JNS.org – Martha Goldberg was a middle-aged Jewish woman from the Bronx, N.Y., on her visit to the Far East. After the long trip from New York, she was exhausted but insisted on continuing her journey to the mountains of Tibet. She was so eager to have her long-awaited audience with the great guru Maharishi that she refused to delay it any further.

Martha arrived at the spiritual teacher’s sanctuary and was told by his assistant that the holy guru was very busy with prayers and meditations, and her audience must be very short. She would be allowed to say only three words. Martha was disappointed, but she couldn’t wait any longer, so she agreed. Ushered into the holy man’s private chamber, she shouted three words: “Sheldon, come home!”

I don’t know if this story really happened, but it certainly could have.

For years, far too many young Jews in search of spirituality ended up in the Far East with Eastern religions. Some never bothered to look in their own Jewish backyard, while many others did go to shul but couldn’t find what they were looking for. It is tragic that so many young Jews did not find spiritual satisfaction in the synagogue because Judaism is the primary source of spirituality.

Perhaps, it wasn’t always that accessible.

This week’s Torah portion, Vayakhel, tells the story of how the Jewish people fulfilled the instructions of God to build the very first house of God in history. The Mishkan—“tabernacle” or “sanctuary”—was constructed in the wilderness. It was a portable building that was erected and dismantled many times during the Jewish people’s decades-long sojourn in the wilderness. It was the precursor to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, which would be our permanent sanctuary.

In an earlier chapter, Moses was told by God which materials would be needed and how to build it. But this week, we read that the Israelites actually did build it. The Torah reading is punctuated by the words Vaya’as (“And he made it”) and Vaya’asu (“And they made it”). They made the Ark. They made the Menorah. And they made all the sacred utensils. Everything was constructed and put together with the Divine instructions carried out to the letter.

Many commentaries question why there is so much seemingly superfluous duplication in these chapters. Previously, we read how God told Moses to make the sanctuary. And now, we read how Moses told the Israelites to make it. Many of the verses are almost verbatim. As the Torah is always concise, why is there so much repetition here?

Some suggest that since “the longest distance in the world is from speech to action,” the fact that they made it happen deserves repetition. Others argue that the building of a “House of God” on earth by finite human beings is itself so remarkable that it deserves to be said again and again.

Interestingly, the entire story of creation in Genesis takes all of one chapter in the Bible. The revelation at Mount Sinai and the Ten Commandments take up three chapters. The whole long story of the Exodus from Egypt fills 10 biblical chapters. But the building of the sanctuary takes up no less than 13 chapters of the Torah. Why? Because making a home for God on earth, in this material world, is the entire reason for which the world was created in the first place.

Can an infinite God be housed in a box? Can mere mortals of flesh and blood draw down the Divine spirit from heaven to earth? How is this even possible?

The answer is that we were empowered by God to do just that. He instructed Moses, who, in turn, instructed us exactly how to do it. And when we followed those instructions precisely, it happened. Because He made it happen, and God’s presence filled the sanctuary.

The mystics teach that God wasn’t satisfied with having angels sing His praises up in heaven. Angels are spiritual beings who have no bodies and no physical desires or distractions. It’s easy to be angelic up in heaven. But God wanted human beings, with all our moral frailties and terrestrial temptations, to live a godly life here in the physical realm. When we overcome our creature comforts and material constraints and live with faith and spirituality according to God’s will, that is a huge achievement, one worthy of creation itself!

So whether it is building a physical house for God or taking the most materialistic object—money—and giving it to charity instead of spoiling ourselves, we are doing nothing less than transforming the physical to the spiritual and the earthly to the heavenly. Taking a piece of leather that could have become a pair of Gucci boots and using it for a Torah scroll, tefillin or a mezuzah is transformative, too. Angels singing God’s praises in heaven is quite natural, but human beings praising God in our manmade synagogues here on earth is not to be taken for granted.

When we come to shul and study Torah in-depth, including the mystical sources, we discover how spiritual Judaism is. There’s no need to run to Tibet. We can bring God down to earth and raise ourselves up to heaven, wherever we live. That is earth-shattering stuff.

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