Parshat Terumah5 min read

Rabbi Nehemiah Walked Into the Tabernacle and Saw the Whole Universe

He lifted the tent flap and looked up. The curtains were not cloth. They were the sky pulled taut, the same sky stretched on the first day.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. He Lifted the Flap and the Sky Was Cloth
  2. He Washed His Hands in the Divided Waters
  3. The Altar Held Every Creature That Breathes
  4. Seven Flames Kept the Fourth Day Burning
  5. The Presence Sat Between Two Wings
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He Lifted the Flap and the Sky Was Cloth

Rabbi Nehemiah lifted the tent flap and stepped inside. Other men who walked into the Tabernacle saw a portable shrine. Blue and purple curtains. A hammered gold lampstand. Incense sweet enough to follow a man out into the sand. A structure built to be taken down, carried forward, and set up again.

He looked up. The curtains hung from poles and covered the space the way a tent covers the people under it. He did not see cloth. He saw the heavens stretched the way Psalms said God stretched them, like a curtain (Psalms 104:2). The verb, the image, the function were the same. A curtain pulled taut across a world. Whoever wove this cloth and hung it from the poles had repeated the gesture of the first day.

He stood under it and did not move for a while. The desert was still outside. Inside, the first day had been hung on poles.

He Washed His Hands in the Divided Waters

Below the curtains stood the laver, the great bronze basin where the priests washed their hands and feet before they went any farther. Rabbi Nehemiah put his hands in.

The water was cold. He saw in it the waters divided on the second day, the upper waters separated from the lower, the firmament set between them (Genesis 1:6-7). To wash here was to touch the waters of creation at the moment of their first split, to stand at the boundary between what was above and what was below.

He drew his hands out. Drops ran back into the basin. He was still in a tent in the wilderness, and he was also standing where the waters had been told to stay on their own side.

The Altar Held Every Creature That Breathes

He walked out to the altar in the court. Bulls, rams, birds, goats. Israelites brought them. The fire took them. Other men saw a place where animals died. Rabbi Nehemiah saw every living creature that breathes, gathered into one act of presentation before God. The altar was not only a place of death. It was the place where every creature's life was named as belonging to the one who had made it.

Smoke went up. The court smelled of fat and blood and heat. The third day's work, the living earth, was being walked up a ramp and given back.

Seven Flames Kept the Fourth Day Burning

He went back inside. The menorah (the lampstand) stood in the holy space and burned without a seam, seven flames from a single hammered body of gold. Rabbi Nehemiah counted them. Sun. Moon. The five visible planets. The lights set in the firmament on the fourth day to rule the day and the night and to be for signs and for seasons (Genesis 1:14-16).

A priest trimmed the wicks at dawn. Each time he did it he was tending the lights of creation. The gold held the heat. The oil lasted from evening until morning, the same care the boards had been given, the same refusal to let the night go dark in the middle.

Beside it the altar of incense burned resins and spices in a continuous cloud that rose toward the roof. Rabbi Nehemiah breathed it. Air and wind. The breath of the world moving between earth and heaven. The fifth day's air, still traveling.

The Presence Sat Between Two Wings

He came last to the Ark. Over it, between the outstretched wings of the two golden cherubim, God's own presence rested. The same presence that had hovered over the face of the waters before anything was made (Genesis 1:2).

Rabbi Nehemiah did not go in. He stood at the edge of the holy of holies and knew what the tent had been saying since the first pole went up. God had already built a house. The universe was that house. The desert tent was Israel's way of saying we understand what You built, and we have done our best to build it again in the only materials we had. Cloth. Bronze. Gold. Acacia. A basin of water. Seven flames.

He stepped back out into the sand. The flap fell. The sky over the camp was the same sky he had just been standing under, only without poles. He washed nothing off his hands. The divided waters were still on them.

Yalkut ShimoniExodusTabernacleCreationMidrash AggadahCosmosTemple Vessels
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From the tradition

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The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 419:1Yalkut Shimoni on Torah

Translation of the source text.Torat Emet (Yalkut Shimoni) · CC-BY-NC

Rabbi Nehemiah used to say: the tent of meeting that Moses made in the wilderness corresponds to the work of creation. The curtains correspond to the heavens and the earth. The laver and its stand correspond to the six days of creation. The altar of burnt offering corresponds to all the cattle. The altar of incense corresponds to all the spices. The lampstand corresponds to the sun and the moon. Its seven lamps correspond to the seven stars that serve the world, and these are they: Shabbtai, Tzedek, Maadim, Chammah, Nogah, Kochav, Levanah [Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon].

See the miracles that He performed for them. "The length of the courtyard a hundred cubits" (Exodus 27:18) and what does Scripture teach by saying "fifty by fifty"? Rather, there were two squares. The inner square within the Tabernacle, from the entrance of the tent of meeting inward, was thirty cubits long and ten cubits wide, so it amounts to fifty cubits on every side: fifty cubits within, in the east fifty long and fifty wide within the fifty. The altar of burnt offering was five by five, and its ramp lay all along it to the south, extending about thirty cubits, with only a hairsbreadth of space descending between them. And according to those who say its height was three cubits, its ramp was ten cubits. And the laver and its stand were set within the twenty cubits in the east. And the altar and the ramp were prepared, and Aaron and his sons were engaged in the service, and the Holy One, blessed be He, taught them the order of service, as it is said, "And the sons of Aaron brought," and so on.

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Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 422:1Yalkut Shimoni on Torah

Translation of the source text.Torat Emet (Yalkut Shimoni) · CC-BY-NC

The work of the curtains was blue and purple and scarlet and fine twined linen, and the thread was folded fourfold. Rabbi Yose says: a thread of gold was added among them, as it is said, "And they beat out the plates of gold" (Exodus 39:3). "The work of a skilled weaver" (Exodus 26:1). Rav Nachman said: "the work of a skilled weaver" means two faces, two figures, one on this side and one on that side; and "the work of an embroiderer" means one figure, one face.

There were other curtains above them, made of goats' hair, eleven curtains, two sets: one set of five on the west and of six on the east. The length of the two sets was forty-four cubits, corresponding to the length of the lower curtains, and their width thirty cubits, corresponding to the width of those below, joined with clasps of gold. And the ones above were joined with clasps of bronze, to join the tent so as to be one. And they were placed corresponding to the last third of the tent, opposite which the curtain hung below. Rabbi Yose says: it was folded double opposite the boards. So there were two extra cubits, which hung over beyond the curtains of blue from east to west, as it is said, "shall hang over" (Exodus 26:12-13). From here you learn proper conduct, that a person should be sparing of the beautiful.

"And you shall make a covering for the tent" (Exodus 26:14). Another covering covered the tent, on three sides, from the north, from the south, from the west. Rabbi Nehemiah says: they were made like lattices. Rabbi Yehudah says: below were rams' skins dyed red, and above tachash skins. How were their measurements? North and south its length was thirty cubits. Ten by ten on the west was the Holy of Holies, the place of the ark. A curtain was at the end of ten cubits, dividing the house: ten cubits within and twenty without. And it was spread under the clasps of the curtains, and outside it twenty by ten. The golden altar was set at the end of ten cubits, dividing the house ten cubits to the east and ten to the west, five to the north and five to the south. The lampstand and the table were within the altar, the lampstand in the south and the table in the north, five cubits between the lampstand and the table, two and a half cubits from the boards on the south to the lampstand, and likewise from the boards on the north to the table, and five cubits from its place to the curtain, and five cubits from its place to the altar. And the entrance of the sanctuary was on the east, and there were no boards there but pillars, the thickness of each one cubit by cubit, overlaid with gold and their sockets of bronze, and a screen was spread over them corresponding to the inner curtain. And the place of the boards standing on the south and the north and the west was a cubit wide, and was not part of the measure of the tent.

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Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 1Yalkut Shimoni

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria Community Translation · CC0

In ten articles the world was created, and what is meant to be said, and in one article he could recover, but heal the wicked who destroy the world created in ten sayings and give good reward to the righteous who fulfill the world created in ten sayings....

R. Yochanan said: "Against the ten commandments in which the world was created, and from May,

Rabbi Akiva said these twenty-two letters in which all the Torah was given as a bride, and they were engraved with a flame pen on a terrible crown of the Holy One, blessed be He, and when He sought to create the world, they descended and stood before God. In the beginning, the Lord entered his presence and said to him, "Master of the Universe, that you will create in me the world in which you are going to give the Torah to Israel by Moses, as the Torah commanded us to do." The Holy One, blessed be He, replied, "I will make an impression on you, and. He immediately came out in front of him with his mind. And after that, all the signs were entered, and after all of them they entered Bet. The Master of the Universe said to him, "I want you to create in me the world in me, which I say every day, Blessed be the Lord, Amen and Amen." The Creator replied, "Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord, immediately received the Holy One, blessed be He, and created the world in him, A thousand said to him, "Why are you silent, and you do not say anything to me?" A thousand said to him, "Master of the Universe, because I have no strength to say before you that all the letters are calculated in a large number and I am in a small number. Two at three in the third with three and all in one. The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to him, "Do not be afraid that you are the head of all of them as a king. You are one, and I am one, and the Torah is one, which I will give you to the people of Israel, as it is said: I am the Lord your God:

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