Pekudei. Sacred Space.

In Parashat Pekudei, we seal the book of shemot, together with the long process of the building of the mishkan.

The last gesture of completion is actually about what surrounds it:

He set up the Courtyard surrounding the Tabernacle and the Altar, and he emplaced the Screen for the entrance to the Courtyard. Moses completed the work. (shemot 40.33)

וַיָּ֣קֶם אֶת־הֶֽחָצֵ֗ר סָבִיב֙ לַמִּשְׁכָּ֣ן וְלַמִּזְבֵּ֔חַ וַיִּתֵּ֕ן אֶת־מָסַ֖ךְ שַׁ֣עַר הֶֽחָצֵ֑ר וַיְכַ֥ל משֶׁ֖ה אֶת־הַמְּלָאכָֽה:

The mishkan is completed by building a courtyard, and a screen protecting it- in other words : a two-fold transitional space, which creates a distance between the outside, and the sacred space that was just built.

How is that relevant to us today?

Drawing on the midrash, the Mei Hashiloach is teaching us how the meaning of the desert, for us, has changed, once we built the mishkan:

It is written (Bamidbar Rabba, 1:3), “before the Mishkan was erected the whole desert was suitable (kosher) for speaking with God, 

and after the Mishkan was erected the desert was no longer suitable (passul).”

והנה איתא (במדבר רבה פרשה א', ג') עד שלא הוקם המשכן היה כל המדבר כשר לדבור 

ומשהוקם המשכן נפסל המדבר

We are about to enter the month of Nissan, the month in which we celebrate Pessach, the testimony of our transition from slavery to freedom, from an enclosed space to the desert: the space of all possibilities.

With Pekudei and the completion of the mishkan, something changes in our relationship to the world: where the word of God was available everywhere, we now have a dedicated space.

Within the desert of our growth, we have built a space, a space of intentionality: a space in which the divine presence can dwell within and among us, so that we can carry it with us everywhere we go.

We don’t do it for God.

Life Source doesn’t need a space. It is everywhere. It already dwells within each of us.

We do it for us: as a reminder, as a space of intentionality.

The dawn of a new month, and the dawn of the new year, as this last shabbat before the month of Nissan, is a propitious time to reset our intentionality:

What is a dedicated space in our lives, where we hold space for the divine presence?

It can be a space in our home. A space in our calendar. A space we share with others.A space in our heart.

But all dedicated spaces have this in common: we have to build them, and then we have to carry them with us.

As long as we stay connected to them, they keep offering a space of connection for greater than us.

This is the wisdom of frames- be it a physical space, or the framework of any relationship we build in our lives.

Nissan, in the month of Spring, one, and perhaps the most important of our Roshei Shana- New Years, is an opportunity to reflect again, and strengthen our dedicated spaces.

One of these spaces is a space in our heart for hope.

As 59 Israelis, alive and dead, are still being held hostage in Azza in the worst conditions, and as the negotiations seem stuck from both sides, this is a time to strengthen a space of hope in our hearts.

This is a time to sweep our own courtyards and clean our own hearts instead of pointing fingers at others, and ask ourselves:

How can my own intentionality, how can my own prayers, and my own hope, sustain the captives, right now, and help them come home, from bondage to freedom, from slavery to liberty, from narrowness to space?

Maybe it starts with the space we just finished creating this week.

Maybe it starts in our own hearts.