R. David Kasher on Parashat Pekudei: The Invisible Palace

Ta Shma

There is something hidden in the mishkan. A story of creation.

Nehama Leibowitz, the great 20th century compiler of Torah commentary, calls our attention to a group of modern scholars who sensitized us to the use of repetition as a rhetorical device in the description of the building of the mishkan. She cites a list of the greats: Buber, Rosenzweig, Benno Jacob, Cassuto, Meir Weiss, and others, who all highlight the way key phrases in our text echo an earlier story in the Torah—the earliest, in fact.