Summary of the Parasha
God asks Moses to receive a terumah, an offering, “from every person whose heart moves him to give”: gold, silver, copper, blue wool (techelet), purple and scarlet, linen, goat hair, skins, acacia wood (shittim), oil, spices and precious stones. “They shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them”: not “in it”, but “among them”, in each one of them, our teachers explain.
Then the Torah describes each element: the ark (Aron) of acacia overlaid with gold inside and out, with poles that must never be removed, and the cover (kaporet) bearing two cherubim facing each other with outspread wings: “I will meet with you there, from between the two cherubim”. The table (Shulchan) for the showbread. The seven-branched Menorah, from a single block of hammered gold, decorated with cups, knobs and almond blossoms, “according to the pattern shown to you on the mountain”.
Next come the curtains of the Mishkan, of linen and colored wool with embroidered cherubim, the goat-hair curtains above them, then rams’ skins and tachash skins; the acacia boards set in silver sockets, with their bars; the parochet, the curtain separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies, and the entrance screen. Finally, the copper altar for burnt offerings and the courtyard enclosure. Rashi reports that Jacob had planted cedars in Egypt in preparation for the Mishkan, and that his children took them with them when they left.
In the Sephardi Friday night prayers, the “Kegavna” is read, a passage of the Zohar on our parasha that describes Shabbat as the secret of oneness.
Summary of the Haftara
“VaHashem Natan Chochmah LiShlomo” (“And Hashem gave wisdom to Solomon”)
Text in I Kings 5:26–6:13
King Solomon, at peace with Hiram king of Tyre, organizes a huge labor force: woodcutters in Lebanon for the cedars, stonecutters in the mountains. He begins building the Temple in the 480th year after the Exodus. The stones were prepared at the quarry, so that “neither hammer nor axe nor any iron tool was heard in the House while it was being built”. God then speaks to him: “If you walk in My statutes… I will dwell among the children of Israel and will not forsake My people Israel”.
Parasha-Haftara Connection
The parasha describes the sanctuary in the desert, the haftara the Temple in Jerusalem. Both are built with everyone’s generosity, and both carry the same promise: “I will dwell among them”, provided the heart of the people is a sanctuary.