In a few days, I am leaving for Israel.  Of course, that means I have been busy trying to take care of the many details necessary for travel and also to prepare for being away from the office for ten days.  In the midst of that, as I was rereading this week's parashah, T'rumah, and its description of the building and decorating of the Tabernacle which will move with the Israelites as they journey across the wilderness, I was thinking about what each of us may carry as being representative of sacred space.  For me, it may not be something I carry each day, but an object that has moved with me and which serves as a reminder for me every day.  And so, here are some thoughts that I wrote last year, but which have been on my mind again this week:

For many years, I used a small tallit bag that had belonged to my grandfather, apparently given to him on the occasion of his bar mitzvah in the late 19^th century in Russia.  At one time, the bag had embroidery, including a depiction of a synagogue and my grandfather's name in Hebrew.  Over the years, much of the embroidery had disappeared making it difficult to read the letters or get any sense of the original work.  Fifteen or more years ago, my wife finally took the bag from me so I would not destroy it any further and had it placed in a double-sided Lucite frame so it can now be viewed and preserved.

I was thinking of my grandfather's tallit bag when I was reading this week's parashah, T'rumah.  The parashah contains a detailed description of the building and decorating of the Tabernacle which will house the Ark of The Covenant as the Israelites move through the desert.  The richness of the detail signifies the importance of the Tabernacle and what it contains to the people and to God's relationship with the people, for these are God's building instructions.  On the one hand, the glory of the Tabernacle is a reminder of the power of the gift of Torah at Sinai, so that those that were there could always remember the moment.  Moreover, the grandeur of the Ark's home provided the people a constant symbol of the great potential of the future that God would always be among them.

I think that my attachment to the tallit bag was also a look back and a simultaneous look ahead.  Certainly, each time I carried the bag I felt a connection with a grandfather I never knew and his relationship to Judaism.  The bag also gave me a sense of potential, that the strength of our tradition was something tangible that I could pass on to my children and future generations.  Perhaps we all have some kind of personal "tabernacle" that connects us to the power of the past, while engaging us in the potential of the future.     

Shabbat Shalom

Lee