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THOUGHTS ON THE TORAH PORTION
Parashat Shemini
At the Intersection of Strange and Scattered
The long process of building, furnishing, and consecrating the mishkan — the desert sanctuary — reaches its climax in Parashat Shemini.
After seven days of ordination rituals, it is on the eighth day, shemini in Hebrew, that the sanctuary is finally inaugurated through the offering of the initial sacrifices.
The ninth chapter of Leviticus details those sacrifices. When they are complete, Aaron blesses the people, and he and Moses enter the Tent of Meeting together. The text does not tell us what transpires inside, but the result is unmistakable: when they emerge and bless the people a second time, fire descends from before the Lord and consumes the offering on the altar.
“And all the people saw, and shouted, and fell on their faces.” (Lev. 9:24)
The Hebrew is emphatic: kol ha’am — all the people, together. That unity of experience and response was, in fact, the point of the entire painstaking enterprise. The creation of the mishkan was designed to transform a large and fractured band of former slaves into a people with a shared direction, a common center, a unified identity. That unity would be essential both to their survival and to the purposes for which God had…
