The Degradation of Holiness

After the instructions for making the oil for the Temple menorah, parashat Tetzave is primarily focused on the consecration of the kohanim (priests), including how their priestly garments are to be tailored. As part of the consecration ceremony, Aaron and his sons are instructed to offer up a ram and eat it at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting:

You shall take the ram of ordination and boil its flesh in a holy place. And Aaron and his sons shall eat the flesh of the ram and the bread that is in the basket in the entrance of the tent of meeting. They shall eat those things with which atonement was made at their ordination and consecration, but an outsider shall not eat of them, because they are holy. (Exodus 29:31–33)

According to this passage, the ram served three purposes. It was for atonement, ordination, and consecration. The priests were commanded to eat it, but it was forbidden to outsiders. Leviticus 22:10 reinforces this saying, “A lay person shall not eat of a holy thing; no foreign guest of the priest or hired worker shall eat of a holy thing.” These instructions sound similar to Paul’s instruction for partaking of what is commonly called the Lord’s Supper:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord … For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. (1 Corinthians 11:27, 29)

The Didache (one of the earliest testimonies to the teachings of the Apostles outside of the Apostolic canon) interprets this prohibition narrowly to mean those who have not come to faith in Yeshua:

The Forest Hidden Behind the Trees

Parashat Terumah opens with God giving Moses instructions for the building of the Mishkan, the Holy Tabernacle. When reading through this section of the Torah, and the portions that follow, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all of the details given that describe how the Tabernacle was to be constructed. We read about planks of acacia wood, gold, silver, bronze, multi-colored yarn, linen, goats’ hair, rams’ skins, and more. We read about how each individual item had to be so many cubits wide, or so many handbreadths thick. There are so many details that many people are tempted to skip ahead and try to find where the storyline picks back up.

But we need to remember the significance of what we are reading. These instructions served as the blueprints for Moses and the Children of Israel to actually build this incredible structure called the Tabernacle. They needed to have detailed instructions so that the pieces would come together to create something spectacular. However, there is a particular detail at the beginning of these instructions that is easy to overlook. When God tells Moses that He wants the Children of Israel to build a dwelling place for Him, He says something unusual. Exodus 25:8 begins by saying, “And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in …” We would expect the final word to be “it.” God wants the Children of Israel to build Him a house that He can dwell in, right? But that’s not how it ends. The last Hebrew word of that sentence is betocham, which means “in them” or “among them.” Therefore, the passage reads:

And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. (Exodus 25:8)