This week’s parashah, Pekudei, is the last one in the book of Shemot (Exodus), and it also brings a close to the details of building the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. It outlines - with a fair amount of monotony - all the fabrics and metals that were used, the different dimensions of the various components, and how they built this intricate project. The word Pekudei here means “records,” and the first words of the parashah mean, “these are the records of the Mishkan.” This certainly seems fitting after we’ve just read hundreds of verses of the Torah thoroughly outlining this project.
But in this detailed recording, I wonder why it’s important. Why so many records about the building project? I think these many details help us understand our identity as a religious people. Thousands of years later, reading these verses allows us to connect to a part of our spiritual history and helps us understand the essence of what this structure was to our community. It gives texture to the centrality of the Mishkan and what it meant to our people in a certain time.
An essay by Lisa and Laurence Edwards, in a collection called Torah Queeries, offers something powerful. They highlight that this word pekudei has the root PKD, used throughout the Bible in connection with birth and marking transitions. It’s used when discussing Sarah’s future progeny in addition to Hannah’s, as well as the liberation from Egypt (a different kind of re-birth). And just like the ‘pekudim’ of the Mishkan are records of the building of a structure, they write that “PKD relates to another means of cultural preservation and transmission. If birth is one essential aspect of sustaining identity, equally crucial is the concern for careful record-keeping and the creation and preservation of the material artifacts that bear testimony to civilization.”
I’ve thought a lot this week about why the recent Russian bombing of Babyn Yar felt particularly painful, even amidst the backdrop of devastating war. Babyn Yar is a record of sorts. A painful record, no doubt, but an important record that, “bear[s] testimony to civilization.” The bombing of Babyn Yar attempts to destroy a crucial artifact, as it were, of our tragic history. It seeks to destroy some of our record, some of what reminds us of the texture of our past. And perhaps most importantly, it tries to remove one of the ways people connect to this traumatic part of our history as a Jewish people.
The records of the Mishkan, the pekudim, connect us to deeper parts of our history, and the records of Babyn Yar tie us to more recent history. Both of them remind us of the importance of storytelling in order to be connected to our past. Both of these sets of records drive home the importance of remembering. Remembering, not letting these records be forgotten, ties us deeper into our humanity, our collective experience as a Jewish people, and our ability to dream of a better future. I hope and pray, even with the horrific bombing of Babyn Yar this week, that there will be future generations to read our records, to incorporate them into their own religious identities, and to build a world of peace, healing, and hope.
