Our sages teach that the Mishkan (Tabernacle) was not simply constructed once and left standing. Before it was finally erected and inaugurated on the first of Nissan, it was assembled and dismantled seven times.
Again and again, Moses built it, took it apart, and built it once more.
This pattern echoes a deeper teaching of the Midrash.
Before creating our world, God created worlds and destroyed them until this world came into being. Creation itself unfolded through a rhythm of building and dismantling.
The message may be that falling and rebuilding are not failures, they are part of how something lasting is formed.
Anyone who has built something meaningful knows this truth.
The path is rarely straight.
We invest our hearts in building, and sometimes things collapse.
We are left to gather the pieces and begin again.
Builders understand resilience because they have known what it means to start over.
In Jewish wisdom, falling is not the opposite of rising.
Often it is the path that leads to it.
As we learn in the Book of Proverbs, “The righteous fall seven times and rise again.”
Seven times we fall. Seven times we rise.
Seven times we rebuild.
Just like the Mishkan.
There is also a deeper spiritual layer to this pattern.
Each dismantling is a kind of small death. Something ends. Something we hoped would stand does not endure in the way we imagined.
But from that ending comes the possibility of rebuilding in a more refined way.
We see this most clearly in the cycles of life and death themselves.
When we accompany the dying, comfort the bereaved, or care for the deceased, we are reminded that endings are not only loss.
They are also part of the design of existence.
What appears to be a dismantling is, in a deeper sense, part of a process of transformation.
The separation of body and soul allows each to return to its source and be refined.
In Jewish belief, death is not an end but a stage along the way, making possible a future reunion when body and soul will come together again in a more perfected form. In this way, death becomes part of the divine pattern of falling and rising, of dismantling and rebuilding, that ultimately leads to renewal at the end of days.
The examples teach us that holiness can emerge after something has been taken apart.And we do not rebuild alone.
The Mishkan itself was a collective effort, built through the generosity and devotion of an entire people. When it was assembled and dismantled, it happened through many hands working together.
The same is true in our lives.When we are knocked down, we often rise because someone sits with us in the darkness. Someone listens. Someone helps us gather the pieces. Community becomes the scaffolding that allows rebuilding to take place.
And God is present in that rebuilding.
In the end, the Mishkan stood because the Shechinah, the Divine Presence, came to dwell within it.
But that presence arrived only after the repeated efforts to build, dismantle, and build again.Perhaps this is an important message of the Mishkan’s seven assemblies: Do not be afraid when something in life collapses.Sometimes what feels like destruction is actually part of a process that allows something stronger, deeper, and more enduring to emerge.
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