Parshat Terumah: Our Inner Dugong

Torah teaches that the Israelite community donates many gifts of the heart towards the building of the first Mishkan (communal sanctuary), including orot techashim - literally "dugong skins." Some commentators recognize tachash as the name for a marine mammal native to Egypt. Others turn to linguistic evidence in the Tanakh, where tachash names a kind of fine leather.

Several beautiful midrashim weave all the findings together. One midrash suggests that the Israelites have never been as highly motivated a community as they were in the early years. According to this midrash, God created a creature called tachash, showed it briefly to Moshe, and then hid it away. This midrash calls us to find the inner tachash, the impulse to join in a community project that can unite the entire world camp of Jews.

Another midrash draws on a love-poem from the prophet Yechezkel, in which God says to Israel, "I found you lost and alone in the desert. I dressed you in fine garments, and in sandals made of tachash."  According to this midrash, the Israelites gave God a spiritual wedding gift of tachash skins, which God fashioned into sandals and gave as gift in return.

Here the tachash is a metaphor for our spiritual motivation. When we become seekers, we offer energy in the direction of the Divine. When our questions are answered in the fullness of experience, it is as if our energy has been reshaped into something fine and useful that gives stability. The raw energy that we offer becomes the tool for walking a spiritual path - both alone in an intimate one-to-one relationship with God, and in community as we create the institutions that anchor us.

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