Stars and Colored Fire

The following Dvar Torah was delivered at the Shabbat morning minyan at Temple Shaaray Tefila.

Every time that January 1^st rolls around, I find myself filled with a sense of possibility. I’ll start making resolutions about how this will be my best year yet. I’ll start reading more books for fun. I’ll adopt some new personal slogan that will remind me to get out of my own head and live in the present moment. And the next few weeks will be great! I’ll feel that I can do anything—that with the right attitude and sense of determination, anything is possible.

And then, a few weeks later, the good habits begin to slip. I’ll get down on myself. I’ll feel that my expectations were too high. And I’ll resign myself to continuing my old habits, as that sense of possibility that I felt on January 1^st drifts further and further into the past.

In this week’s Torah portion, we find Moses and the Israelites striving to maintain their sense of possibility. Their recent experience at Mount Sinai has left them feeling like they can do anything. They’ve seen the thunder and the lightening. They’ve accepted the Ten Commandments. They’ve said na’aseh v’nishma—we will do this thing, no matter how hard it is. Never before, and perhaps never again in their entire lives, have the Israelites felt so hopeful, so certain that they can do God’s work on earth.

And now, the thunder and the lightening are gone. And now, the vast dryness of the desert is set before them. And now, the Israelites must find a way to hold onto that Sinai feeling. And so, the Israelites set about the task of constructing a mishkan, a Tabernacle—a portable sanctuary in which God will accompany them as they wander through the desert—so that even as they drift further and further away from that profound day at the foot of Mount Sinai, they’ll continue to feel as if they can do anything.

It is with these high hopes that Moses receives God’s instructions for building the mishkan. The plan is incredibly complicated—with exceedingly rare building materials, a minutely detailed construction process, and the likelihood for error inherent in constantly constructing and deconstructing a portable sanctuary. But one phrase that appears four times in this parashah raises the task from just plain difficult to downright impossible. Four times, God instructs Moses to build the Tabernacle “k’asher ani mareh otkhah—exactly as I am showing it to you.”

From this phrase—ani mareh ot’khah—our sages determine that God didn’t simply whisper the instructions in Moses’s ear, or draw for him a detailed blueprint, but rather that God showed Moses a prototype—perfectly designed and perfectly constructed. And having seen God’s prototype, the loftiness of Moses’s goal comes into full relief. The mishkan that he is shown is breathtaking. How could mere human beings ever build so perfect a structure?

To make matters worse, a midrash teaches that in this divine prototype, the clasps that held the mishkan together were made not of gold, but rather of the stars of heaven. The materials weren’t made of dyed yarn and linen, or tanned animal skins and colorful stones, but rather of red fire, green fire, black fire, and white fire. And what’s more, our sages teach that Moses saw God’s perfectly constructed Tabernacle not as if in a dream or a vision, but rather that Moses saw the real thing—as it occurred, with his own eyes, made of stars and colored fire.

And suddenly, Moses feels deflated. He fears that he’ll never measure up. He and his Tabernacle will never be as great as he had hoped they would be.

What are we to do when our sense of possibility turns on us—when our high expectations for ourselves leave us feeling as if our dreams are impossible? We strive and strive and strive to make something great of our lives, to live up to our highest potential, only to find that the more we grasp, the more it slips through our fingers. What are we to do when we are made only of flesh and blood, and our dreams for ourselves are made of stars and colored fire?

Moses didn’t have stars and colored fire. He only had acacia wood.

How did Moses regain his confidence? How did he and the Israelites decide that acacia wood would be good enough for building the Tabernacle? One explanation comes from the medieval Spanish Torah commentator Ibn Ezra. He explains that when the Israelites arrived at Mount Sinai, Moses told them that they’d be staying there for several months. And so, the Israelites realized that they had better build temporary shelters for themselves, to protect them from the sun. Ibn Ezra explains that there was a forest of acacia trees at the foot of Mount Sinai, which the Israelites chopped down and used to build huts. And these huts became the Israelites’ houses during their stay at Mount Sinai.

And after the giving of the Ten Commandments, suddenly Moses was asking for donations of acacia wood in order to build a Tabernacle. Now of course, the Israelites didn’t know what a Tabernacle was, and so they weren’t all that inclined to part with the wood that had become their homes, that had sheltered them, that they’d grown so attached to.

But then they remembered that Sinai feeling, that sense of possibility and wonder, that feeling that they could achieve greatness. And they realized that they already had what they needed. And one by one, as their hearts moved them, the Israelites learned to embrace their greatest asset. They took the acacia wood-houses that they themselves had built—that they’d grown to love, that had sustained them and enabled them to reach that very moment—and they found for them new uses. And they built a Tabernacle. And even as they departed from Mount Sinai, God’s presence continued to dwell among them.

The mishkan wasn’t made of stars or colored fire. It was made of what they had. It was made of who they were.

And this is why God commands us to build the mishkan—to return us to sense of possibility, to tell us that who we are and what we have are enough to enable us to achieve our dreams. Then, we’ll embrace our greatest assets. Then, we’ll know—that when it feels like all we’ve got is acacia wood, somewhere deep inside of us are stars and colored fire.