This past week during Shabbat services (10 am prayer and song; 10:45 Torah study, every week at this link) we studied Parashat Terumah, the Torah portion known as Terumah which means gifts—Adonai, the Source of All Existence, invites the Israelites to bring gifts, “And let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8).
We are struck by this request because a later verse in scripture articulates an idea or a belief that many learned in our first day of Hebrew School education: “Holy Holy Holy, Adonai of Hosts, the whole universe is filled with God’s glory” (Isaiah 6:3). Or, put more succinctly, God is everywhere.
But if God is everywhere, the question is begged, why would God need or desire a sanctuary? Can’t we find God’s presence everywhere?
As Rabbi Shai Held observes in a beautiful teaching, a midrash teaches that in order to be present in the sanctuary, God withdraws some of God’s presence (Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 2:10).
Held continues: “[In a] form of divine self-restraint, God does not make the divine presence always and everywhere obvious. If human beings are to choose relationship with God rather than having it imposed upon them, if we are to discern God’s presence rather than be bludgeoned by it, then God has to render the divine presence more subtle, and even elusive, than we would sometimes like. In order that there be space for us, God does not exercise all of God’s power; in order that God’s presence be discovered and freely embraced, God does not make God’s presence manifestly obvious at all times.”
God renders the divine presence more subtle, and even elusive, than we would sometimes like.
That’s our experience of the world, isn’t it? Or at least, it is sometimes mine: sometimes we (I) experience God as fully present, shining a light for us, directing out path; at other times our experience of God can be cloudy at best, all out absent at or indiscernible at worst. As Rabbi Held would have it, this is a feature not a bug: too much presence from God and where is the human autonomy, the human agency, the holiness that comes from opting in, choosing relationship to the Divine.
He goes on, as did our participants in Torah study, to reflect that, as in the relationship between human beings and the Divine, so in the relationships among human beings—parents and children, spouses, friends: sometimes, we need to withdraw, make space, for the other person to flourish, be themselves, embrace us.
But, meanwhile just as “the whole universe is filled with God’s glory” we, too, are always there for our loved ones.
