Fashioning a Sanctuary in the Wilderness: Parshat Pekudei and the Equilibrium of Shabbat

It is tempting to go off on the record breaking insanity of this past week here in Boston, as our elected officials, pretty much across the board; rushed to defend a foreign students right to brazenly champion a terrorist organization. Do these officials represent the same government that designated Hamas as such? Has Hamas been removed from that list? Not to my knowledge. Nor should they be. They are stone cold killers and defending them is morally reprehensible. As is defending their defenders. The collapse of objectivity and the subsequent moral decay is happening frighteningly fast.

Instead, I will focus on the headlines of this weeks Torah portion. In it, we read about the culmination of the building of the Tabernacle. All its components are then brought to Moses, who anoints it with the holy anointing oil, and initiates Aaron and his four sons into the priestly caste. The G-dly cloud appears, and hovers overhead signifying the manifestation of the Divine Presence (Shechina).

Though we don’t live in that wilderness anymore, we retain the spiritual potency to replicate that Holy space; in our covenantal capacity—in the midst of whatever physical or psychic wilderness space we do inhabit.

The observance of Shabbat is a powerful paradigm that demonstrates this. A weekly opportunity to fashion and anoint a sacred sanctuary in time. The restored equilibrium and renewed spirit we can experience as a byproduct of detaching from the draining cycles we participate in the “outer world” by drifting “inward” for twenty four hours—IS the Presence of that Very same Divine Presence ( Shechina) that hovered over the consecrated Tabernacle.

Much Love,

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Yossi