Building A Mishkan For All Of Us — Susana Darwin

This week, Mishkanite Susana Darwin celebrated her 60th birthday — and wanted nothing more than to learn how to chant Torah and offer a drash at Mishkan. So as we turned our attention to the section of Torah describing the building of the Mishkan, the traveling tabernacle the Israelites built in the desert throughout their wanderings, we invited Susana to share her observations and insights

****

For upcoming Shabbat services and programs, check our event calendar, and see our Accessibility & Inclusion page for information about our venues. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook for more updates.

Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

Hello and welcome to contact Hi, this week Michigan I'd Suzanna Darwin celebrated her 60th birthday, and wanted nothing more than to learn how to chant Torah and offer a thrush at Mishcon. So, as we turned our attention to the section of Torah describing the building of the Mishcon, the traveling tabernacle, the Israelites built in the desert, throughout the wanderings, we invited Suzanna to share her observations and insights. And in doing that, she brought all of us a little more awe and wonder, we could all use a little more awe and wonder. So, mazel tov and take it away Susanna.

So just to review, in this text, the biblical character, God continues with detailed minut Lee obsessively detailed instructions to Moses on Mount Sinai. And here's what he says. Now, for the Mishcon, which is the traveling sanctuary, make 10 swaths of cloth, you're gonna weave fine linen with blue, purple and scarlet wool and have artists artisans add cherub designs, each swath of cloth is 42 feet long by seven feet. You align the claws are the swathes of cloth together five by five. Next, you create 50 Blue loops along the far edge of one cloth in the first set. And then do the same thing along the edge of the far cloth and the second set, you position them so that they are opposite one another, then make 50 Gold clasps, and attach the claws to each other with the clasps so that the Mishkan may be one hole.

The instructions then continue about the outer tents, and the paneling for the interior.

So let's try and imagine our way into how it felt to have spent centuries under a regime of forced labor in a place Egypt

that was at least as ubiquitously polytheistic, as the US as the US is Christian.

So consider the imagination and charisma, it would have taken to bring 1000s into the Sinai desert and remind them convinced them that actually one single force is responsible for birth, death, a bountiful harvest, victory and war, success and love rather than gone for each.

Some of us now might name that force, causality, or physics, but that's not my point.

My point is that in this in this text, God the biblical parent character appears as someone intently concerned with a dwelling place, which is purpose number one of the Mishcon the section I read only addresses the awnings. Then we hear about the outer tents made of cashmere and hides acacia wood paneling for the interior and later gold, silver copper furniture and other Kuchma. The linens demarcating the courtyard.

Now imagine it's you living in the desert, with your family and your flocks and whatever else you were able to slip out of Egypt.

Some of us here today can tell you from experience

at Burning Man

that deserts are a big hot, dusty mess. And it does not take long for everything to wind up the color of oatmeal.

So how does it feel when you gather all together and you discover this colorful soaring structure the Mishkan

even if some of us today might find the design a bit much.

You might feel desolate.

You probably feel all

and speaking of gifts. What a gift or is all can stop you short at the Pritzker Pavilion when it's lit up at night. And Sonny Rollins is saxophone is wailing. All can blow you away at sunset over the Gulf of Mexico or the gulf of Naples.

A moon landing Giant Sequoias in Yosemite, the Western Wall a chip off the Berlin Wall a birth. Barbara Jordan's opening statement, Nixon's house impeachment hearings.

All those things can spell your heart make you glad to be alive.

So maybe this is an appeal to the human predilection for all build me a splendid dwelling place. Let's make room for all that

Rabbi Heschel says that all enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the, of the Divine, to sense in small things, the beginning of infinite significance to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.

So, of course, the Michigan's awnings aren't just simple woven pieces of cloth. The text says that skilled workers are to apply images of cherubs to carry Veeam or fiery figures, not the cute baby put to you see on the ceilings of basilica's. The ones on these awnings have counterparts inside the Mishcon on the ark itself, in the inner sanctum hammered from gold contributed by the Israelites. The two cherub him inside are face to face on the arcs lid punim el Panini like Moses face to face with God on Mount Sinai.

The voice of God is to emanate from between these two gold adornments. So we get this redemptive redemption or conversion of gold. From a taboo I object the golden calf into a conduit for the divine voice. A case of cosmic alchemy.

The scholar of Viva Gottlieb's dornburg suggests that the golden calf was actually a necessary antecedent to the Mishcon and that its presence in the story lends a dynamic complexity to the Michigans meaning by leaving a warning against idolatry embedded in it.

Physical details aside what stands out in this texts, the phrase at the very end of what I read, the hi Yah ha Mishkan a HUD. So the Mishkan may be one whole.

Besides creating a single architectural element, a portable one by design, making one hole of the Michigan's parts could be symbolic of many unifying impulses, the unity of divinity as in I don't know I had us and the universal energy here represented by God, the biblical character of the Jewish people of humanity of the world.

Like what if there is no us in them? What if there's only one big us

which brings me to how it feels doing this today.

In the midst of all this.

I can't be blind or indifferent about any of it.

The carnage in the south of Israel on October 7.

The depravity of hostage taking and rape and torture as war strategies,

or enabling a terrorist organization will hamstringing a fragile political one and engaging in the brutal illogic of turning Gaza into Grozny

in order to eradicate terrorists,

but I won't be resigned either.

I choose to make good trouble on the side of peace on the side of equity and unity, which is something I've been trying to do for 40 years.

You can take the symbol of symbolism of making the Mishcon one hole as inspiration towards a more unified individual to

nerdy 12 year old May was fascinated by the languages that Tolkien made up for Lord of the Rings. And that's probably how I wound up a Russian major.

Though if I could, I might like to hand back that part of my Bachelor's rest in peace Nirvani Slavonia.

Other ways of writing and speaking can seem like a secret code if you don't know the language, and there was a Code Cracking element to learning to chant these verses from Torah. But learning these verses from Torah was also a way to play in a part of myself that's energetic and focused and that feels like a gift.

It also feels like a gift to call myself a Jew by embrace.

And today I'm honoring my 27 year old self, still nerdy,

who wound up meeting with three different rabbis over the course of years before converting the first rabbi and I offended each other basically on site.

The second Robert was kind but candid about his Congress and congregants attitudes about gay people.

By the time I got to the third Rabbi, I had done a lot of reading and thinking and studying and feeling welcome and loved among the bishop aka.

Rabbi Peter noble, just flipped through his day planner and asked so for the mikvah house Tuesday.

May his memory be for blessing? And speaking of blessings, I want to throw a kiss to my long lifelong friend Jennifer Morin Castle, who's here today from Dallas with Sunday elder Sam, Jenna and I got to be pals as three year old remember this?

At the JCC nursery school in Nashville, Tennessee. Jenna and Sam and their family are a big part of why I'm here today.

My conversion happened in 1991 which is more than half my life ago you can do the math surely it's no coincidence that I started law school within days of converting

I just heard how that sounds

said it said acted of justice justice shall you pursue is in make good trouble. But finding a congregation that I fit in that fit me did not happen until 2014.

The first time I attended a service at Mishkan Chicago, I remember thinking

this feels like home.

Welcome home. Funny thing is welcome home is the customary greeting at Burning Man.

And within hours that Rashanna I had a hunch that I should not ask the rabbi, have you ever been to Burning Man? But what year?

Did you go to Burning Man 2006

was her immediate reply.

Now I'm a few days short of 60 or a few hours depending on the calendar because I turned 60 Tonight on the Hebrew calendar, which is so cool. Still a nerd.

Still making good trouble or trying to fighting for equity and democracy in Florida.

Alongside my wife,

beautiful Amy.

Last spring when I was wondering what how should I mark this birthday? Genting Torah was the immediate answer as it might be, and chanting Torah at Mishcon Chicago has been a huge gift.

As Lizzi mentioned, the name of the Torah section is trauma, which means an offering or contribution. So I might take issue with gift though I know the like the literature uses the word gift. But a community like this one depends on contributions of time and energy and attention, in addition to money. The gift is in the opportunities that we create, that this community sustains in the establishment of a space where we can show up, both in the mundane and in the cosmic senses.

Now returning to the verse that I verses that I read, the story says that the Mishkan is a place that God the biblical character, asks for, to dwell among us to have an immediate intimacy to exist in community with humans, not on some Magic Mountain, not up in the sky,

kind of sweetly in an abode, and a portable one, so as to come with us whether we go just

even displaying a particular aesthetic.

Other interpretations suggest that the point is to have the divine reside within each of us, or that the portability of the Mishkan indicates that divinity is everywhere, not just in one spot.

To me, the likeliest place to discover divinity is between humans.

Together, we have the capacity to create things far greater than any one individual.

As Michigan's rabbis reminded us during the High Holy Days, we are each of us a freaking miracle.

Awesome to behold.

What one of us can do is staggering. What we can achieve together is nothing short of world conjuring.

I imagined as building a Mishcon roomy enough to house all of us.

But why couldn't that just be the globe itself? How about we treat this planet like it's a place for connection and reflection and creation, not desecration.

A place to dwell happily and sing and dance with joy.

The Hi yah. Michigan had like that. Shabbat shalom.

Shabbat replay is a production of Mishcon Chicago, our theme music was composed and performed by Kalman Strauss, you can always see where and when our next service will be on our calendar. There's a link in the show notes. And if you appreciated the program, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts. I know you've heard it before, but it really does help. On behalf of Team Mishcon. Thank you for listening