In this week’s Torah reading, the Israelites finally complete the mikdash, the Sanctuary, for which they have been collecting materials and designing for several weeks now. Back in Exodus 25, God told Moses, va’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham, “Make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” Moses appoints Betzalel and Oholiab, who are imbued with God’s spirit of creativity and skill with all kinds of materials. The Israelites bring gifts with which the sanctuary is constructed—all of their best things—precious metals and stones, dyes and skins, all of the things Betzalel and Oholiab will need to accomplish their daunting project. In this week’s parashah, in Exodus chapter 39, they present their work to Moses, who reacts by blessing them.
As a people, we need sanctuaries. The Israelites needed a sanctuary in the desert, a place where they could meet and learn the laws of this new people they were creating. It was a place of safety and comfort, where they could make offerings to God and come away assured that their lives would be blessed.
When they make it to the Promised Land, they still need a sanctuary. This time it was in the form of the Temple, a magnificent structure where throngs of Israelites would make daily offerings, holiday offerings, sin offerings, etc. Whatever they needed in their life, they would find a way to get it at the Temple. When they needed to consult with a priest over an ailment or a business dispute or whatever was happening in their lives, they would seek them out at the Temple. When they met there, sacrificed there, learned there, they were blessed.
When the enemies of Israel wanted to hurt them, they would attack the sanctuaries. The Romans, the Greeks, the Syrians, they all knew that the Temple was the heart of the Jewish people, and they could hit where it hurt most, by desecrating their sacred space. But every time they tried, we would eventually rebuild, because we are blessed.
In the Diaspora, when the Jews moved to Europe and Africa and spread themselves out throughout the world, they build synagogues. Synagogues were the new sanctuaries. In Hebrew they were know as Beit Midrash, Beit T’filah, and Beit K’nesset. A house of study, a house of prayer, and a house of gathering. They used these names interchangeably for the same space, because it served all these purposes. They found a community of like-minded Jews who wanted to study, prayer, and gather together, and when they did so, they were blessed.
Eventually people around the world started treating the Jews badly. Perhaps this is because of the blessings they found in their Jewish communities. Perhaps they were just scapegoats, plain and simple. Many Jewish Europeans found their way to this new place called America. Jewish people have been in America since right before the 1700’s, with approximately 300 families here by then. A dramatic shift in the late 1800’s brought 2 million Jews between 1880 and 1924, when the Immigration Act restricted entry in such dramatic numbers, but to this day there are censuses that count the US as having the largest Jewish population in the world. In America they found a new sanctuary, a place where they could be free from the persecution of Europe, a place where they could find success in life, a place of newfound blessing.
As Jewish immigration was restricted in the US, a tiny strip of land the size of New Jersey had gotten the attention of Theodor Herzl and other Jewish leaders. Herzl’s dream was that the Jewish people would have their own nation, a place where they could be safe from the anti-Semitism that dominated the politics and legal system in Europe. He dreamt of a Jewish and democratic nation, where the Jewish people would be free and safe to practice Judaism, be themselves, have have sanctuary in a world where there were unsafe spaces for Jews in all other nations. Herzl died 44 years before his dream would come to fruition, but today Israel is the world’s only democracy that gives full social and economic and political rights to those who live within its borders but would want it not to exist. It is a sanctuary for Jews, Christians, and Muslims who might be persecuted in their birthlands. It is a sanctuary for its citizens and its tourists, and if you have ever been there, you know what a blessing it is to have the State of Israel.
Just like the Temple was attacked so many years ago, our modern sanctuaries of Israel and the United States are both under attack. Sometimes physically, usually politically, extremists in our nation have taken it upon themselves to spread hate in and around our sanctuaries. I don’t have to list the many acts of anti-Semitism for you that have been growing in our community lately. Tree of Life in Pittsburgh was not the first, and the Museum of the Holocaust in Fairfax were not the last. Quite frankly, these kind of attacks on our sanctuaries worry me. They scare me, and they make me angry.
But there is a subtle kind of anti-Semitism that scares me even more. It is the kind of anti-Semitism that doesn’t bare its teeth or chant hateful epithets. It is the kind that hides itself as a joke or claims to be made out of ignorance. It is a tweet saying “it’s all about the Benjamins” or a slap on the back calling a fellow politician a “universalist.” It is the student who watches the hateful symbol pretend to be a game, and every politician who only call out the hateful actions of those in the opposing party. Anti-Semitism is not a game. A swastika is not a toy. Hate speech is hate speech, whether it comes from someone we politically oppose or from an ally.
Rabbi Peter Levi, director of the Orange County Anti Defamation League, told me and other Jewish leaders this week that these events are like a storm, but the real problem is the climate. “We need to take out an umbrella when it is raining,” he said, “but that will not affect climate change.” When we react to what we see on the internet, it is important to let people know that this is intolerable behavior, and that we will not stand for it, but it does not address the growing presence of anti-Semitism in the United States, especially here in Orange County.
It is time for us to start teaching love, not hate. Time for us to call out our colleague, classmate, or coworker when they make a “joke.” Time for us to tell parents that they are teaching the wrong message to their children. Time for real consequences to hateful actions wrapped up as games. It is time to build our society back up from the refuse of hatred and create a world where people have real conversations about our differences but using careful language that could never be construed as harmful.
It is time for us to behave as the blessings that we are, and to once again build a sanctuary out of our community, where God’s presence can dwell, and where we can be a blessing.
