CHOCHMAS NASHIM: IF YOU BUILD IT…
By: Suri Davis
Every year, when we approach the many Torah portions which discuss the building of the Tabernacle and its utensils and clothes of the priests, it means something else to me. Last year, I had just seen the sophisticated relics of Mt. Vesuvius, an Italian volcano which spewed molten lava on its city burning and mummifying and preserving everything in its path.
We believe that the ancients were rustic and utensils and their knowledge primitive, not so, as we have seen through the eyes of anthropologists who dig through ancient ruins, multiple levels of those ruins.
So it was, that erev Sukkoth, two hours before chag, when there was a deluge, and once again the government calculated the cost of flooding JFK Airport versus the houses of its residents, that my house, which hasn’t had a drop of ill-gotten water, was blessed with a deluge. I discovered it with my son as we were bringing food to the downstairs refrigerator. I looked at him and told him not tell the rest of the house full of guests, that obviously it is a brachah/blessing from G-d, and I would deal with it after chag.
After chag, I called my insurance company and they sent an army of people to come and empty my basement to avoid mold. They came as a swarm and I barely had the opportunity to decide garbage or the storage pod.
Now months later, construction is done and it is time to review the contents which made it into the pod. There was the box of my bubby and zaidy’s Pesach utensils, the potato ricer with the wooden knob, the heavy metal fish grinder, which screw on to the table top, made in 1894. There was Tante Paula’s sewing kit, made out of an old large wooden cigar box. I knew it was hers because it was filled with her old prescription bottles filled with buttons, and straightpins, safety pins, chalk etc.
The baby books, which I found just in time for one son’s birthday, with copies of his perfect first gemara tests by Rabbi Sharchon of Yeshiva South Shore fifth grade. Reminiscing how a HAFTR 10th grader came to my home one day as the gemara test was on the table, he reviewed it and said “I will never know in my lifetime when your son is learning in fifth grade.” Only G-d laughed at that comment, because he sat in kollel for ten years, and learned a great deal more of gemara than he ever anticipated in his young years.
As I go every day to reclaim one or two boxes in the box and determine how to absorb the contents into my home, I pause reflectively and think about the thirty years of living life which was stored in the basement, it is an anthropological, archeological dig into those years of raising children and the birth of my grandchildren. I put so much into these albums and picture frames and the love which went into the smiles at the beach, the backyard and the snow days. And I realized all the details which went into the building of my home, and in one fell swoop, G-d thought I needed this blessing.
In these coming Torah portions, we see the care that G-d asks man to put into the building of our common home with Him. We know the end of the story, G-d destroyed it, but it does not undo all the love and care and joy which went into the building of our holy Tabernacle and Temple, as we joined with G-d on Mt. Sinai to affirm our mutual covenant. So much hope and love and concern goes into building relationships, and even as a sand castle gets washed away, it can never undo the joy of the building and anticipation and joy of coming together.
The details are a bit exacting, not really the stories we are used to, but think of the joy G-d put into these blueprints of His home and the joy He had at the anticipation of it being built by His beloved children.
Happy Purim Kotton.
Good Shabbos.
-Suri