Adina Roth – Director of Jewish Life

Parshat Tetzaveh, Making Space

I’d like to share three anecdotes from my week which all are connected, believe it or not, to this week’s Parsha. Firstly, at home, we have had a major immigration graduation moment; we are bringing in a cleaner once a week! I am beyond excited. I mistakenly thought she was coming in yesterday and I dreamed of returning home to see our space transformed, clothes put away, a spotless kitchen, no more laundry for days. You get the picture. Setting up a home as a space of calm, an oasis from the busy life is a sacred activity, but it is not one that I always have the time, energy or even finesse, to make happen!

My second story is this – one of my students was talking to me this week. She said she has been wanting to observe Friday night Shabbat with her family. “It should be easy,” she said. “I know all the blessings,” (this made me happy). “Also, we don’t need a fancy dinner like potatoes and chicken. We could do pizza and ice-cream. We just need candles and grape juice and challah.” She is right. Shabbat food should really just be food that you enjoy eating, but candles, wine and challah are the small but powerful details that transform our home and space on Friday night from the busy mundanities of the week to the warmth and sacred upliftment of Shabbat. 

My third story – I am moving offices at school and had a meeting this week to talk about the vision for my new office. I am not a person with a good eye for these things but I do have a sense of the feel I want to create which is warm, welcoming and with imagery around Jewishness and spirituality. We spoke about colours and chairs to host visitors.

It  doesn’t matter whether it is your home, your work space or the space of family on a Friday night – our environment and space matters!   

Having just received the Torah and gearing up for some more time in the desert, Parshat Terumah details God asking the people to construct a finely detailed home for Godself, known as the Sanctuary, or Mishkan in the desert. One third of the entire book of Exodus is dedicated to what is essentially an engineering and interior decorators manual for this Holy Home. The materials and proportions of the holy table, the holy candelabra, the holy basin and the holy curtains are all elucidated. In the middle of the instructions manual, God explains the reasoning: Make me a  sanctuary, and I will dwell among them. The Kedushat Levi, a 19^th century Hassidic commentator says ‘among them’ means in the hearts and minds of the people. In other words, God is saying, “create a space for me and my consciousness and wisdom will enter you”. The profundity of this insight is immense. Create outer space and your inner consciousness will shift! Interestingly,  the Mikdash or Sanctuary of God started off as a centralised space in the desert and eventually in our Temple in Jerusalem. But when the Jewish people were exiled, we developed the concept of a mikdash me’at, a small, decentralised holy space wherever we travelled in the world. On the one hand, this was simply the concept of the shule but it has also become the idea of a home, a room, an office, even a cupboard, where we can transform the mundane into the sacred.

When God says make me a sanctuary and I will dwell among you, we are being told, give care and attention to your surrounding space, and you will benefit internally. This isn’t about guilting us to tidy up more! It is rather an invitation to do one small thing to transform our space, it could even start with lighting of Shabbat candles on Friday night or (speaking for myself) just putting away the laundry…

Shabbat Shalom!