March 2017

What might this mean, that none of us are able to see God’s face?

Rashi explains that it is a matter of authority and permission. Just after this, God makes all of God’s goodness pass before Moses, but according to Rashi, God does not allow Moses to see God’s face.

But another commentator, S’forno, has a different take, written from God’s perspective: Your inability to see what you would like to see is not due to My depriving you, personally, of such an experience, but is rooted in man’s inability to see such things unless you had died first, as an eye of flesh and blood cannot see such things. You would be fatally blinded before understanding anything you would see.

According to Jewish law, a sanctuary requjires three things to be considered kosher. The first is a Torah scroll. During any Jewish service, we never lose sight or focus on what is most important, the holy text of our Torah. The second is a bit harder to discern, especially if you are looking around in this sanctuary, because I have to let you in on a secret, we don’t have it. The second item is a window. Each sanctuary must look out onto the outside world. Please rest assured, however, the building plans for our renovated sanctuary do include the construction of beautiful window that will look out onto a garden. And the third item? It is the subject of our Torah portion T’tzaveh this week. It is the ner tamid, the eternal light.

You maybe remember that this Torah portion, Parashat T’rumah is the first example of a synagogue’s capital campaign. God tells Moses that the Israelites should give generously in order to hopefully be able to build a new synagogue in Athens, GA … Sorry, that’s not quite right … but God does command the constrcution of the first synogugue. This is what God tells Moses: