Parshat Terumah5 min read

Rabbi Nehemiah Walked Into the Tabernacle and Saw the Whole Universe

Rabbi Nehemiah saw the whole universe folded into the desert tent. Its curtains were the sky, its laver the divided waters, its lampstand the sun.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Rabbi Who Read the Wrong Thing Into a Tent
  2. Curtains Stretched Out Like the Heavens
  3. Object by Object Through Six Days
  4. The Tent That Was Always the World
Rabbi Nehemiah Walked Into the Tabernacle and Saw the Whole Universe Click for full size

The Rabbi Who Read the Wrong Thing Into a Tent

Most people who walked into the Tabernacle saw a portable shrine. Beautiful, yes, with its blue and purple curtains and its hammered gold lampstand and its sweet-smelling incense. But portable, temporary, a structure designed to be taken down and carried forward and set up again. Rabbi Nehemiah walked into the same tent and saw the universe.

Not a model of the universe, not a symbolic representation of cosmological principles. The actual universe, rebuilt in miniature by human hands and placed in the middle of the desert. Every element of creation corresponded to something inside the Tent of Meeting, and the correspondences were not metaphors. They were identities. The curtains were the sky. The laver was the divided waters. The lampstand was the sun and the moon. When you entered the Tabernacle you were entering creation from the inside.

Curtains Stretched Out Like the Heavens

Begin overhead. The curtains of the Tabernacle hung from poles and covered the top of the space the way a tent covers the people under it. Rabbi Nehemiah saw in those curtains the same heavens that Psalms 104 described: God stretched them out like a curtain. The verb, the image, the function were the same. A curtain stretched over a space is what the sky is, pulled taut across the world, and whoever wove the Tabernacle's cloth and hung it from the poles was repeating the gesture of the first day.

Below the curtains stood the laver, the great bronze basin filled with water where the priests washed their hands and feet before entering the holy space. Rabbi Nehemiah saw in this the waters divided on the second day, the upper waters separated from the lower, the firmament set between them. To wash your hands in the laver was to touch the waters of creation at the moment of their first separation, to stand at the boundary between what was above and what was below.

Object by Object Through Six Days

The altar outside received the animals, the bulls and rams and birds and goats that came in as offerings from every Israelite who brought a gift to the holy place. Rabbi Nehemiah read in the outer altar every living creature that breathes, all the animals of the world gathered into one act of presentation before God. The altar was not a place where animals died. It was the place where every creature's life was acknowledged as belonging to the one who had made it.

The menorah (the lampstand) stood inside the holy space and burned continuously, seven flames from a single hammered body of gold with no seam. Rabbi Nehemiah saw in the seven lamps the sun and the moon and the five visible planets, the lights that were set in the firmament on the fourth day to rule the day and the night and to be for signs and for seasons. Every time a priest trimmed the wicks at dawn he was tending the lights of creation.

The altar of incense, burning sweet-smelling resins and spices in a continuous cloud that rose toward the roof, represented the air and wind, the breath of the world that moved between earth and heaven. And over the Ark, 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.

The Tent That Was Always the World

The Yalkut Shimoni, the thirteenth-century anthology that preserved Rabbi Nehemiah's vision alongside other interpretations of the Tabernacle, did not present it as one option among many. It presented it as the answer to a question that had always been implicit in the Tabernacle's design: why did God want a house? Because God had already built a house, and the Tabernacle was a way of saying so. The universe was God's first home. 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.

Yalkut ShimoniExodusTabernacleCreationMidrash AggadahCosmosTemple Vessels
← All myths

From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

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.

Full source
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.

Full source
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:

Full source