Teruma: Engineering

Teruma: Engineering

Teruma has the instructions for the Mishkan.  Dimensions are specified.  Materials are designated.   Visual images ( as was shown on the mountain) are referenced. Despite the details, a great deal of artistic leeway remains. The artisans can make it  beautiful or plain. This is a structure that must transcend style and trend. Given the source of the design, that is very likely. 

The Torah begins with instructions. Light, heavens, earth, seas, plants, animals, and sentient humans are all commanded.  Some, unidentified, entity is told to make these marvelous creations...and here we are.  The details of the instructions are not given. 

In our times, we can begin to imagine how this happens. At work, I talk into my "phone", words appear on my screen.  Instructions become available to those nurses and pharmacists who are tasked to carry them out. And they ( almost always) happen.

The biological view of instructions changed with the discovery of messenger RNA ( Sidney Brenner 1957) . Those experiments demonstrated that cells contain an instruction set, DNA that is transmitted through en ephemeral RNA messenger and then translated into protein using an intelligible code.  This system reliably produces all the uniformity necessary for the maintenance of life and all the variability needed to survive variations in circumstance.  It is a marvel of engineering and organization to which we do not attribute consciousness.  That is just the way it is. DNA is the emanation of Gd. Instructions are given, they are followed, the being lives - and flourishes. 

How much of life is following the instructions?  The instructions from Sinai are, as described in the parsha,  enshrined in the ark, covered by the kaporeth, behind the parocheth, in the inner sanctum of the temple. These are the DNA. They define limitations and some goals for our behavior.  Our choices are the variations that drive (progress) evolution.