19 Terumah: Day 5 (Thursday)




Today's reading is Exodus 26:31 to 26:37.

This is the link to Daily Chumash with Rashi at Chabad.

The Daily Wisdom from the Lubavitcher Rebbe is titled "Transcending the Intellect."

On 19 February 2026 at 6:43 AM EST, Jonathan writes: 

Shalom, Rabbi Klayman. Your encouraging feedback means so much to me. I have been treasuring it all week. And also feeling slightly trepidatious. I am on holy ground here with my daily Torah study at Chabad as further illuminated by Bible Hub and Panim el Panim classes with MJTI. I think I need to order a new kippah just for these 6-8 AM Torah study sessions (even though I am a Gentile). But even if I submit to the kippah and the respect for Hashem and the Torah that the kippah symbolizes, I wonder if perhaps I will still be desecrating the memory of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Is it wrong for me to seek deep relevance for disciples of the Messiah Yeshua in the Rebbe's luminous wisdom? Do you think Chabadniks will appreciate my admiration for the Rebbe and my attempts at interfaith synthesis, or do you think they will be offended? It's a free internet, I know, and anything Chabad publishes is fair game for study and discussion in the virtual yeshiva, but the Rebbe was "explicitly opposed to formal interfaith theological dialogues with Christians, arguing they caused confusion, fostered intermarriage, and were unnecessary. He believed interfaith activities should be limited to secular, civil, or commercial cooperation rather than religious discussions," according to Google Gemini.    
 
With respect to today's Torah's reading, and the Rebbe's brilliant elucidation of it, here are some additional details from Gemini about the three items in the Holy Place as they feature in Chabad mysticism: 


For those who want to look at the curtain in this Torah portion through the New Covenant lens of Hebrews 9, see Hebrews: The Curtain of the Holy of Holies - Revisited and Updated | REASONED CASES FOR CHRIST. 

There is a good argument against Hebrews 9 that can and has been made by leading interfaith scholars in rabbinic Judaism, I am sure, but all in all this seems to me a very strong case from the followers of Yeshua.  

Still lingering in the back of my consciousness is a question that I raised in yesterday's Panim el Panim class with Rabbi Vered Hillel about the intended audience of the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, specifically in light of James 1:1. It's really striking to me that seven hundred and fifty years after the fall of the ten northern tribes of Israel to the Assyrians, James should address himself "to the twelve tribes in the dispersion."

I can't yet fully shake the hunch - which could be right or could be wrong - that James was speaking symbolically about the twelve signs of the Hebrew zodiac, and that he meant not just the twelve tribes (ten long lost) of Jewish believers in the Messiah Yeshua, but that he was also speaking to Gentile believers in Yeshua, who became spiritually grafted into one of the tribes of the commonwealth of Israel through their natal association with one of the zodiacal signs. In this case, the "Dispersion" (Galut) would refer to a cosmic state of disintegration as well as a physical diaspora of believers.  

This is an esoteric interpretation, to be sure, and I wouldn't have mentioned it, except that the Rebbe's reference to the Table of the Twelve Loaves made me think of it. For various reasons I won't get into here, I seem to have a deep conviction that the twelve tribes of Israel were not primarily or exclusively genetically defined clans, but that they also had some kind of temporal and celestial significance within a twelve-fold zodiacal cosmology.

Thank you for indulging me.

May all who study today's Torah reading in the virtual yeshiva be blessed and may we in turn be a blessing to those who are not called to prayer and reflection in this particular house.

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