The rabbis of the Mishnah preserved a teaching that has always guided me: “Mitchalmidai yoter mikkulam” — from my students I have learned more than from all others. That teaching arrived with fresh force this week through Dan Stern, one of the lay leaders on Beth Tzedec’s board of directors.

We have just concluded the readings about the Mishkan — the portable sanctuary our ancestors carried through the wilderness. Dan noted something sharp: for all the Torah’s extraordinary detail about the Mishkan’s structure, materials, and adornment — the gold, the acacia wood, the curtains and clasps — there is almost nothing about its physical security. It is an open tent. It moves. It exists in the middle of a wilderness full of threat. And the Torah is essentially silent on fortification.

Why? Because the answer was implicit all along. When the Israelites camped, the Mishkan was placed at the center. The Levites were closest — but surrounding them, spreading outward in every direction, were all twelve tribes. The protection was never structural. It was human. The community itself, simply by choosing to orient its life around the center, was the security. The people were the shield.

Last Shabbat, we called our community to be present. We named what many have been feeling — the anxiety building in Jewish communities across North America, the antisemitism that has moved from background noise to foreground reality. We asked people to come. UJA Federation Toronto called it Shabbat Strong.

They came. Thirty percent more than a typical Shabbat.

People showed up — to daven, to sit together, to be present with one another in a room that felt, for a few hours, like a tent surrounded by the tribes. They were not naive about the threat. They came because of it. And in coming, they became exactly what the Torah described: the people, arranged around the center, embodying the protection itself.

This week we open the Book of Vayikra — Leviticus. The word itself is the key. Vayikra means “and God called.” God called to Moses. Moses called to the people. The book opens with a summons.

We issued a summons. The community answered.

It is worth sitting with the central vocabulary of Vayikra for a moment. The Hebrew word for offering — korban — comes from the root karev: to draw close, to approach. A korban is not fundamentally about giving something up. It is about closing distance. The ancient Israelite who brought a korban was not engaged in a transaction. They were drawing near — to the sacred.

That is what happened last Shabbat. People brought themselves. They closed the distance. In a moment of communal insecurity, they did not retreat inward. They approached. They answered the call and, in doing so, became the offering — the act of drawing close that Vayikra asks of us.

There are real conversations we must continue having about physical security — camera systems, trained personnel, coordinated protocols. Those conversations matter and we take them seriously. But Dan’s insight from the Mishkan reminds us that security has always carried two dimensions in Jewish life. One is structural. The other is spiritual.

The tribes surrounding the Mishkan were not passive spectators. They were present, oriented, committed. Their very arrangement was a statement: this matters to us. We will not leave the center unguarded. We will not be moved.

That is what thirty percent looks like in practice. That is what “Vayikra” — and God called — looks like when a community takes it seriously. God called. We called. The people answered.

I do not know what the weeks ahead hold for Jewish communities in Toronto, across North America, in the world. What I know is what we witnessed on Shabbat: people drawing close. People who understand, perhaps intuitively, what the Torah understood long ago.

The sanctuary is protected not by the thickness of its walls, but by the density of the people who gather around it.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)