One day this week, Betzalel, my youngest child, asked me with great enthusiasm, “Do you want to see the fish I brought home from school?” I was relieved to find that the fish was not leftover pieces of his lunch, or a prize from an early Purim celebration. It was one of the many art projects he brings home each week, this one approximating a living, swimming being, made from a flattened cupcake paper colored with markers glued to a colored foam triangle. I’ll admit that I often allow my kids to tell me what their art represents before trying to guess myself. The artwork of a five year old could really represent so many things, and while I wouldn’t always guess correctly, once I know what they are, it is fascinating to see how they are thinking, and the love and joy they put into their reflections of what they see in the world.
This week we read the final parsha of the book of Shemot, Exodus. In this parsha, the work of building the mishkan, the portable sanctuary, is completed by the first Betzalel, the master architect. The rabbis see this conclusion to Shemot as a kind of bookend to the beginning of Beresheet, Genesis. We started by reading about how God created the world for people to live in, and as this book concludes we read about how humans have created the mishkan for God to dwell in.
Sometimes this claim of imitating the divine through our own construction project strikes me as audacious, as if to say that we can do just what God does, creating a microcosm for God to live in. One midrash (which appears in slightly different forms in at least two places) spells out the details of how human beings approximated the creation of the universe in the tent they constructed in the desert. The midrash lines up each day’s work of creation with a part of the structure of the tabernacle.
Day One – God created the heavens and the earth – In Psalms the heavens are compared to a sheet – The mishkan included sheets of goat hair.
Or Day One – God created the heavens and the earth – The mishkan had an ark which held tablets of stone
Day Two – God created a firmament to separate the heavens from the water below – The mishkan had a curtain separating the Holy of Holies
Day Three – God gathered the waters into oceans – The mishkan had a wash basin
Also Day Three – God created plants which give us food – The mishkan had a table to hold the show bread
Day Four – God created the sun moon and stars – The mishkan had a menorah, a seven-branched candelabra that gave light
Day Five – God created flying creatures – The mishkan had figures of cherubs over the ark with wings stretched upward
Day Six – God created human beings – Aaron served in the mishkan as the high priest. He was a human being.
The midrash diverges into a different conclusion in each variation, but just the delineation of the similarities between God’s creation and human creation highlights the relative puniness, and the vagueness of the representation of each element of the world that the paralel in the mishkan approximates.
And yet, the construction of this rudimentary imitation of God’s wondrous creation is enough to draw God in. As the mishkan is completed, God’s presence does, in fact, descend in a cloud of glory onto the mishkan, covering it, surrounding it, filling it, just as planned. God does not need our creation to look like divine creation. Our best loving efforts are enough. Like a parent who sits down on the little chairs to eat and drink the tea and cookies that their child has lovingly “baked” out of crayons on paper or thin air, God responds to what we have to offer.
Another midrash asserts that all forty years that the Israelites spent in the desert they had no need for the sun’s light by day or the moon’s light at night. The midrash sites the last verse of our parsha, “For over the Tabernacle a cloud of the LORD rested by day, and fire would appear in it by night, in the view of all the house of Israel throughout their journeys.” The midrash is saying that God’s presence provided all of the light that the people could possibly need throughout those years, and it was available to the people wherever they were in the camp, even indoors. So, even though they could see the color of the sky change, they didn’t depend on it as a source of light.
Reading this midrash together with the other, an image emerges of God, who appreciates our rudimentary approximation of divine creation enough to fill it with God’s presence, and by that very presence, gives us everything that we truly need. This powerful image is a comforting, nurturing way of thinking of God and the potential relationship between God and human beings. But, to me, it also offers a hint at how we can imitate God as parent.
The Jewish people grew from a family into a people in Egypt. The crossing of the red sea evokes the imagery of birth. And if we gestated and were birthed through yetziyat mitzrayim, the exodus from Egypt, then the journey through the desert puts us solidly in early childhood, a time of attachment, dependance and wonder. One of the metaphors for God that I find most compelling is that of a parent. And while it is impossible to be entirely like God, we can aspire to parent in God’s Image. If we identify with loving, praising, taking joy in, and engaging in our children’s playful approximation of the adult world, just as Moses, Betzalel, and the Israelites approximated God’s world, then we are called also to recognize that, at least at some juncture in their development, our presence, our entering into, above and around what they make for us, is enough to provide them with all the light they truly need.
So, while I may not always see what my children see in their art, in their imaginative play games or in the inventions that they plan, it may just be that entering into the fantasy, loving it, inhabiting it with them, could be everything. So the next time an art project comes home, maybe I will be less likely to look at it as one more piece of paper, and more likely to see in it a world that we can dwell in together.
May you be blessed with the same.
Shabbat Shalom.