Finding Home

Friday March 21, 2025/21 Adar 5785

Parashat Vayakhel

Hevre/Friends,

Spring has arrived and with it warmer temperatures, melting snow, muddy roads, and slushy trails. We’ve replaced our snow tires with our all-seasons. Today I took my final runs at Mont Tremblant. Winter is officially over. Time to pack up and head south. At least we’re going against the snowbird traffic. 

Many are amazed at mine and Andi’s routine of moving back and forth across the border between our home in the Laurentians and our perch in New York near (most of) our children. If you knew how my wife likes to pack, you’d be even more amazed. Still, we’ve grown accustomed to - and deeply grateful for - our more fluid sense of “home” which provides us the groundedness of both nature and family. And yet, while we experience our fluctuating home territory as a gift, on a deeper level it’s a necessity.

These are dark and difficult times across the world during which people are having to reimagine their relationship to the idea of being “at home”. Just two months ago the latest wildfires in our unstable climate destroyed almost 12,000 houses in the Los Angeles area. The most recent data counts over 122 million forcibly displaced people around the world. As the newly-released documentary, “October 8”, portrays with horrifying clarity, we in the Jewish community have had to reexamine our sense of at-home-ness in a world wherein so many viciously turned on us in our moment of unfathomable pain, and continue to. Residents of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are still fleeing their homes for bomb shelters as Israel remains under attack. And here in Canada where President Trump’s declared intentions are taken - and felt - seriously, many express the feeling that  their “home” has become vulnerable. Given these challenges to being rooted in one’s place, how can anyone feel anchored, settled, and secure?  

This week’s Torah portion, Vayakhel, contains yet another description of the components and vessels of the Mishkan, the desert sanctuary; a dwelling place for the Divine. Many have wondered why these details need to be repeated in no less than four separate portions, especially given the Torah’s reputation for being concise. I think it might have something to do with teaching us to be able to find “home” even when the landscape around us changes.

The Mishkan was designed to be portable, foretelling the story of our endless Jewish wanderings during which we’ve had to take our Torah and our traditions with us wherever we’ve gone. The repeatedly emphasized design details are those which made our sacred service possible along the way. They were the original containers for our beliefs and our rituals. Making sure that they were familiar and recognizable even when we encounter them in new and different settings, as well as making sure they were renewable in every place we found ourselves, is what has enabled us to find home even in times of profound dislocation; to seek shelter and sanctuary not in walls but in values and vision, together with people with whom we share our spaces: personal, communal, and societal.

As the most iconic verse of these portions puts it, God commanded the building of the Mishkan by saying: עָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם / let them build me a sanctuary and I will dwell within them - not within IT, but within the hearts, minds, and souls of the people, giving us a sense of place and purpose wherever our journeys may lead us.

Especially now, as those journeys can be fraught and dangerous, may we stay rooted in who we know ourselves to be, who we know we have the capacity to become, knowing we carry within us our humanity, our Jewish spirit, our dignity, our freedom, and our destiny. And may we walk humbly with those who seek to walk alongside us.

With continued prayers for our ability to bring home all the hostages, protect the soldiers, heal the injured, comfort the bereaved, and build a lasting peace in Israel and around the world, and with blessings for a Shabbat Shalom,

Dini