Our lives as Jews in the diaspora, connected to smaller communities like TBZ, was not what Moses envisioned as the Jews wound through the desert and approached Israel. Instead, in our Torah portion, parshat Re’eh, Moses tells the people that when they are settled in the land of Israel, they will have one centralized place to worship.
וְהָיָה הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר-יִבְחַר יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם בּוֹ לְשַׁכֵּן שְׁמוֹ שָׁם שָׁמָּה תָבִיאוּ אֵת כָּל-אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוֶּה אֶתְכֶם עוֹלֹתֵיכֶם וְזִבְחֵיכֶם מַעְשְׂרֹתֵיכֶם וּתְרֻמַת יֶדְכֶם וְכֹל מִבְחַר נִדְרֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר תִּדְּרוּ לַיהוָה
וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם לִפְנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם אַתֶּם וּבְנֵיכֶם וּבְנֹתֵיכֶם וְעַבְדֵיכֶם וְאַמְהֹתֵיכֶם וְהַלֵּוִי אֲשֶׁר בְּשַׁעֲרֵיכֶם כִּי אֵין לוֹ חֵלֶק וְנַחֲלָה אִתְּכֶם
הִשָּׁמֶר לְךָ פֶּן-תַּעֲלֶה עֹלֹתֶיךָ בְּכָל-מָקוֹם אֲשֶׁר תִּרְאֶה
כִּי אִם-בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר-יִבְחַר יְהוָה בְּאַחַד שְׁבָטֶיךָ שָׁם תַּעֲלֶה עֹלֹתֶיךָ וְשָׁם תַּעֲשֶׂה כֹּל אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוֶּךָּ
You must bring everything that I command you to the site where your God will choose to establish the divine name: your burnt offerings and other sacrifices, your tithes and contributions, and all the choice votive offerings that you vow to God.
And you shall rejoice before your God with your sons and daughters and with your male and female slaves, along with the Levite in your settlements, for he has no territorial allotment among you.
Take care not to sacrifice your burnt offerings in any place you like,
but only in the place that God will choose in one of your tribal territories. There you shall sacrifice your burnt offerings and there you shall observe all that I command you (Deuteronomy 12:11-14).
Why does God want us to come together in only one physical place?
In the JPS Torah Commentary, Jeffrey Tigay shares:
“This law is the most singular, and one of the most pervasive, of all the laws in Deuteronomy. It is also one of the most puzzling laws in the Bible…Given the universality of God’s power, the idea that He would accept sacrifice in only one place is puzzling.”
There are many possible explanations that Tigay offers for the centralization of the Temple and of our religious practice; there are political, economical, and spiritual/religious explanations of all kinds. But it seems, at least within our parsha (Torah portion), that the biggest reason is that God is concerned that we as Israelites will be lured to follow other Gods and we will too easily become like the other nations who sacrifice and worship their gods wherever they like. Our parsha is very, very concerned with how potentially easily it is to be led astray. Not just by dreamers and false prophets who arise from within the community, but also by the people we are most intimate with – our partners, close friends, and family members.
The antidote is a physical place and with it, a community that cares about our physical presence in that place. Having a physical place that demands that we show up in it makes it much harder to be led astray. It might seem that God making us worship in one Temple is about asking us to connect with God in one particular place, but it really is about asking us to show up to be with others in one central place. The community that gathers at the Temple will keep us all connected and grounded to something which is far greater than each of us as individuals.
And lest we think the Temple is to be a place for only the elite or only men, the vision of the Temple is of a place where all are expected to gather:
We are taught:
You shall rejoice before יהוה your God with your sons and daughters and with your male and female slaves, along with the Levite in your settlements, for he has no land allotted among you (Deuteronomy 12:12).
“You shall rejoice” is in the masculine or gender-nonspecific plural. It seems that women might be missing from this list, but The Torah: A Women’s Commentary offers an explanation: “Free Israelite women are conspicuous by their absence from the list, which suggests that they were already included in the masculine plural command to rejoice before God.” So adult men and women, their sons and daughters, their male and female slaves and servants, and the Levites (who don’t own any land) are all invited to the Temple. The Temple is a place therefore where different genders and where people of all different social classes are expected to come and “rejoice before God.”
In just over a month, we will come together for Rosh Hashanah and then Yom Kippur, powerful days of self-reflection, of both asking for and offering forgiveness, and of expressing the joy and trepidation of reaching a new year. We won’t gather as an entire Jewish people in one place. We won’t sacrifice anything. But we will gather in smaller communities, just as we have been doing for the past two thousand years.
Much is different from the Torah’s vision of how festivals would be celebrated in the Temple. But what remains the same is that when we show up in community, we remind each other that our presence always matters, that who we are matters. It is only through being together that we truly “rejoice before God.”
Shabbat shalom,
Rav Leah