Terumah
Abraham Joshua Heschel on Parashat Terumah, read on Shabbat Terumah — with one of this week's three questions for the two of you.
Terumah opens with God's command to build the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary in the wilderness. The verse that frames the whole instruction is one of the most carefully worded in the Torah: Make for Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them. Not 'in it' — among them. Heschel, attentive as always to the surprising word, hears it: God is not promising to dwell in the Mishkan, in the wood and gold. God is promising to dwell among the people who build it. The Mishkan is sacred not because of its materials but because of the giving of its materials — the act of building, willingly, together. The marriage is the same. The home is sacred not because of its walls. It is sacred because of the daily, willing, loving act of building it.
What is one piece of our home — concrete or invisible — that is sacred not because of what it is, but because of how it came to be?
The full week — the passage itself with its source, the other two questions, and the closing verse of hope — lives in the app. Together Tomorrow on the App Store.