Sermon Archives

Exodus and Redemption

Several weeks ago, on the 7th of Adar, I attended the annual dinner of our local Hevra Kadisha. The seventh of Adar, according to rabbinic tradition, is the anniversary of Moshe’s death. The Torah records that Moshe was prepared for burial and buried by God alone and so God, at that moment on the 7th of Adar, can be considered the founder of the Hevra Kadisha, the “Sacred Society” in every Jewish community that prepares the dead for burial. In many communities it is customary for the Hevra Kadisha to gather on the 7th of Adar to take stock of their accomplishments and to celebrate their sacred service to the community.

Of course it was inspiring to eat dinner amongst so many heroes who volunteer to perform tasks that many others shy away from and that benefit the dead who will never be able to repay that debt. But, in the weeks that followed the dinner, the moment that has stayed with me is the presentation that Dean Grayson, the lead volunteer of the Hevra Kadisha made in which he reported back to all of us - with charts and graphs, on the breakdown of all the burial preparations performed by the Hevra Kadisha over the past year. He showed us the data broken down by days of the week. He showed us the data broken down by the various funeral homes in the region. And he showed us trends, month to month, on the number of funeral preparations performed by the Hevra Kadisha with projections for FY 2026.

Each time I think about his presentation I think “this is the most Jewish DC thing imaginable” and “I love this community.”

Who thinks of statistics and numbers and quantitative analysis when engaged in sacred endeavors? The DC Hevra Kadisha, apparently, and also our parasha. 

Parashat Pekudei can seem dry on its surface. We already know what the mishkan is supposed to look like. We already know that B’nai Yisrael donated more than enough materials to construct the mishkan and that Betzalel taught others how to assist him with the various construction and crafting tasks. Parashat Pekudei contains an accounting of each piece of gold, silver, and brass that was donated. It contains an accounting of the fabrics that were used to construct the mishkan and it tells us - fourteen times, that each and every item was fashioned כַּאֲשֶׁ֛ר צִוָּ֥ה ה as God commanded.

Transparency, faithful obedience to instructions, avoiding even the appearance of corruption, and detailed accounting all characterized the construction of the mishkan. And, in so doing, they brought a measure of redemption to the Jewish people.  

Ramban, in his introduction to his commentary to the book of Exodus, explains that Sefer Shmot, known to the rabbis  as “Sefer HaGe’ulah” the book of Redemption is just that, the book of redemption which completes Sefer Bereishit, the Book of Genesis. Bereishit is the story of the creation of the Jewish family, and its descent to Egypt. In Shemot, that family grows into a nation, is enslaved, and then given freedom. Yet, Ramban points out, the book seems to end early! The book ends in the desert. The Jewish people do not complete the journey back to Eretz Yisrael in Sefer Shmot. There is no redemption in the Book of Redemption, no ge’ulah in Sefer Ge’ulah.  

Ramban answers his own question by explaining that the final scene in Sefer Shmot, in which God’s presence rests upon the mishkan and the Jewish people surround the mishkan, is a status that is “like redemption.” To be a people without a homeland, without homes, just tents, and yet to be able to erect those tents to form a community surrounding, and surrounded by, the presence of God – that is “‘nechshav ge’ulim – considered redeemed.”  

And so, for Ramban, the Book of Redemption ends with the Jewish people still in exile, because it is enough to have completed the mishkan. For Ramban, (and I think, at least as it’s described in Sefer Shemot he is correct), the mishkan is a way to perpetuate the experience of standing at Sinai. The mishkan is a way to place the covenant itself, in the form of the tablets of the law, in the very center of the community. The heart of the nation is the normative moment when we bound ourselves to God and to each other by binding ourselves to The Law. (Next week we will see a different purpose for the mishkan that will emerge from Sefer Vayikra but you will just have to wait a week to consider that perspective).

Michael Walzer, among the most significant living political philosophers, and a highly engaged Jew in his modern classic Exodus and Revolution studies the ways that the story of Yetziat Mitzrayim, our story of leaving Egypt, has been a model for revolutionaries, freedom fighters, and activists for hundreds of years. From the English parliamentarians planning the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to civil rights activists marching in Selma or here in Washington, the liberation from Egyptian bondage has captured the imagination of those in the Western World seeking liberation from their own Pharaoh.  

Walzer notes that the most successful of these revolutions have echoed Sefer Shmot itself in highlighting the covenantal moment at Sinai as an essential stage on the path from slavery to freedom. Only a covenant that binds a people together, and to law itself, can provide the stability for a long march to the promised land. Walzer reminds us, and if we know the Torah we shouldn’t need this reminder, that the march to the promised land always takes a long time. As my teacher Rabbi Yehuda Amital z’l repeatedly said, “ein patentim” there are no shortcuts to any worthy goal.

The dark underside of Western politics, Walzer warns, is the messianic temptation to bypass the necessary process, the long march to freedom, and to circumvent the commitment to the covenant and to law itself. There is no short-cut to the promised land. There is no way to build a community or to build a nation without a covenantal moment, where we bind ourselves to commitments to each other and to law.  

God’s presence didn’t come to the Israelite camp in the wilderness through the heroism of Moshe or the charisma of Aharon. God’s presence rested in the mishkan, a structure dedicated to the Torah, the covenantal moment and the rule of law. That allowed us to march on to the promised land without losing our way, succumbing to temptations of hunger, or to the seductions of a demagogue like Korach. And no matter how long the journey before us stretched, we experienced a modicum of redemption while still wandering in the wilderness.

The details, repeated again in Parashat Pekduei, the quantification of materials collected, the insistence again and again and again - fourteen times in Parashat Pekudei -  that everything was constructed exactly as commanded, did not just make it possible for the Mishkan to function as intended. Rather this process itself, in its transparency and devotion to law, was itself redemptive. 

In two weeks and a day we will sit down at the seder and recall and relive the moment of redemption from Egyptian bondage. We will burst into songs of Hallel at our table and lift our glasses as we praise God who redeemed our ancestors and will redeem us too. We imagine that future redemption as the Pesach seder depicts the redemption from Egypt; God rending asunder the laws of nature itself and intervening, into history and human affairs. But when we completed Sefer Shmot this morning we are reminded that long before we lived as free Jews in our homeland we experienced redemption when we worked together at a common purpose to bring God’s presence upon the mishkan. 

When the mishkan was completed, the Torah tells us that Moshe recited a blessing, but the blessing itself is not mentioned explicitly in the Torah:  

                                                                                                                 וַיַ֨רא מֹשֶ֜ה אֶת־כָל־הַמְלָאכָ֗ה וְהִנֵה֙ עָש֣ו אֹתָ֔ה כַאֲשֶ֛ר צִוָ֥ה ה׳ כֵ֣ן עָש֑ו וַיְבָ֥ררְ אֹתָ֖ם מֹשֶֽה׃ 

And when Moses saw that they had performed all the tasks—as the LORD had commanded, so they had done—Moses blessed them

Rashi fills in the text of Moshe’s blessing:  

                                                                                                                                      .ויברך אתם משה. אָמַר לָהֶם יְהִי רצון שֶתִשְרה שְכִינָה בְמַעֲשֵֹה יְדיכֶם 

Moshe prayed that God’s very presence would rest upon the handiwork of the builders of the mishkan. And, indeed, so it was.  

And so I wish to conclude as I began, with a message of love and appreciation for all of you and for the unique spirituality that characterizes our region. I see it in the care and deliberation with which you exercise leadership within our shul community. (I’m eager to work with the new board - get your nominations in soon). But I see it even more clearly in the spirit of public service that permeates this community and gives it its distinctive characteristics. Commitment to one another, an insistence on transparency, an orientation that is focused on law and its ability to organize human society towards justice, an obsession with quantifying every detail of public life…these are virtues that are not always sufficiently appreciated and which, quite frankly, are severely underappreciated in much of our country today. But these are the virtues of Parashat Pekudei. These are the virtues that enabled God’s presence to rest upon the work of our hands, and these are the virtues of redemption itself.