind our masters of servitude, we were put through a washing machine, like a mikvah which cleansed us in the Yam Suf. We came out the other side fighting, and taking on a big journey, an uphill battle to meet our creator. Then we are given many laws, some we understand and some we do not, but we accept them and will look into them further with some time and hindsight, but accept them nonetheless. We need to set up a system of judiciary so that all our internal issues can be sorted out fairly, and now we come to the idea that in any society we have to be mindful to think of others before ourselves. We have to look after our leaders who are only engaged in helping us. We have to look after our spiritual needs and our poor. We need to put something aside to educate our children, to defend ourselves and treat our bodies with assistance when necessary, and build the buildings we need for all these requirements. An underpinning of any society is tzedakah - charity, and it goes hand in hand with all the other infrastructure in our life. Giving the terumah - the contribution, the donation, is vital for continued success for the ideas we embrace as the most important in our lives.
Now comes the most vital understanding of Terumah. Inside the word Terumah is 'rom' - high, uplift. In everything we do in our lives, all the mundane activities can become uplifted because we give a proportion to something important. It brings meaningfulness to everything we do and nothing is mundane anymore. When we earn our living, and it's not easy, all we have to do is remember that part of what we do is for what many of us consider to be the highest honour - of coming closer to God... by looking after those around us.
And this brings us back to the idea of whether we need all the exact dimensions of the mishkan and utensils. Giving us those ideas helps build within our own minds the idea of proportion, and that all our activities are all related to each other. And because they're all related it means that nothing is mundane and everything can be holy when we do it in the right way.
Good Shabbos.
