Finished? Don't worry, I'll wait.
The connection that Pesikta D'Rav Kahana draws, between creation and the conclusion of the tabernacle, has huge mythic underpinnings in the rest of the Ancient Near East.
When Baal, the Canaanite storm god, defeats Yam, the manifestation of chaos, the first thing he does is build a palace to celebrate: "Baal was now King of the Gods. Lord of the Mountain of Saphon. But Baal had no palace like the other Gods..." (From the Baal Cycle, followed by the artisan god, Kothar-wa-hasis building Baal a palace).
It must therefore have been striking to ancient audiences that our God does not do the same. After God has finished creation, there are no immediate steps taken towards building Him a permanent home. Instead that act of creation is not completed until the Israelites build God a mobile home in the form of the tabernacle.
Thus the midrash connecting the end of building the tabernacle to the creation of the world exactly reflects the ancient mythic trope of Baal building his palace, and draws attention to the uniqueness of Israel, that it is in a mobile temple, among the people, carried by the people, that God finds His first home in the world.
Because in our world view, and the view of the torah, it is not some artisan god who creates God's home, but human beings, and each of us, in every generation, is called to do the same thing.
"Make for Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among you" (Ex 25:8) - through the act of making space for God, we give God the home on earth that He needs.
Very good - I'd seen that Midrash before, but the fact that the departure of the Shechina was caused by groups, but its return by individuals had never occurred to me before - very inspiring.
ReplyDeleteYou probably know Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's take on this: that the Ancient Near East pagan creation myths end in the designation of a sacred place, but the Jewish creation story ends in the designation of a sacred time, Shabbat. That, however, is another topic entirely.
By the way, the traditional rabbinically-deduced date for building of the Mishkan is nearly six months, from the day after Yom Kippur until the first of Nisan.
We have decorators (including electrics and plumbing) in at the moment. Just six days of work would be a miracle... Oy...
Thanks Daniel, always love to receive comments from you :-)
DeleteHeschel's take is wonderful, and is an excellent read of Genesis 1-2. Having not actually read what he wrote however (just had people explain it to me) I wonder what he makes of the connections between the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus and the creation of the world in Genesis (lots of the same verbs used, for example).
I think even the pshat of the torah wants us to see the Mishkan as either the completion of the work of creation, or a microcosm of it.
Good luck with the decorators!
I confess Heschel's The Sabbath is on the loooong list of books I still want to read! I've just read an extract (in Nehama Leibowitz's Studies in Exodus) that deals with the aspect I mentioned, but doesn't quote any of the aspects you mention, although elsewhere in the Studies Leibowitz quotes other sources dealing with parallels between the creation of the universe and that of the Mishkan.
DeleteThere is an idea described there (I forget where it originally appears) that the Mishkan itself should be seen as a model of the universe; for example the three domains of the universe in biblical thought (heavens, earth, sea) are paralleled by the three areas of the Mishkan (Holy of Holies, Sanctuary and Courtyard, I think in that order).