This week's Torah reading concludes the book of Exodus, and what a bang-up ending it turns out to be! Although people who are following along might have snoozed a bit the past few weeks as we've been reading the details of the construction of the tabernacle (mishkan) and all its appurtenances, this week we see the massive payoff. Our reading begins with the completion of everything: the priestly garments, the tent, the altars, the table for the challah that was constantly on display in the tabernacle, the annointing oil, etc., etc., etc. (As Yul Boccursrynner would say).

Then Moses "blesses" them and the entire structure and apparatus is completed; the date given is the first day of the first month in the second year of leaving Egypt (1st of Nissan, 2 weeks before Passover, on the one year anniversary of the Exodus). Each part is put into place, every hinge and hook is assembled. The entire "melacha" (special word for work, used elsewhere in reference to the types of work not allowed to us on shabbat) was completed. So far so straightforward. (Please Click Read More for the entirety of Rabbi Bockman's D'Var Torah)

But now that everything is in place, the unthinkable : a cloud comes to cover the tent / tabernacle, so thick that even Moses cannot enter (shades of Mt. Sinai?). When the cloud lifts, the people travel, but when it settles, they stop. This pillar of cloud (day) and fire (night) is visible to the Israelites throughout all of their subsequent journeys.

Boom!

Instant proof that the mishkan was constructed and assembled exactly according to specifications. It works! God's presence is visibly there.

But we might be troubled by the description, for it can also be read that the ISRAELITES were able to see the cloud and the fire, but that nobody else could.

How is this possible? Is it realistic that Jews can see the miraculous presence of God when others cannot? Perhaps it is not parentage or genetics that gave them this special visual acumen, but rather their own devotion to the project. After all, when an accountant looks at the books, s/he may see many things there very clearly that non-experts would easily overlook. And such it may have been regarding the 'working' of the tabernacle. The truly amazing fact is that we, reading along in all these detailed accounts, are
*included* in the visual adjustment - we too can see the miraculous arise out of the prosaic.

It turns out that being descendants of the "House of Israel" does not mean merely that we struggle with God and people and can survive (as we read in parshat Vayishlach in Genesis), but that we also are privy to a visioning of the world that enables us to see multiple dimensions even amidst the most everyday of things!

As an instantiation of this principle, we read in the maftir about the original preparations for the Exodus from Egypt one year prior to the rest of the Torah reading/ We were told that "*this* new moon will be for us the first of all the moons/months. A very early midrash says  that we actually saw God's "finger" POINT AT THE MOON so we would recognize it ever after. This was fully two weeks before they left Egypt, indicating that even in the midst of a regime of enslavement, a world remade by freedom and independence could be seen by those in the know. Preparations needed to be made for the eventual playing-out of the scenario, but for a God-covenanted nation, the outcome was certain even then!

May we continue to see with privileged eyes.

Shabbat Shalom