Parshat Terumah introduces the Mishkan, a sanctuary built in the wilderness, precise in measurements and portable by design. It moved as the people moved. God’s presence rested among a nation without a permanent home.

For nearly two thousand years, Jewish life functioned in Mishkan mode.

Without sovereignty and without a Temple, Jewish law became the architecture that traveled. Halacha, Jewish law, created sacred space wherever Jews settled. The synagogue stood in place of the courtyard and the Shabbat table carried echoes of the altar. Study sustained covenant across continents.

Judaism survived in the diaspora because it was built to move.

But the Mishkan was never meant to be the final form. It pointed toward the Mikdash, the Temple that was ultimately built 3,000 years ago in Jerusalem, enduring and anchored in sovereignty. The Mishkan belongs to wandering. The Mikdash assumes a people settled in its land.

Exile required portability. The State of Israel reintroduces permanence.

That shift changes the demands of Jewish life. Law still shapes the individual and the community, but it now encounters public power. Covenant enters the arena of governance.

The wilderness sanctuary rose from voluntary gifts. The Temple required national structure and responsibility. Now, sovereignty requires the same. While a portable faith sustains survival, a rooted nation must translate that faith into courts, policy, defense, and public ethics.

Jewish history has moved from dispersion to statehood. Yet the deeper challenge is spiritual: whether a tradition perfected in exile can shape a society in power without losing its moral clarity.

Terumah begins with a traveling sanctuary. It gestures toward something fixed and enduring.

The journey from Mishkan to Mikdash continues in our own time.