There were two space-worthy events in the news this week. The first was that Space shuttle Discovery and its seven-member crew lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 7:43 p.m. this past Sunday to deliver the final set of power-generating solar array wings and a new crew member to the International Space Station. On the NASA website http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/ you can track the day to day activities of the shuttle, meet the crew, and watch video of the take-off and pairing with the space station. I love space flight and the one thing I regret when living in Florida was not being able to see a live launch. The program was basically in hiatus for a few years following the explosion of space shuttle Columbia along with the loss of 7 astronauts including of course Israeli born Ilan Ramon. http://www.science.co.il/ilan-ramon/ (The only other Jew to make it to space was Elijah the prophet who rode a fiery chariot up to heaven )http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=245&letter=E. I got a call on Monday from a friend who lives down in Boca saying she went to the launch and it was truly a sight to see, the power, the noise, and the majesty of a rocket launching towards the stars. It’s something I have always wanted to see, and hope to some day.
The other newsworthy space related story was that there is a new Star Trek movie http://www.startrekmovie.com/coming out this May and apparently there is a town in Alberta called Vulcan. Anyone who is a trekkie fan knows that is the home planet of Mr. Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy. Perhaps not everyone is aware of Nimoy’s Jewish roots, in fact he had a Jewish photography exhibit in NYC at HUC while I was in school there. You know his famous “live long and prosper” hand greeting. Apparently when the show was filming the director wanted some sort of interesting hand signal greeting from Spock and Nimoy suggested it, remembering from childhood how his Cohen father used to use it when doing the priestly benediction. Rabbi’s and Cohanim still use this to this day, and often you might see the hand sign on the gravestones of Jewish cohanim. But I digress. The point is that Vulcan, Alberta wanted to host the first screening of the new film but apparently Paramount couldn’t handle this logistical dilemma. Yesterday Nimoy personally took up the cause to bring the screening to Canada. http://www.vulcantourism.com/Personally, wherever the film is screened I can’t wait to see it, I’m a big trekkie fan.
You might now be asking, what does space or spaceships have to do with our Torah portion this week. As we read this morning in parshat vayakhel-pekudai, God provides us with very specific details on the building of the mishkan, the tabernacle. In fact in Exodus we are provided with this specific precise measurements and minute details 4 times. Why so many times, the great Torah scholar Adin Steinsalz http://www.steinsaltz.org/asks, why devote so many lines of text towards the physical attributes of the mishkan and its vessels when its purpose is spiritual.
His answer is that the Mishkan is a way to create a relationship between God and the people Israel, the first tangible connection to God, a medium of communication that bridge the immeasurable distance between the finite and infinite. Clearly it needed great care, time and precision to achieve this union of heaven and earth. (Jerusalem Report, Mar. 7, 2005)
Steinsaltz suggests that the building of the Mishkan could be compared to the building of a spaceship, and he outlines the following reasons. A spaceship is built to journey to distant extraterrestrial places, though they are voyages defined by physical parameters. The Mishkan faced an even greater challenge, to transcend vast distances beyond physical parameters, towards the infinite God. When building a spaceship, one must develop a design, gather the raw materials, and fashion each component. Then each item must be checked, and double checked, tested, and joined together into a cohesive unit.
Then each part must be checked again, retested and reassembled. Then the whole ship must be tested, over and over again, to ensure safety and perfection. It seems that at each launch there is always a delay or a final check, because something was amiss, and it has to be perfect. With a launch, the slightest problem can have catastrophic results. Actually on this last launch, apparently a small bat was clinging to the side of an exterior tank when the shuttle took off, and somehow not only did he decide not to fly away, he actually clung on through the launch all the way up at least until the shuttle left the atmosphere. But this bat didn’t affect the launch in any way.
Now if the spaceshuttle needs that much preparation and rechecking, then Kal V’chomer (a Talmudic phrase that means, “how much more so”) the Mishkan needed to be assembled, deconstructed and constructed anew to verify that each part perfectly complemented the other.
And even once the spaceship has been built; it still needs human involvement both inside and out. The space shuttle is guided by engineers on the ground and the astronauts on board. Throughout liftoff, travel and return, it is closely watched throughout the world, in wonder and amazement, and such a marvel of human creation, and we are united in grief when things do not go well. For the Mishkan too, on the last climactic day of its creation, an extraordinary attention to detail was required by Moses, Aaron and the Priests. Only after the Mishkan was created perfectly and the flawless performance by the people to prepare the sacrifice, was God revealed “and the glory of God appeared to the entire nation and a fire went forth and consumed the offerings…the whole nation saw and sang with joy and fell on their faces” (Leviticus 9:23-24). Finally a connection between the people on earth and God of heaven and the cosmos above.
The famous Rav Kook,(chief Rabbi of Israel in the 1930’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Isaac_Kook), agreed that the Mishkan corresponded to the entire universe. The Talmud teaches us (Shabbat 99a) that the gold fasteners holding up the intricately woven tapestries would sparkle like stars in the sky. There were two tapestries held together, emphasizing the unity of the mishkan, they would make it “one”. The wooden beams of the upright beams were held together into the base by sliding into silver sockets (adanim). The harmonious synchronization of the building reflects the harmony of our world and universe. The stars in the universe that hold together the great canopy of the cosmos bind the forces of the world into one. And we realize that ultimately, just as people created the mishkan, it was God who created the design and harmoniously formed the world in its splendor and perfection, for the ultimate unity of the universe.
Today we have spaceships and movies about what might be out in space, but our Mishkan, the one so beautifully described in our text, does not exist anymore. Steinsaltz suggest that while the physical Mishkan is gone, the essence of the Mishkan lives on in the neshama, the soul, of each Jewish person. Just as the construction of the Mishkan required such careful attention to detail, we must develop our own neshama, it cannot be faked or bought or borrowed. While our neshama was designed by God, we must enhance and develop it. As Moses and Aaron finalized the Mishkan so that God’s presence could enter it, so too we finalize our neshama in our daily actions and interactions, no matter how small or insignificant, to discover and fulfill our purpose on earth. This is demanding work, because it forces us to remember that our daily actions can have long last effects on our wholeness and on the people around us. But if we take small steps we too might find the way to connect Heaven and earth.
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