A TABERNACLE IN THE WILDERNESS

In the parasha Terumah, in the Book of Exodus of the Torah, God tells Moses that the people “shall make me a sanctuary and then I will dwell in their midst.” This commandment is followed by a detailed description of the size, construction, layout, and materials for this sanctuary. Later in the Torah, very specific instructions are given for the use and care and transport of this structure.

Creation is about something new in the universe of God. It is about a physical world being introduced into a spiritual universe. A completely novel entity, consisting of wide variability surrounding severe limitations of space and time, is inserted into a context defined by eternity and infinity. It would seem that the two types of existence are mutually exclusive. Like matter meeting anti-matter.

God is able to separate the Heavenly from the Worldly, the transcendent from the material. God inhabits the spiritual plane, consisting of perfect harmony and uniformity. The new Creation presents new and never-seen diversions. Among these are people and their own tendency to question, innovate, and create.

God is surprised at the human reaction to being. Adam and Eve want knowledge of good and evil, when just living in the Garden of Eden should have met their ultimate desires and needs. Thinking individuals were not satisfied with the earthly bounty so magnificent, so they sought to reach the heavens by building a Tower of Babel. God provided  the nearest thing to a perfect spiritual existence in the Holy Land of what would become Israel, but materially oriented people sought to manipulate their environment as part of their own sense of growth and development.

God might have asked: “Isn’t all that I provided adequate for your lives? What more do you need than food, safety from harm by man or beast, family, and time for reflection and prayer?”

God apparently expected men and women to desire and be satisfied with the benefits of a spiritual life within the physical world. The idea was that these people would establish themselves in this new Creation, and then go about the important business of trying to bridge the Heavenly with the Earthly.  Well, it did not work out that way. Human nature is to want to take advantage of all that their earthly delights have to offer. Pursuing spiritual enlightenment is not an intuitive imperative.

All of this may have come as a surprise to God. God’s human creation should have just jumped at the opportunity to find their spiritual path. Everything was taken care of in terms of survival, contentment, and physical needs.

But, NO! These human wanted more. God kept trying to convince them that all they had to do was follow a bunch of reasonably simple rules for living. Then they could get down to the business of connecting the Earthly to the Heavenly.

People were not going to commit to and sustain the effort to bring these two opposing but nevertheless complimentary worlds together.

The ultimate goal of Creation is to create that very bridge and get the two polar universes to find commonality. With the predictable intransigence of human beings being so powerful, God needed a means to bring God into the physical world.

The problem with this is that anything pure becomes polluted when exposed to anything impure. God is pure spiritual. Contact with a universe that is not purely spiritual will make God less than pure.

Apparently, though, there is a way that God can come into this physical world without absorbing some of the material characteristics therein. There is an inert structure that can be built, as long as very strict criteria are followed without even the slightest deviation.

Hence, the tabernacle. If mortal human beings, inherently limited by space and time, do not want to put the time and energy into achieving spiritual enhancement, then God would just come to them.

The purpose of Creation is to bridge the Heavenly and Earthly. The spiritual and the physical have so much potential to add to each other. Each has wondrous and marvelous characteristics to offer the other.

Establishing that connection is the problem. There are ends from which to build the link and make the association. People, by concentrating on being more spiritual in their lives, can reach out to the Heavenly realm by meditative effort and certain proscribed actions and lifestyles that God dictated. That is from one end of the chasm.

Alternatively, God can approach and enter the material world from the universe that God has inhabited for eternity. But this is an exacting process, fraught with the potential for error. Humans must help construct the receiving receptacle. And humans, of course, are imperfect and tend to make mistakes, even with the best intentions and guidance.

The nature of God is to be 100% spiritual. Adding physical reality to God could make God less than 100% spiritual. That would alter God, an entity of pure consistency and impossible to do.

So, for God to enter the earthly domain requires following very exacting restrictions. An example [we can know about] might be a chemistry experiment that mandates purity. The solution in question must only contact surfaces that will not alter it. Therefore, the glass beakers must be perfectly clean to obtain the desired results. Since this perfection never happens, science is always an approximation, results presented as statistical likelihoods.

God is not an approximation. God is absolute. So the glass beaker that God will inhabit must meet strict criteria. The Tabernacle is constructed with no allowance for error or improvisation, by a unique individual who can do it within the parameters of excellence needed.

God knows that this Tabernacle, when completed, would safely host God’s spiritual essence without altering it. The physical materials, the distinct architecture, the distribution of the contents, and the care taken in putting it all together are all necessary for the Tabernacle to be inert relative to the 100% spiritual nature of God.

But more is needed. The rituals, the people who enter and perform certain deeds, their clothing, and their intentions and focus are all factors to make this glass jar receptive to God without alteration.

God can communicate to God’s Creation while inhabiting the Heavenly universe. But God can only enter and dwell in this Creation via the portal of the properly built and properly used Tabernacle. (Remember, God intends to dwell in their midst with the construction of the Tabernacle.) When the criteria are met, God is not exposed to anything that might detract from God’s Holiness, that is: God’s “otherness.”

Then God can dwell in their midst.

Naturally, humans find a way to disrupt even the best plans of a supernaturally eternal and infinite God.

In the Torah, when the first rituals are about to begin, catastrophe strikes. Two of the sons of Aaron, the High Priest (Moses’ brother), perform the ceremony in a manner not prescribed by God. Maybe they think they understand a more spiritual way of performing it.

The problem is that spirituality is not what is called for. Things must be done to allow God to enter the material world. This is evidently not the same as making the material world more spiritual. These two men may indeed have deep insight into practices that may increase the Heavenliness of the Tabernacle.

But they were unable to foresee that this ritual adjustment could make the entire project hazardous to God.

They entered the Tabernacle with their “strange fire” just as God was sliding into the friendly confines of the perfect receptacle. Their actions triggered a sudden withdrawal of the Deity. This abrupt and unexpected reversal triggered a meteoric response, drawing “fire from Heaven” that consumed the souls of Aaron’s sons.

Then, God could safely dwell in the midst of the Hebrew congregation.