In a 2017 essay published in the Sunday Times, novelist Boris Fishman recalls a visit he made to his friends Pete and Susan in rural Virginia. He writes that as he walked into their home, he could tell something was wrong. Pete was frantically cleaning
and Susan was sitting and staring off into space. Eventually, Susan explained that the night before they had received devastating news about one of their children. Boris didn’t know what to do or say. He wanted to ask for more details, but could tell they did not want to talk. He wondered if he should find a way to tiptoe out and cut his visit short. Both of these options felt wrong. So he said the only other thing he could think of: “Can I make lunch?” Susan sighed, and said: “I’ve been meaning to make a big salad for weeks.” So Boris got to work peeling off my wand chopping in the kitchen. Where just moments before he had felt uncomfortable, now, he wrote, “I felt something approaching elation.” The quiet sounds of cooking in the kitchen were “composed, rhythmic and filled with a kind of grace.” Fishman, an atheist Jew, wrote: “If I were a believer, I would have said God was there. When the salad was ready, Susan embraced me. And what was an opportunity for an unforeseen boundary turned into a moment of greater intimacy than before.” Fishman titled this piece, “God is in the Salad Dressing” because through the act of cooking and feeding his friends, he encountered the sacred.
Parashat Terumah raises questions for us about where God resides. Does God dwell in a particular place in our world? Yet the Kedushah in the Musaf Amidah, quoting the book of Isaiah, reminds us that “k’vodo maleh olam — God’s glory fills the world” (6:3). God is not confined, but permeates the entire universe. In our parashah, however God commands the Israelites: “V’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham –– Make me a sanctuary so that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8).
Does God need a sanctuary to dwell among the Israelites? Is God’s physical presence actually in the mishkan? The 15th century Portuguese commentator Isaac Abarbanel argues that God commands the building of the mishkan for the benefit of the Israelites, not because God is actually contained in that space or needs a physical space. The mishkan will allow the Israelites to feel close to God, lest they think “God had abandoned the land,” as it says in the book of Ezekiel (8:12). With a mishkan, a portable sanctuary, Abarbanel teaches, a central meeting point for Moses to communicate with God and the priests to offer sacrifices, the Israelites would feel as if God dwelled right there, among them. In a similar way, our sanctuaries, our synagogues, can focus our minds on God’s closeness when we’re in a time of trouble, reminding us that God’s love and care for us is never far away. Within our synagogues we can feel God’s love in tangible form, through the community we create to support one another.
The 15th century Italian sage Sforno disagrees with Abarbanel, arguing that God’s presence can in fact be located in the mishkan, specifically in the space between the two k’ruvim, the cherubs, on the lid of the holy ark. When God says, “Build me a sanctuary so that I may dwell among them,” Sforno teaches that the “dwelling place” of God refers to the small, empty space between the k’ruvim. Ironically, it is in that empty space that God’s presence is manifest. It is from that space that God hears and responds to the people’s prayers and offerings.
A profound notion: God exists in the empty spaces, in the silences between us. I think about the intimacy of sitting in silence with a person we love and trust, without having to speak, knowing that we are so deeply connected that we can be quiet together. Just as God exists between the two k’ruvim, God exists in the relationship between people.
Some of us feel God’s presence in the sacred structure of our sanctuary. When we look at the ark and the ner tamid, as long as the light is on we know God is here, in our spiritual home. For others, the synagogue is a gathering space where we come together with our community. It’s not that God is confined to this building; it’s that together we create a place where we study and pray and are reminded to live up to the ideals and values that God and our tradition have set before us. But God is bigger than all of us and any building we can construct. Sometimes, in fact, we feel God’s presence most powerfully in the majesty of the natural world, under the open sky. Perhaps that is God’s true mishkan.
I resonate with Fishman’s experience of encountering the sacred in the salad dressing — or more accurately, in the act of quietly taking care of a friend in need. I am reminded of a shiva home, a space made holy by the people who show up to pray, to sing, and to share memories. That space is made sacred by the people who prepare food and arrange the details and let their grieving friends know that they’re not alone. God is in the ones who bring the baked goods, who set up the chairs, who make time to be present for another. May all of us sense God’s presence in our care for one another, in our relationships of love and trust, in the structures we create here in our synagogue to offer support and understanding. For if we truly care for one another in this place, then God will dwell among us and be ever-present in our lives.
Rabbi Rachel Marder 