By Talia Spear

This week's parasha is Terumah. If you have been reading along the Jews currently have a lot of information and laws and holy commandments but no physical space to hold them. This entire parasha is all about how the ancient Israelites were supposed to build the Tabernacle, Ark, Menorah, Mishkan. Pretty much the creation of Holy space for Holy things -God said "they shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell in their midst" . The instructions that God gives are incredibly detailed and very exact. First Moses needed to collect the gold, silver, copper, fine died cloth and other valuables from all the children of Israel as an offering showing their generosity. Then it just gets super specific. I don't think its worth getting all into now but if you want to get into the nitty gritty you can find a summery here and from there you can also find the exact translation.

As an example - it would be like the Mirkez/et Chunuch giving instructions for how to write a peula by saying that all peulot are exactly an hour and forty three minutes. It must start with a trigger that involves all chanichim standing in a strait line and last for exactly 17 minutes. Next there will be a text no longer than 4 paragraphs and no shorter than 2, printed in size 12 font Comic Sans... and it would go on.

If you have a vision that other people are going to need to carry out, you probably are going to be as exact as you can be. After all you have this really clear incredible vision of something and you need to make sure that your instructions are understandable and follow-able. So from that lens I get where God is coming from but there was a part of me while I was reading through the parasha that really didn't jibe with how particular the instructions were. In the movement we embrace creativity, outside the box thinking, and taking your

own initiative and we don't really do a lot of cookie cutter type of work; not all peulot start with a 17 minute trigger. It wasn't that there were instructions it was how intricate they were. But vision is important and at the moment when God was giving these instructions there really wasn't a lot of collaborative building and processing going on - and there wasn't a lot of room for out of the box thinking or going your own way, they were in the middle of the desert, survival was a pretty big goal and Gods vision had gotten them that far. The circumstances were such that the exactness was not just acceptable but needed and appropriate.

Thinking about this - my takeaway and questions to ponder are when I or we have a vision of how something should go or look or be built - how exact and detailed does it need to be? When is being to peculiar a strength and when is it to the detriment of the vision? What happens when in the end its not exactly how we thought? Who are we creating it for? Why is it important? What does the vision not being followed mean? Its critical to think about the circumstance that it is being actualized in, the people it effects, and the intention behind it.

Other interesting things that stood out at me in this parasha are the relationship to Holy space, material wealth as a marker of holiness and God, the creating of community/society center, and the lens of the person who follows directions. Just adding some more food for thought if you want to explore further.