A Thought on Parshat Terumah by Aaron Berdy

“And you shall make a table of acacia wood, two cubits its length, one cubit its width, and a cubit and a half its height.”

If I was alive back in the time when the Israelites were in the desert, I would have wondered: Why does God care whether the table is acacia or oak, or 2 x 1 x 1.5 cubits vs. 2 x 1.5 x 1 cubits? Does it really matter to the all-powerful creator of the universe if the table is half a cubit too wide? More recently, in elementary school, I had a similar question: Why does my teacher care if I color outside the lines, or if I draw a cursive S the wrong way? Does it really matter?

Maybe not to them – they probably aren’t too invested in my handwriting or drawing skills. So… Why all these rules? Of course, my teachers cared about me, and were helping me develop my early skills by providing guidance – for my sake. But how is one set of dimensions more beneficial than another?

Perhaps there is a deep divine reasoning beyond our comprehension, or maybe it’s just arbitrary. So, arbitrary rules for our own benefit?

The other day, I was doodling in class. I worked for maybe five minutes on my little sketch. Had I lost that drawing, I might have had the reaction, “Oh well…” On the other hand, I have been working on some of the most complex programs I’ve ever written and I’ve devoted hours to it, meticulously perfecting every detail (or at least trying to). Had my computer crashed and I lost my programs, I would have been pretty upset…

As cliché as it is, you get out what you put in; if you spend months planning and creating something – whether it’s planning a shabbaton, drafting a college application, working on a piano piece – it will have much more value than something that came with relatively low work. All of the specifications of building the Beit Hamikdash, all the attention to detail increased the nations investment in the project and hence the payoff of accomplishing their goal.

Shabbat Shalom,

Aaron Berdy