A Torah scroll. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The month of August is the season of traveling and going on vacation. The very idea resonates with our wandering in the desert for 40 years and then in exile, all over the world. Many Jews are inveterate travelers; where did this wanderlust come from?

The Torah talks about a tent, Ohel Moed — the Tent of Meeting — where Moses held court during the 40 years in the wilderness. It functioned as a kind of community center, and a place the people would go to for information and, of course, to complain. But there was also the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, which was a collapsible sanctuary whose function was solely as a religious ceremonial center. At its core was the Aron HaBrit, the Ark of the Covenant.

The Mishkan and the Aron continued into the Promised Land, and were carried around the city of Jericho before its walls fell. It is unclear, but it appears that David brought the ark to Jerusalem and Solomon brought it into his Temple. And there it remained until the Babylonian conquest, when it disappeared.

We (and Hollywood) love conspiracy theories. We continue to speculate where it might be to this very day, assuming it was not stripped of its gold by the Babylonians and its wood recycled. The word Mishkan comes from the Hebrew word Shachan, meaning to dwell. And the implication is that it represented the dwelling place of God, or the one place on earth that was metaphorically closest to God.

In the Book of Deuteronomy (Chapters 11 through 16) the word Shachan is used five times to refer to “the place where God will have His name dwell.” This has always been understood as referring to the Temple itself.

Meanwhile, back in Babylon, Jews looked towards Jerusalem and re-building the Temple. The exiled community revived the idea of a Mishkan Ohel Moed as a community center, the focal point of Jewish life, and a place of study, to ensure that the Biblical texts were read and not forgotten. So a dual system developed of Diaspora Jews having a gathering center, a Beit HaKnesset, to replace the Tabernacle, and the study house, the Beit Midrash, for study.

The rabbis often argued about which was the priority. The place of study, the Beit Hamidrash, doubled as a place for prayer. And what became known as a synagogue, from the Greek term, synagein, which means to bring together (like synergy) was primarily “a place of assembly,” but it could also function as a place of study too. The Yiddish word Shul (from German schule, “school”) was later also used to refer to the synagogue, but it emphasizes study as a priority.

I should confess that I really don’t like the word synagogue. To me, it sounds like a cross between sin and demagoguery. But what can we do? Blame the Greeks. But I don’t like the name “temple” either. Some Christians preferred to call it a Tabernacle. Perhaps because temple conjures up a model long gone of being passive observers and lots of sacrifices. In contrast, a synagogue was based on the idea of knowledge and study as well as prayer, but not necessarily with functionaries. That is why so many communities can manage perfectly well without a rabbi or officiating clergy, relying instead on an educated laity. This is not for everyone, of course, but it does emphasize the possibility of different paradigms. It also emphasizes why the home is just as important as the community.

After the Temple was destroyed, the rabbis added a new name for God, Makom. They believed that God was everywhere and anywhere and had gone into exile too. One did not need a temple or indeed anywhere else specifically to interact with God.

This brings me back to the beginning and the message of this piece. Wherever we travel, we can take God and our values with us. We should not think we can leave them at the doors of our homes or in our synagogues or temples. Wherever we go, even on holiday, we should take along our religious values as well as the rest of the family. Enjoy your summer break.

The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.