page_title: Terumah (parsha)
section_title: Exodus chapter 25
hierarchical_section_title: Terumah (parsha) / In classical rabbinic interpretation / Exodus chapter 25
caption_attribution_description: English: Tabernacle Layout acording to the original description from the Five Books of Moses - Tent and Courtyard Dimensions Русский: План Переносного Храма согласно описанию из Пятикнижия Моисеева. Размеры Шатра и Двора Шатра
context_page_description: Terumah, Terumoh, Terimuh, or Trumah is the nineteenth weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the seventh in the Book of Exodus. The parashah tells of God's instructions to make the Tabernacle and its furnishings. The parashah constitutes Exodus 25:1–27:19. It is made up of 4,692 Hebrew letters, 1,145 Hebrew words, 96 verses, and 155 lines in a Torah Scroll. Jews in the Diaspora read it the nineteenth Sabbath after Simchat Torah, generally in February and rarely in early March.
context_section_description: A Midrash read Exodus 25:2 to say "that they take Me as an offering" and thus to tell how God gave the Torah to Israel and said to them: "You are taking Me."
  Reading God's words in Exodus 25:2, "accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him," the Mekhilta of Rabbi Simeon deduced that each and every Israelite was so rich from having stripped the Egyptians (as reported in Exodus 12:36) that each Israelite had the wherewithal to erect the Tent of Meeting, with all its vessels, all of its golden hooks, boards, wooden bars, columns, and pedestals.
  A Midrash taught that Exodus 25:3 calls for offerings of gold, silver, and brass for the construction of the Tabernacle, because gold symbolizes Babylon, of which Daniel 2:32 says, "As for that image, its head was of fine gold"; silver symbolizes the Medes, of which Daniel 2:32 says, "Its breast and its arms were of silver"; and brass refers to Greece, of which Daniel 2:32 says, "Its belly and thighs were of brass." But the Bible makes no mention of iron in the construction either of the Tabernacle or of the Temple in Jerusalem, because iron symbolizes Rome, which destroyed the Temple.
  The Rabbis taught in a Baraita that the turquoise wool (techeilet, תְכֵלֶת) listed in Exodus 25:4 came from an animal called a chilazon that resembled the sea in color and a fish in shape, that appeared once every 70 years, and whose blood was used to dye the expensive blue thread.
  Rabbi Elai said in the name of Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish (Resh Lakish) that Rabbi Meir used to maintain that the תְּחָשִׁים, techashim (sometimes translated "sealskins" or "dolphin skins") listed in Exodus 25:5 came from an animal called a tachash that lived in the time of Moses. It was a separate species, and the Sages could not decide whether it was a wild beast or a domestic animal. It had one horn on its forehead, and it came to Moses providentially just for the occasion. Moses made the Tabernacle's covering, and then the tachash disappeared. The Gemara taught that the tachash was multicolored.
  The Tosefta deduced from Exodus 25:5 (and the principle that the law prohibits doing on the Sabbath all that was done to build the Tabernacle) that one who tans hides on the Sabbath violates the commandment to keep the Sabbath.
  The Tosefta taught that invalidity of either the onyx stones or the stones to be set described in Exodus 25:7 invalidated the other.
  The Tosefta taught that Exodus 25:8 provided the commandment that Exodus 39:43 said that Moses fulfilled.
  A Midrash explained with a parable God's instruction to build a Tabernacle. A king had only one daughter, who married another king. When the son-in-law king wished to return to his country and take his wife with him, the father king told him that he could neither part with his daughter nor tell her husband not to take her, as she was now his wife. The father king thus asked the son-in-law king the favor that wherever the son-in-law king would go to live, he would have a chamber ready for the father king to dwell with them, for he could not bear to leave his daughter. Thus, God told Israel that God had given Israel a Torah from which God could not part, and yet God also could not tell Israel not to take the Torah. Thus, God asked the Israelites to make for God a house wherein God might sojourn wherever the Israelites went, and thus Exodus 25:8 says, "And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them."
  Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah taught that the words of Exodus 25:8, "And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them," demonstrate that so great is labor that God's Presence did not dwell among the Israelites until they had performed the labor of making the sanctuary.
  The Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael asked why in Exodus 25:8 God commanded, "Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them," when in Isaiah 66:1, God said, "The heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool; where is the house that you may build for Me?" The Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael taught that the purport of the commandment was simply to enable the Israelites to r
caption: Tabernacle Tent and Courtyard Dimensions (2009 drawing by Aleksig6) (Note that the Rabbis differed over the dimensions of the courtyard, as recorded below.)
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