There is a question that has puzzled commentators for generations, and I think it sits at the very heart of this week’s parasha. God says to Moses: “V’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham” — “Make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.” Not within it. Among them.
The text doesn’t say God will dwell within the Mishkan, within the walls and the curtains and the golden ark. God will dwell among the people. The sanctuary is not the destination — the real destination are the people. And that changes everything about how we read this parasha.
Terumah opens with an invitation. God tells Moses to speak to the Israelites and ask them to bring gifts — but only from those whose hearts move them to give. “Kol ish asher yidvenu libo” — every person whose heart is willing. This is not a tax. This is not a demand. This is not a repayment. It is a calling. And the list of materials is astonishing in its diversity: gold and silver and copper, blue and purple and crimson yarns, fine linen, goat hair, tanned skins, acacia wood, oil, spices, precious stones. No single person could have brought all of this. No single family. The Mishkan could only be built by everyone, each person contributing what they had, what they were, what they could give.
This is deeply intentional. The rabbis teach that the Mishkan was a kind of mirror of creation — that its construction echoed the seven days of the world’s making. But if creation was God’s work, the Mishkan was humanity’s answer. God built the world; we build the space where God and humanity meet. And just as creation required the full breadth of existence — light and darkness, water and land, creature and human — the Mishkan also required everyone in the community.
And notice this: for the first time since leaving Egypt, the Israelites are not being led somewhere. They are not following a pillar of fire or receiving commandments from a mountaintop. They are being invited to build something — together, as a people. The Mishkan was the first act of collective Jewish intentionality. It was the moment when a group of freed slaves became a kahal — a sacred community with a shared purpose and a shared vision of who they wanted to be.
Because that is what an intentional community does. It holds up a mirror. It says: this is who we are when we are at our best. The Mishkan was not a dwelling place for God — it was a dwelling place for the highest version of the Jewish people. Every beam of acacia wood, every thread of crimson yarn, every drop of anointing oil was an act of collective aspiration. When they built it, they were saying: we are capable of beauty. We are capable of holiness. We are capable of meeting the divine — not as scattered individuals, but as a people.
This matters because we do not encounter God alone. Of course there is personal prayer, personal study, personal wrestling with faith. All of that is real and all of that is sacred. But the Torah is telling us here that there is something that only happens b’tocham — in the midst of an intentional community. There is a version of the divine encounter that is only available to us together. We need each other not just for support, but for revelation.
This means that a community is not a building. It is not a membership roster. It is not a budget or a calendar of events. A community is built in the same way the Mishkan was built — through the willing hearts of its people, through the offering of what each person has to give. Some give gold. Some give goat hair. The Mishkan needed both. Our community needs both.
We often fall into the habit of thinking that contributing means writing a check. And yes — financial support matters. The ancient Israelites knew this. You cannot build a sanctuary on good intentions alone; you need gold, silver and the acacia wood. We need resources to do the sacred work we are called to do, and each of us is asked to give as we are able. There is no shame in giving less, and yet there is great responsibility in being able to give more.
The Torah is careful: the Text does not list what is impossible to quantify: time, skill, presence. Betzalel and Oholiav did not just donate money — they donated their hands, their artistry, their wisdom. The women who spun the goat hair gave their labor. The leaders who brought the precious stones gave their status in service of something larger than themselves. A community is woven from all of these threads.
So we understand that the Mishkan was not the goal. The Mishkan was the process. The goal is V’shachanti b’tocham. I will dwell among them. Between them. In the intentional space they created together.
The Israelites didn’t stumble into holiness — they designed it. They made choices, together, about what kind of people they wanted to be and what kind of community they wanted to inhabit. Every measurement of the Mishkan, every specification for its furnishings, speaks to this: holiness requires intention. A sacred community is not one where people simply coexist — it is one where people have made a conscious commitment to bring out the best in one another, to hold one another to a vision of what is possible.
That is our long term work here at Adath Israel. We are an intentional community. We have made a choice — each of us, in our own way — to seek something here, to be here tonight. And in doing so, we become a mirror for one another. When you walk through these doors, you are not just coming to pray or to learn or to mark a life cycle moment. You are coming to meet God as part of our people. You are coming to be seen — in your searching, in your growing, in your becoming — by a community that is committed to seeing the best in you, even when you cannot yet see it in yourself.
We are committed to being a community where every person can explore their connection to Judaism in their own way, at their own pace, on their own path. Some of you are here every Shabbat. Some of you are finding your way back after years away. Some of you are asking questions you have never asked before. Some of you are not sure what you believe, but something brought you through the door. You belong here. Your offering — whatever it is — belongs here.
The last thing I will add is that belonging is not passive. The Israelites did not receive the Mishkan. They built it. And we build this community together — with our time, with our resources, with our presence, with our questions and our doubt and our faith. We can only have the community we dream of when we show up for it, when we invest in it, when we treat it as the sacred project that it is. The community we dream of is built from the materials we each bring — and it reflects back to us who we are capable of being.
The Mishkan taught the Jewish people something they would carry through every exile and every century that followed: that God does not live in any fixed place. V’shachanti b’tocham. I will dwell among them.
God lives in the relationships we build toward something greater than ourselves. God lives in the intentional gathering of people who have decided, together, to reach for their highest selves. Every time we gather, every time we study, every time we support one another, every time we give — we are laying another beam of that ancient, eternal structure called the Jewish people. Shabbat Shalom.