Rabbi Toba's Shabbat Thoughts

This week we begin the final section of the book of Exodus, which is almost entirely taken up with the construction of the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary that accompanied the Israelites throughout their wilderness wanderings. Parshat Terumah includes God’s instructions to Moses to “build me a holy place, that I may dwell among you.” This structure, to be created through the voluntary donations and craftwork of the Israelite community, will facilitate the people’s ability to access the divine Presence.
 
Moses gets these instructions right after receiving a long list of ethical and ritual demands that define the Israelites’ covenantal relationship with YHVH. The Israelites are, in essence, being asked to build two things:  a covenantal society governed by laws regulating their relationship to God and to one another, and a physical structure that will stand, quite literally, in the center of their community.  I would suggest that the Mishkan—which allows God’s Presence to “dwell among” the Israelites—is a physical representation of the social "structure" that will allow Godliness to “dwell among them” as well.  And how is such a structure built? In his commentary on the verse in which Moses is told to tell the Israelites to “take for me an offering from each person whose heart so moves him,” Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav imagines God saying, “Each one shall bring their own, unique inner quality, the special aspect of themselves.”
 
As we figure out, as a community, how to respond to the devastation of the war in Israel/Palestine (which now is spreading into Lebanon and beyond), I am thinking about the gifts brought by members of our community to the demands of this moment.  We have members helping to organize safe spaces for people with a range of experiences and political views, spaces to connect and share resources and possibilities for action in support of both Israelis and Palestinians. CDT members have shown up at vigils in support of the hostages and in support of a cease-fire. In the religious school, our kids are raising money for Hand in Hand, the network of Jewish-Arab schools in Israel.  Through our giving page, members have the opportunity to support a wide array of organizations doing essential work on the ground in Gaza and in Israel (I regularly update this page, with suggestions from CDT members and others, please check it out!).

In my role at CDT, I have felt that my particular contribution to our “Mishkan” is to support all of you in your efforts, and to model my own commitments to honoring the value of all human life, to helping shape a discourse both here at CDT and in the wider community that rejects false binaries, and to supporting the incredibly courageous people on the ground in Israel/Palestine who are doing the difficult work of bringing about a future of peace, justice, equality and security for all of the residents of the land (you can see a recent article about one of those groups, Combatants for Peace, here).
 
Outside of CDT, I have taken other action related to the ongoing war and its effects closer to home, including organizing a public letter from rabbis who are also alumni of Harvard University decrying the campaign against Dr. Claudine Gay, and attempting to organize a meeting of local rabbis with Rep. Katherine Clark in support of T’ruah’s statement calling for a negotiated cease-fire. And while I have lent my name to a number of different statements, the one area I feel I  make a tiny bit of real difference is by giving regularly to aid organizations and to those working inside Israel to end the war.
 
Most days, as I read the news of unspeakable devastation in Gaza, of attacks within Israel, of the deepening frustration of the families of hostages who feel completely betrayed by the Netanyahu government, I just want to scream. I want to scream because the level of suffering is excruciating to witness. I want to scream because I feel helpless, knowing that Netanyahu is willing to endlessly prolong this war to preserve his hold on power.  I want to scream at our own government’s unwillingness to exert the kind of pressure needed to get all of the relevant parties to meaningfully negotiate an end to the war and the necessary next steps.
 
But mostly I don’t scream. Instead, I find inspiration in all the good-heartedness in our community, and in those organizations working for transformation on the ground. I do my own small actions in the hope that the collective force of thousands of small actions will achieve some real effects.  And I take heart from our tradition, from the wisdom of Torah, that imagined a community of imperfect human beings trying to figure out, together, how to build a world in which God’s Presence might dwell. May we continue to build, and may the day come soon when the fighting and displacement stops, when healing comes, when justice and peace are realized.