The Mishkan (Tabernacle) served as an intimate meeting place between God and His people. After the fiery revelations of Mount Sinai, God chose to dwell in a quiet sanctuary built by His chosen nation. This sacred space became the heart of offerings and rituals, drawing our people into a deeper, more intimate bond with their creator.
However, as the Mishkan took shape, a new designation emerged – it is called Mishkan Ha’edut, the Tabernacle of Testimony. This suggests that the Mishkan is not merely a dwelling place for God or a center for sacred rituals; it also serves as a form of testimony. Beyond its role in fostering divine connection, it carries a message meant to resonate beyond its walls, speaking to a broader audience.
This dwelling place of God stood as a testament to forgiveness. Though we had angered God, He did not abandon or destroy His people. Once He entered into a covenantal relationship with us, He also granted us a path to atonement and redemption. Unlike the corrupt generations of Genesis, who spiraled into complete moral collapse, there was hope beyond sin. The Mishkan bore witness that sin was not a death sentence but a call to return. A broken bond with God could be restored, and sincere contrition had the power to mend even the deepest rifts between man and the divine. God now offered a way back – a means of return and renewal.
There was an additional historical layer to the Mishkan testimony: The construction of the Mishkan, even after the sin of the golden calf, demonstrated that once God chose us, we remained His chosen nation through every trial and tribulation. This historical testimony preempted the claims that would arise throughout history – that God had forsaken His people in favor of another. No matter our failures, we were His, and He remained our God, even when we faltered.
From the earliest moments of our national past, we were destined to bear testimony to the world – a testimony of forgiveness and redemption, and a testimony of God’s unbreakable covenant with His chosen people. To be a Jew is to be a witness.
Light or testimony?
Throughout our history, we have not only served as a light unto the nations, modeling faith and morality, but we have also borne testimony. Being a light means illuminating the world through the values we embody, inspiring others with a dignified life of devotion to God and His commandments.
Testimony, however, is more than inspiration; it is historical evidence, a concrete affirmation of a foundational truth. Testimony goes beyond merely serving as a guiding light, for it is not just an ideal but a reality borne out by historical events. It offers hard evidence, proving truths through the unfolding of history rather than merely inspiring through example.
Alliance of lunacy
At this defining moment in history, we are called upon not only to inspire but also to bear witness – to offer undeniable testimony that can mend a fractured world. A culture adrift, unmoored from its foundations, is in desperate need of testimony to help restore its course.
The world around us is convulsing in an existential crisis. Murderers, cloaked in the guise of religious devotion, have committed acts of unspeakable savagery – atrocities so horrific which we once believed modern civilization had banished to the past. They slaughter and torture in the name of religion, invoking a bloodthirsty god and desecrating the divine dignity with which God endowed every human being. Their crimes are an affront to God, an assault on the Jewish people, and a savage onslaught against civilization itself.
But to us, their pathological hatred is no surprise. We have seen this before. In every generation, there are those who rise against us, determined to erase us from existence. The faces change, the slogans vary, but the relentless hatred remains the same.
What is truly shocking, however, is the response of a world that prides itself on its enlightenment and moral conscience. Supposedly intelligent people have thrown their lot in with barbarians. Oct. 7 unleashed a tidal wave of raw, genocidal hatred against Jews. Those who seek our destruction have revived ancient antisemitic tropes while crafting new, 21st-century libels, branding us as occupiers and oppressors.
Devoid of any historical truth, they have twisted reality, transforming the victims of Nazi annihilation into supposed perpetrators. The world we believed was educated, rational, and guided by a moral compass has revealed itself to be something else entirely – a world gripped by madness, consumed by lies, morally adrift, and willing to stand with evil.
This unholy alliance between Islamic fundamentalists and the hard-left hyper-progressives is astonishing. Radical Islam wages a holy war against the West, convinced it must be vanquished. Hyper-woke ideology sees Western civilization as irredeemably built on oppression and believes it must be torn down. Though their worldviews should be utterly opposed to each other, they stand hand in hand, united by a shared hatred – and they have chosen the Jews as the scapegoats, the root cause of all they despise in the Western world.
This war about the Jewish homeland is also a battle for the soul of Western civilization – a civilization that we helped create.
At this critical juncture, we are once again called upon to bear testimony – this time, to the values we uphold and the way they have sustained us through relentless hatred and the constant specter of genocide. We have now been summoned to bear testimony – not theological or moral, but cultural. Our endurance stands as living testimony to the lasting strength of these core values.
The power of faith
The most obvious force behind Jewish survival has been our unwavering faith and religious commitment. Modernity has cast aside faith and religion, viewing them as obstacles to individualism and barriers to personal freedom. Without faith in a higher being, there is no moral accountability. Humanity is spiraling back to the days of paganism, to a world of competing gods that could be manipulated and set against one another.
Today, instead of multiple gods, society has embraced multiple truths, abandoning any notion of objective truth. Without absolute moral foundations, even the most horrific acts can be excused, justified, or redefined to fit the moment.
The power of family and community
Jewish experience is anchored in the communities we build. Whether within the family unit or the larger Jewish collective, communities uphold enduring values and immutable truths. Without communal affirmation of principles, truth dissolves into a chaotic free-for-all of personal whims and aimless speculation. As the Western world witnesses the fraying of family bonds and the collapse of communal structures, values and identity have become muddled, and truth has been twisted into a postmodern haze where nothing is absolute.
The power of memory
We are a nation of historical memory. We do not forget the past, and this collective memory binds every Jew to a story far greater than themselves. Every Jew in history is part of the same book, a continuous unfolding story. Throughout the year, we gather on holidays to remind ourselves that we belong to this larger narrative. We are the people of the book – not just the sacred texts we study but also the grand book of history in which we all have a place. We share a common story, a collective mission that unites us across generations.
We offer the world hope that it can withstand this tidal wave of hatred and escape the abyss of confusion. We have endured. So can you. We will show you the way.
The writer, a rabbi at the hesder Yeshivat Har Etzion/Gush, was ordained by YU and has an English literature MA from CUNY. His recent book, Reclaiming Redemption: Deciphering the Maze of Jewish History (Mosaica Press), is in bookstores and at www.mtaraginbooks.com.