Parashat Terumah 2025/5785
Shabbat Shekalim
When I was 16, I stepped into the famous Krakow synagogue along with other teens on the March of the Living. It was meticulously reconstructed to look as it did before the community was destroyed in the Holocaust.
We took seats, and in front of us were desks where people once learned Torah. But we couldn’t touch the desks because there was plexiglass over them. It was no longer a synagogue, no longer a beit midrash, no longer a beit knesset—it was a museum dedicated to the lost community of Polish Jewry.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, “A body without a soul is a corpse, and a soul without a body is a ghost.”
Yes, we need spirit, but as Heschel said, we also need a place to gather. The question is: what should that place look like? Should it look like that mighty cathedral in Krakow? Or should it look like, well, a storefront across from a gas station?
I’ve driven past our shul countless times, but I’m rarely in the passenger seat. This week, though, our oldest son was driving me, and Harrison was in the back seat. I turned to them and said, “I have a confession to make. Whenever someone calls CSK ‘my Temple,’ I cringe. I mean, we’ve made it really beautiful inside, but as our friend Geil says, ‘You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.’”
Avi just coolly responded, “I don’t know, Abba. I think it’s kind of cool.”
“What’s kind of cool?” I asked.
“You know, it’s unique. It’s down to earth. Who else goes to shul across from a gas station?”
To my son, who is becoming a bar mitzvah today, this is what shul is.
Today, the second of our children is a bar mitzvah—and I can’t help but think about how things have changed and, at the same time, how they have stayed the same.
No matter where we live, we Jews have always had an edifice complex. Europe is filled with beautiful synagogues that span over 800 years. Perhaps they would still be full if not for the Holocaust. Any Jew who has been on trips to far-off lands knows that synagogue buildings are there too, often empty. And while there’s nothing wrong with buildings—we need them—we also need to learn from this week’s parashah how to build our Mikdashei Me’at, our small holy places, and, more importantly, what should always be inside them.
The upcoming parashiot deal with the building of the Mishkan. But why do they need this place when God is everywhere? Why limit the experience of God to just one space? And why do we try to contain God within enormous cathedrals?
A few years ago, before Havdalah, Rabbi David Ingber of Romemu in Manhattan’s Upper West Side asked a question: “What is the first thing you need in a synagogue?”
He turned to me first. Like a good rabbi, I responded, “A Torah.”
He then asked the chazzan, “What do you need?” The chazzan said, “A guitar.”
Then we turned the question back to him: “Well, what do you think?”
Rabbi Ingber said, “A tissue box. A shul needs to be a place where people can cry.”
There’s a lot of wisdom there.
The Kotzker Rebbe famously said, “There is nothing more whole than a broken heart.” To truly understand life and the world, one must experience brokenness. Only then can we be truly whole.
This is a difficult concept, but it is also deeply Jewish. In the face of tragedy, Jews learn and grow. We hold joy and sorrow together.
The human heart is an amazing thing—it can expand exponentially and also contract to a tiny point. And it is the heart where God dwells—if we let God in.
In verse 8, after God gives the instructions for what people should bring to the Mishkan, God says:
(ח) וְעָשׂוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם
“And make for Me a Mikdash, and I will dwell among them.”
On the surface, it seems like the Mishkan is for God: “Make Me a Mikdash.” But if we look deeper, we see that God says, “I will dwell among them,” not it.
Zedah La-Derekh, a commentary to Rashi, teaches that God is not seeking to enter the sanctuary but rather to dwell within our hearts.
When King Solomon builds the Beit HaMikdash, the Holy Temple, he states clearly:
“But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain You. How much less this Temple I have built.” (1 Kings 8:27)
Even the greatest structure we had, the Holy Temple, could not hold God. The only thing that can hold God is us, as human beings, wherever we are. We make that place holy.
This is the gift of the Mishkan—and it’s what has made this our spiritual home for the past 15 years.
The Mishkan gave our ancestors the strength to persevere, to be connected to the God of Sinai on a daily basis. Within it, the light of the menorah was always kindled, and the fire of the altar burned continuously. It was the fire of our hearts and the breath of our lungs.
For 2,000 years, we have lived in a post-Mishkan, post-Temple world. But in truth, the Mishkan was never destroyed—it was only dismantled.
Because the Mishkan is here, in our hearts.
So as we celebrate this special milestone today, let us remember: The holiness of a place is not in its walls, but in the people who fill it. Whether we gather in a grand structure or across from a gas station, God dwells among us when we open our hearts, embrace our community, and create spaces filled with love, learning, and compassion.
May our shul always be a place where hearts are open, spirits are lifted, and the presence of God is felt in every tear, every song, and every moment of connection.
Comments