Rabbi Jennifer Clayman

February 27, 2009

Facing Each Other: T’rumah 5769

New parents, shocked by the ways their relationships have changed so quickly following the birth of their first child, find themselves drawing farther and farther apart, even as they bond intensely with their newborn. 

A woman who discovers that her child has been bullied in school turns to the school administration for help, and discovers that no one believes her child, and she herself is branded as a trouble-maker.

The new administration in Washington unveils a plan to help people avoid home foreclosures, and the plan is ridiculed for abetting vanity—as the equivalent of paying for your neighbor’s new bathroom because he couldn’t afford it himself.

We are very good, we humans, at turning away from each other in fearful times, at turning a deaf ear to the hardships of others, at denying the humanity that each of us possesses when we face uncertainty and difficult challenges.  And yet, we know that it is exactly at times like these that we need each other the most, that we can least afford to turn away from each other.

This week, the Torah echoes this lesson—in a way that we might not expect.  The beginning of this week’s Torah portion, T’rumah, finds the Israelites at what might seem like a strange moment.  The Exodus is over—the one-time slaves are now free people.  The Ten Commandments have been spoken, and these free people have willingly accepted the terms of God’s covenant.  We might think that the climactic, history-making, identity-forming moments of our story have passed, but in the scope and sequence of the Torah, this is not the case.  The Israelites’ journey to freedom and their acceptance of the covenant are only the beginning of the story of the formation of a cohesive people.  The next, extraordinary phase of that formation begins with this week’s parashah.  God tells Moses that the people are to build God a sanctuary:

“Build Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” (Ex. 25:8)

Commentators have long noted that the text does not say, “Build me a sanctuary that I may dwell in it,” but rather, “that I may dwell among them.”  God will dwell not in the physical structure but among the people.  God is omnipresent and could never be contained by the bounds of a human sanctuary.  So why build it at all?  Why build a house for God that cannot begin to contain God’s presence?  The answer is that the sanctuary is for us, a focal point for our devotion, helping us make a place for God in our hearts.  Let us build God a sanctuary that God’s spirit may dwell among us.

Following these words come detailed instructions for the actual building, reading like what an adult bat mitzvah student of mine once called the ancient equivalent of instructions from Ikea, with specific details about materials, measurements, and design.  The first set of these instructions concerns the aron, the Holy Ark that will contain the tablets of the covenant.  Commentators have pointed out that when the sanctuary is actually built the outer structures will be built first, followed by the interior furnishings like the Ark.   But here, in the instructions, the Ark comes first, for the tablets that will come to rest inside it will be the record of the covenant between Israel and God, the center from which everything else emanates.

The Ark itself is to be made of acacia wood overlaid with gold—inside and out—with a golden cover.  And on top of the coverthere will be two golden k’ruvim (cherubim or cherubs) with their wings outstretched and reaching for the heavens, their faces turned toward each other and slightly downward.  These are not the cherubs of popular imagination, not cute little chubby angelic winged children with smiling faces.  The k’ruvim of the Ark are fearsome creatures with human faces and some combination of animal body parts.  Their outstretched wings are imagined as supporting God’s invisible throne, and God’s voice was believed to emanate from the space between them (Nachum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus, 161).  Some of our commentators have noted that the fact that the k’ruvim faced each other is significant, not only as a design feature of the Ark , but as an ethical teaching as well.

One commentator says that the k’ruvim teach us that “A Jew must have two qualities…”  Namely, just as the k’ruvim stretched out their wings to the heavens, a Jew “should always strive to move upward, to higher and higher levels, while at the same time [just as the k’ruvim faced each other, the Jew] must notice a fellow’s distress and always be willing to help” (Sadeh Margalit, from Iturei HaTorah).

Other sources have noted that the description of the k’ruvim in our Torah portion actually contradicts a description of them found in the Book of Chronicles, where they are described as facing not each other, but rather the outer structure of the Holy of Holies in which the Ark is housed.  The Talmud says that this is not a contradiction, but rather a reflection of two different possible realities, one in which Israel fulfills the wishes of God, and one in which we do not (Bava Batra 99).  In the scenario where we fulfill God’s wishes, our faces [like those of the k’ruvim in our Torah portion] are toward one another, signifying that “each [person] treats the other with courtesy and kindness; each [person] cares about and is concerned about his fellow.”  The scenario in which we do not fulfill God’s wishes is the one in which our faces are like the k’ruvim in Book of Chronicles, facing away from each other and toward the Holy of Holies, signifying that “[We] are only worried about [our] own religiosity and are unconcerned about anyone else” (from Iturei HaTorah).  The k’ruvim that face each other in our parashah teach us about the way that we humans are supposed to act in the world: we are supposed to keep our faces (and our thoughts, and our deeds) turned towards one another; we cannot look away, even in troubled times.  We cannot become so entrenched in our own experiences and our own ideology that we fail to value the ideas and experiences of others.

The psychologist John Gottman, who writes and lectures extensively on what he calls the “secrets of making marriage work,” cites as one of his main principles that couples need to learn to “turn toward each other instead of away,” by which he means little things—partners checking in with each other at the end of a long day, making the effort, despite exhaustion and distraction, to offer each other small signs of affection even in mundane moments.  The idea is that doing these little things keeps relationships healthy and vibrant every day, so that when troubles inevitably arise, partners are in a good place to face them together.

We can take this principle and expand it beyond couples to a much wider circle of relationships—those we have with people in our communities, our country and our world.  Think of the ways in which our public discourse would change for the better if we really tried to see, and empathize with, and understand the perspectives of people whose lives and experiences are different from our own—if we listened better and showed real interest in the ideas of others, even those with whom we disagree.  Imagine that the rhetoric surrounding the Obama administration’s budget proposals was less inflammatory, less dominated by sloganeering, and more focused on finding the common ground necessary to fix our substantial problems.

Long ago, our people imagined that the vessel containing our holiest objects—the Ark containing the tablets of the covenant—would be topped by two winged creatures who faced each other.  The description of these creatures, the golden k’ruvim with their wings stretched to the heavens in the shape of a throne for God, reminds us of the power and the necessity of turning towards each other, of truly seeing our fellow human beings, so that we can sustain each other in times of sorrow and joy.