When God Moves in Next Door

Parashat Terumah, Exodus 25:1–27:19

Rabbi Yahnatan Lasko, Beth Messiah Congregation, Montgomery Village, MD

What happens when God shows up?

The book of Exodus is a powerful series of answers to this question. When God shows up, the oppressed realize that their voices have indeed been heard. When God shows up, the unjust powers of this world are judged. When God shows up, idols get broken down, the enslaved go free and their children rejoice. When God shows up, the nations of the world hear and see and put their trust in God. When God shows up at Sinai, revelation happens, eternal covenants are made, and a way of life that leads to wisdom and blessing is given. When God shows up after the incident with the golden calf, iniquity and sin are judged and atoned for, the covenant is renewed, and the people’s way of life is restored. When God shows up, priests are ordained, artisans are filled with the Ruach to create beautiful work, and the people are inspired to bring their best to build God’s house. At the end of Exodus, God shows up when his glory fills the Tabernacle, and all of Israel sees God’s presence as a cloud, resting with them in the mishkan and guiding them forward on their journey. At every turn, Exodus is a story of God showing up in powerful ways.

This week’s parasha, Terumah, describes the various furnishings of the Tabernacle, prompting a tantalizing question: What happens when God moves in next door?

Our ancestors surely must have wondered this after God instructed Moses: “Have them make a Sanctuary for Me, so that I may dwell among them” (Exod 25:8). This would be a new step in Israel’s relationship with God. They had known God as the God of their ancestors. They had known God as the God who judged the idols of Egypt. They had known God as the voice of revelation speaking from the mountain. But now God was initiating a new thing: becoming “the God who dwells among them.” 

This relationship of “God with us” would center on a physical structure, a holy tabernacle or tent. The cloud of God’s presence had been with the Israelite camp before, going before them to lead the way or standing behind them to guard and protect them. Now there would be a mishkan, a tent—a physical touchpoint, disassembled, carried, and reassembled by Levites—to serve as the designated place for God, as God’s home among the Israelites. 

What happens when God moves in next door? Our parasha sets forth a provisional answer—a dynamic of mutuality, of giving back and forth—by means of paradox: “Tell Bnei-Yisrael to take up an offering for Me. From anyone whose heart compels him you are to take My offering” (Exod 25:2). 

God describes the gift that each Israelite would give as terumati—literally “my gift.” Before individuals even feel their hearts stirred within them to give gifts to God, those same gifts already belong to God, in a sense. Perhaps this is because God is the Creator of everything, or maybe it’s because God had recently enriched the Israelites with Egyptian valuables (as restitution for years of slavery). Despite the fact that everything the Israelites have to give already belongs to God, it is nevertheless important to God that they feel moved to give it, and do so. 

Another paradox resides in the phrase vayik’khu-li. While the particle li on the end may rightly be rendered “for me” (as in our translation, “take for me an offering”), it also can blend more seamlessly into an invitation: “take me.” Robert Alter effectively captures this ambiguity in his translation: “Speak to the Israelites, that they take Me a donation” (The Five Books of Moses, 460–461, emphasis mine). 

How can Israel “take [God]” as a gift? The word for taking, lakach, forms the root of another important biblical Hebrew word: lekach, which literally means “a takeaway.” It is often translated “doctrine,” and we regularly encounter this word through our liturgy in the verse from Proverbs quoted at the conclusion of the Torah service: Ki lekach tov natati lachem—”For I give you sound learning—do not forsake my instruction” (Prov 4:2). A midrash from Exodus Rabbah expounds further: 

“And they shall bring Me gifts” (Exodus 25:2)—here it is written, “for I have given you a good portion, do not forsake My teaching” (Proverbs 4:2); do not forsake the purchase that I gave to you. When people buy things, their purchase has gold but no silver, or silver but no gold, but the purchase that I give to you has silver, as it is said “The sayings of God are sayings pure like smelted silver” (Psalms 12:7). It has gold, as it is said “More lovely than gold and than much fine gold” (Psalms 19:11). . . . The Holy Blessed One said to Israel, “I sell to you My Torah, and (as if such a thing could be) I am sold along with it.” (Sefaria Community Translation, https://www.sefaria.org/Shemot_Rabbah.33.1?lang=bi, CC0)

The midrash connects the verb yik’khu-li with the Torah, the lekach tov, the good doctrine or takeaway teaching. This fits the order of events in Exodus: first God gives the Torah to Israel on Sinai, with all its statutes and ordinances, and now God is taking an offering.  

The midrash continues, going beyond the language of giving to explain God’s gift: “I’ve given you My Torah, but with it, I’ve sold you myself.”

This is similar to a King who had an only daughter. One of the kings came and took her and sought to go back to his land to marry her. He said to him, “My daughter who I have given to you is my only one. I cannot bear to separate from her, but to tell you that you cannot take her is also impossible since she is your wife. Rather, do me this favour, that everywhere you go make me a small room, so that I can live with you, for I cannot leave my daughter.” So said God to Israel: “I have given you the Torah. I cannot bear to separate from her, and to tell you not to take her is also impossible. Rather, everywhere you go make me one house so that I can live within it” as it is said “And make me a sanctuary” (Exodus 25:8).

This midrash portrays the Torah as a beloved child with whom God is unable to truly part, such that giving the Torah to the Jewish people means that God will always want to maintain a residence among them. To Messianic Jewish ears, this parable also reflects God’s relationship with his beloved son, the living Torah, whom God offered to Israel as an act of covenant fidelity and a guarantee of all God’s promises. We who receive Yeshua as the promised Messiah do so only through a relationship of mutual giving with the God who seeks to live among us. 

How can we give anything to God today? The Malbim, a 19th-century European rabbi and commentator, applied the lesson of Parashat Terumah to our hearts: 

God commanded that each individual should build him a sanctuary in the recesses of his heart, that he should prepare himself to be a dwelling place for the Lord and a stronghold for the excellency of His Presence, as well as an altar on which to offer up every portion of his soul to the Lord, until he gives himself for His glory at all times.

Nearly two millennia earlier, Rav Shaul taught the same spiritual lesson, praying for some “that Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph 3:17), and encouraging others to “present [their] bodies as a living sacrifice” (Rom 12:1). Paul applied this lesson not only to individuals but also communally: “Don’t you know that you are God’s temple and that the Ruach Elohim dwells among you? . . . for God’s Temple is holy, and you are that Temple” (1 Cor 3:16, 17b).

What happens when God moves in next door? The relationship deepens through a mutuality of giving: God bestows teaching, wisdom, and blessing, and Israel celebrates by giving back that which rightfully belongs to her Maker: glory, honor, praise, and the finest things she has to offer. The presence of God in the Tent at the center of the camp thus points to a glorious reality: the presence of God at the center of our lives.

As we gather together each week in our synagogues, circling around humble yet beautiful arks in which we reverently store God’s lekach tov (the good teaching that he has given us), let us be continually inspired to live out the beautiful reality this points to: Imanu-El, God with us, graciously giving and receiving all that we offer up gratefully in love.

All Scripture references, unless otherwise noted , are from Tree of Life Version (TLV).