Weekly D'var Torah

The Mishkan, or Tabernacle, was a portable sanctuary, a spiritual center in the desert, where the Israelites brought sacrifices and worshipped G-d during their journey after the Exodus until their arrival in Israel

The Book of Exodus comes to a close with the construction of the Tabernacle.  After the Revelation at Sinai, the Israelites spend the first two years after their liberation from Egypt building a portable sanctuary.  

Is this the first act of a free nation?  What gives?  G-d commands Israel: "Build Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among you."(B’tocham- “among you” can also be translated as “within you”.)  G-d doesn’t say to build a sanctuary where G-d is supposed to dwell; the residence of G-d is “among you”- within each Jewish heart.  The Tabernacle, the Rabbis teach, is a model of the human soul.  In the secret innermost chamber, the Holy of Holies, is the Divine Presence that is the essence of humanity, created in the Divine Image, represented by the Ark of the Covenant. 

Aron HaKodesh (Ark of the Covenant)

One chamber removed, the precinct of the Holy, is where the Menorah, Incense Altar and Table of Showbread are placed representing the spiritual (the altar), the mental/cognitive (the Menorah) and the physical (the showbread). One area removed from there is the courtyard where the basin of water of purification, the bronze altar for offerings and the silver trumpets for gathering the nation are located, representing the relationships we create with G-d and with each other.
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The Tabernacle was then more than a meeting place between G-d and humanity, more than a place of ritual and instruction.  It was meant to exemplify and demonstrate in the most visible and concrete way possible the infinite value and potential of each person.  Not as some sort of narcissistic humanistic ideal, but as a partner of G-d. To a nation that had been subjected for generations to the degradation of slavery, being shown how G-d recognized them as partners with the divine was the best way to re-educate, re-orient and uplift a people who had been dehumanized and brutalized.
 
In other words, the construction of the Tabernacle was therapy and recovery.  The cure, it seems, was incomplete, as attested to by our failures both en route to The Promised Land and once we arrived, but the meaning, message and call of the Tabernacle is clear.
Even to us, as we read about that ancient national moment of healing and its later installation as the Beit HaMikdash, the Temple in Jerusalem, the Tabernacle endures as an ideal and reminder of the potential of each one of us.