An Offering — Rabbi Mira Rivera

Parashat Terumah begins with the Eternal addressing Moses: “Tell the Israelites to bring to me terumah - an offering - from “everyone whose heart is so moved.”  Calling, calling everyone: kol ish asher yidveno libo, kol ishah asher yidvenah libbah!  Come with generosity.  Come with goodwill.

In my reveries about Terumah, I am reminded of the lyrics of Naomi Shemer’s song Ani Gitara because I would offer a guitar. I have lost count of the guitars that I once owned and have given to fellow travelers along the way, yet a guitar keeps coming back my way.

“I am a guitar 

The wind plays upon me through the changing seasons

I am a guitar

Someone strums me through the changing melodies.”  

Wouldn’t a guitar be a fitting addition to the construction of a travelling Mishkan/ Sanctuary?  Though not a bolt, a peg, or a curtain, it would provide melody and song in the brutal trek through the wilderness.

The Berditchever Rabbi (1740-1809 Ukraine) expounds on Exodus 25:8

 וְעָשׂוּ לִי, מִקְדָּשׁ; וְשָׁכַנְתִּי, בְּתוֹכָם

in which ‎G-d instructs the people through their leader Moses “to ‎build a Sanctuary in their midst.”  Lifting up another teaching from an earlier Rabbi Moshe Alshich (1508 Ottoman Empire -1593 Safd), we learn that this verse implied that the Eternal does not move or relocate from ‎celestial realms to the earth. Rather, the purpose of building the ‎Sanctuary is to indicate that the principal Presence of the Divine was to be ‎on earth amongst the people.  

“I shall take residence among them” - ve’shachanti betokham -  ‎ושכנתי בתוכם‎.  

The operative word in that line is the word ‎בתוכם‎, “within them,” within hearts and minds.  The Divine Presence, G-d, would not be isolated to a physical structure.

Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Kotzk was once asked, “Where is G-d?”  His reply was “Wherever they let G-d in.”

Mistress Artist, weave me in, a guitar of flamed acacia wood among the ten strips of cloth in the Sanctuary made of fine twisted linen, of blue, purple and crimson yarns.  You have worked in a design of cherubim into them (Exodus 26: 1), so you can find me a place. Five of the pieces of cloth shall be joined  to one another, and the other five  shall be joined like a friend to another, as a woman to her sister.  

וְחָמֵ֤שׁ יְרִיעֹת֙ חֹֽבְרֹ֔ת אִשָּׁ֖ה אֶל־אֲחֹתָֽהּ׃

V’chamesh yeri’ot chovrot ishah el achotah.

Ani Gitara, “I am a guitar” whose voice weaves in and out of minds and hearts and a traveling Sanctuary.

“I am a guitar

Maybe once I was a tree  

And inside me I remember anyone who has played me

And I say thank you.”

Rabbi Mira Rivera is the Rabbinic Mentor at Ammud: The Jews of Color Torah Academy