By Rabbi Tsurah August
This week’s Torah portion is Terumah: Exodus 25:1 – 27:19
The insistent wind blew snow flurries against our frozen cheeks and tugged at our homemade signs as we gathered at the corner, in front of our neighborhood library. A woman stood with her two little girls, gripping posters they illustrated with hearts and hugging families, proclaiming, “Keep families together”, “We love our families”, “Without each other we would be sad”. We gathered with neighbors of all ages, races, lifestyles, to protect our immigrant neighbors.
In this past year, the need for providing sanctuary has been churning in me as the abuses against immigrants here and worldwide surge, destroy our human civilizations and poison our very souls.
Sanctuary. What a contrast to what our country has been building – “detention” centers that are effectively prisons for those who are being hunted and torn from their homes and families, because they are suspected of being “illegal,” because they are brown or Black or speak with a “foreign” accent. They live in fear and dread, in hiding.
The parasha “Terumah” comes directly after the parasha Mishpatim, which lays out the ethical, moral and property laws that create and maintain a civil society, a society in which each person has a role to maintain the peace and order for the communal good.
Terumah, translated as “offering”, deals with creating a physical sanctuary, the Mishkan, to which “every person whose heart is so moved” contributes terumah. The Mishkan will be the home for God to dwell in. The parasha goes into great detail describing the materials, processes, structure and ritual objects of the sanctuary/Mishkan. These are physical objects, such as gold, silver, copper and gems.
But let’s first look at the word Terumah. The Hebrew root is ram – to raise up/elevate. In the parasha, one can read it as elevating material objects to spiritually serve a higher purpose. In the process of being elevated, the material object becomes a vehicle for holiness, just as the one who is offering the terumah is spiritually elevated and becomes a vehicle for holiness.
We Jews continue the work of the Mishkan. Yes, we do build magnificent architectural structures – synagogues and Jewish centers, filled with gorgeous ritual objects, art and libraries. And, more to my point, we continue the work of the Mishkan beyond the physical spaces, raising our very selves – and each other – to transform our world into a mishkan, a sanctuary, for all who dwell here on this exquisite, beleaguered planet.
Here in Philadelphia, we have been providing sanctuary for new immigrants for at least 200 years. In our Jewish community, HIAS, the Jewish Federation, JFCS and so many other Jewish organizations and synagogues have been and continue to be advocates and supporters of new arrivals from diverse cultures and countries.
Along with like-minded neighbors from all religions, beliefs and cultures, we join together to lift up our gifts – our voices, our bodies, our knowledge, our time, physical resources, our creativity, our spirits, our love – to not only “welcome the stranger,” but to provide a lasting sanctuary for all who seek refuge.
So many new organizations have been created – like Welcoming Home, whose Terumah are homes and daily life skills support for young adult immigrants; the newly formed NW Immigration Network’s Terumah includes keeping its burgeoning membership up to date on regional ICE activity, local and regional actions to benefit immigrants and providing legal and practical support. Terumah is offered weekly at clergy and activists’ vigils, and on and on throughout our city, region, country.
We bring our Terumah; all of us, “each whose heart moves us.” And the Mishkan we are building is far more glorious and more lasting than any building could be – and big enough for all of us to dwell in, together. That’s divine.
Rabbi Tsurah August is a member of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia and Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains.