The Pshat Heard 'Round the World

Here we go! Five weeks in a balloon of intensive involvement with the construction of the Mishkan, starting now with Parashat Terumah. A balloon, it seems, since we’ve just been at Sinai and receive an entire corpus of civil and criminal law with which to found a society in Eretz Yisrael, and we’re told we’ll be accompanied by Hashem’s angel on the way, so you’d think the next stage would be to set off. Not so fast! The Mishkan and all it entails and implies for the life of the people of Israel will be our subject clear through until the third parashah in B’midbar (!), when we finally do get going. This Mishkan, the most elaborate construction project undertaken by humanity to date as recorded by the Torah (the Tower of Babel was aborted, and the Egyptian store-houses merely required a huge supply of adobe bricks), allows us to fulfill our promise as beings created in the image of Hashem. Hashem creates a world, and we, imitating Him, create a symbolic world. ...

I was speaking last night with a student at the yeshiva with a keen interest in exploring the nexus between Torah and environmental consciousness. We were discussing a seminar he will be giving, G-d willing,  in the next few months. He wanted to present Ya'akov Avinu as a model of environmental consciousness, focusing on two episodes of his life as depicted by the Midrash. The first is the famous image of Ya'akov at the Yabok, preparing for the encounter with Esav and, having crossed his family safely over the river, goes back for pachim ketanim , little flasks, seeming worthless given the danger hovering over Ya'acov. Yet, as we are told, the righteous prize their few possessions, since they attest to the fact that they have studiously avoided theft. Variants of that Midrash tell us that the contents of those small vials was olive oil from the branch presented by the dove to Noach and preserved during all the intervening generations. The other midrash is apropos of our...

Well, this week has been a bit slow for original thought and writing. I've been asked to put the Pshat out earlier, and you see what my obstinate inner self does when pushed, eh? Nevertheless, I wanted to share with you a Midrash you probably are partially familiar with but may not have seen in its entirety: THAT THEY TAKE FOR ME AN OFFERING (XXV, 2). It is written, For I give you a good lesson ( lekach )(; forsake ye not my teaching (Prov. IV, 2). Do not forsake the transaction ( mekach ) I have made over to you. When a man purchases an article, if it is of gold, then it is not of silver, of silver then it is not of gold. But the article I have given you has silver therein, for it says, The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a crucible (Ps. XII, 7); it also has gold therein; for it says, More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold (ib. XIX, 11). A man sometimes buys fields but not vineyards, or vineyards but not fields, but this purch...