This is my God – B’shallach
Their shirah proclaimed, “This is my God, and I will glorify Him: my father’s God, and I will exalt Him”.
Not satisfied that v’anvehu really means “and I will glorify Him”, the Midrash offers alternative translations: “I will beautify Him”, “I will act like Him”, “I will proclaim His glories”, “I will declare His beauty” and “I will accompany Him”.
All have some validity, but the best known interpretation links the word with naveh, a habitation; hence the translation, “I will build Him a habitation” (the American Jewish version says, “I will enshrine Him”).
But how do you build God a habitation? Does He himself not say, “The heaven is My throne and the earth my footstool: where is the house that you may build unto Me? Where is the place that may be My dwelling-place?” (Isa. 66:1).
His infinity cannot be contained in an edifice, however magnificent. Edifices, however, can focus His presence, which is why the Tabernacle, the Temple and the synagogue have meant so much to the Jewish people.
There is another way in which to create a habitation of the Almighty. It is suggested by the story of the patriarchs and matriarchs. When Isaac brought Rebekah into the tent of his departed mother, say the rabbis, it suddenly seemed like Sarah’s tent once again.
Five features of Sarah’s tent returned with Rebekah: a cloud was entwined around the entrance, the doors were opened wide, a blessing was found in the bread, a light shone from one Sabbath eve to the next, and everything was done in purity (Gen.R. 60:15).
Put poetically, the marks of Sarah’s tent were a protective cloud of love and contentment: a spirit of hospitality, friendship and humanity; the table was sanctified; Shabbat was hallowed; and there was purity, trust and discipline in family life.
How do you build God a habitation? There we have our answer He has a habitation in a home built on Sarah’s pattern or love, humanity, kashrut, Shabbat and family purity
Is this a practical program for an age or permissiveness, tension, materialism, cynicism, violence and fear? Don’t we need grander visions of cosmic proportions, not an apparently banal commonplace, simplistic recipe for pleasant suburban living?
But Judaism says: when there are big problems, you make inroads into them by tackling the small problems. If the suburban family can be more contented and more Jewish, it will help to reinvent the human family as a whole. If children are brought up in a habitation of God, they will have a foundation of values that will equip them to recreate the macrocosm.
The prophet says, “Who dare despise the day of small things?” (Zech. 4:10).
