Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei Exodus 35:1-40:38
When we close a book of the Torah, we say: Hazak, hazak, v’nithazek: Strong, strong, and let us be strengthened.
As we close the book of Exodus this Shabbat, in the wake of the attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, we might need these words more than ever. Though “more than ever” becomes a fluid phrase when attacks on Jewish sanctuaries and Jewish lives seem to take place ever more often. We have needed strength and reassurance many times already in recent years, and the entire Jewish community worries that we will need continued strength and resilience in the times to come.
What gives us strength? Secured and safe buildings, trainings and protocols, a readiness to say something when we see something. These are all essential factors in giving communities a sense of strength, the ability to withstand physically.
But in addition to physical strength, we also need emotional strength: the resilience not to feel defeated, not to give up on what we love doing: being in Jewish community.
One thing that can give such emotional strength is looking back at what the Jewish people have achieved and maintained through the millennia: the belief in continuity. The notion that “wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt,” and that we can and have left Egypt over and over again.
The narrative arc of the book of Exodus is itself a powerful example. When the book of Exodus begins, the Israelites are enslaved, forced to build monumental structures for Pharaoh through harsh labor.
When the book ends, the Israelites are a free people engaged in a labor of love: each person contributing with overflowing hearts and generosity to build the beautiful structure of the Mishkan, the place where God’s presence dwells – the words Mishkan and Shechinah come from the same Hebrew root.
Judaism has a deep sensibility for what makes a place holy. Yet it also knows that holiness lives in the hearts and intentions of individuals.
While the Temple was a fixed structure, the Mishkan was a portable sanctuary, a device to carry holiness from place to place. The German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine for example called the Mishkan the “portable fatherland of the Jews.”
I find strength and comfort in this double layer of Torah’s vision of sanctuary, and I hope you might as well. To be clear, the idea of a portable holiness should by no means dismiss the idea of a permanent residence. We do need our fixed structures and buildings. We love them. We pour our overflowing hearts and generosity into maintaining and decorating them. We want to continue gathering in them, and we want to protect them and keep them safe.
At the same time, like the ner tamid that burns before the ark, our spirits are also a sanctuary, like a portable fatherland. They shine the way for our love of community, for singing and learning, for our attachment to one another, for our dedication to creating holiness together. For our belief that we are a resilient and strong people, that we are not going anywhere, and that we have a right to be where we are.
Hazak, hazak, v’nithazek. May we all feel strengthened this Shabbat.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Julia Knobloch