By Rabbi Avi Heller

Towards the end of JRR Tolkien?s Lord of the Rings trilogy, there is an apocalyptic showdown between the forces of good and evil. The frail halfling Frodo Baggins has – at great peril ? carried the Ring of Power all the way to the edge of the smoldering volcano of Mt. Doom. If he does not destroy it, the evil Lord Sauron will acquire it and rule the world with an iron fist. At the moment of truth — as he struggles against his own evil inclination and his nemesis Gollum (a sort of Portrait of Dorian Gray of Frodo) ? he finally hurls the ring into the depths of the volcano. Good triumphs over evil, and virtue and moral valor over vice, greed and the lust for power. It is a powerful and epic moment.

That should be the end of the story.
But it?s not.

There are at least a hundred pages of clean-up. Frodo returns to his homeland, which is devastated in the aftermath of the war, like Europe in the late 1940?s. Nothing is the way it was before and it will never be again.. The true ending of the book is that ? even though the evil threat was defeated ? the world could never return to the way it was before. Miracle moments ? even victorious ones ? are not reset buttons. There is always an epilogue in real life. What will you do after the fireworks are over and reality sets back in?

The same dilemma faces Elijah the prophet on Mt. Carmel, found in I Kings 18. Elijah is in a showdown with 400 idolatrous priests of Ba?al, who have been wooing the Jewish people away from the worship of the one true God. In a truly miraculous moment, God brings fire down from the Heavens at Elijah?s behest. The watching Israelites are swept away by this powerful moment and shout ?hashem hu ha-elokim? ?Hashem is the [real] God!!? It is a beautiful moment of victory and should mark a new era of devotion and religious commitment on the part of the Jewish population. But a few days later, the wicked queen Jezebel?s army is closing in on in on Elijah and no one stands up to protect him against the authorities. He finds himself fleeing into a desert wasteland, a failure, all alone and close to death. What has happened to the religious revolution that was to follow the fireworks? Gone without a trace?.

In the Torah, three days after the Israelites witnessed the splitting of the Red Sea ? three days!! ? they prepare to rise up in revolt against Moses. That singular miracle, which inspired the Jews to believe in God and Moshe (not to mention a Universal Studios ride), had dissipated by the next news cycle. Certainly, no memory of it was left by the time they built the Golden Calf to replace Moshe?. What are we to make of this? That people tend to be ?what have you done for me lately? types? That we have short memories? That we are never satisfied? That the battle is never over?

All of the above may be true. But I think there is another explanation that can be derived from this week?s Torah portion, the very last in the book of Shemot (Exodus). It ends with the completion of the construction of the Tabernacle (mishkan) and the appearance of the presence of God for the first time in His earthly abode.

Now, why is this the end of the Book of Exodus? Wouldn?t it have made sense to end it right after the dramatic climax of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai? The (boring) explication of the building of the Tabernacle and all the commandments could have been earmarked for the next book of the Torah. This is similar to our observation about the Lord of the Rings. Why not just end the book when the bad guys are defeated, i.e. the climax of everything the reader?s been waiting for the last 1,500 pages? Why not end the book with the giving of the Torah, which is what we?ve been waiting for since its beginning?

I think that Nachmanides (aka Ramban, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, 13th c)
answers this very nicely in his comment on Exodus 25:2:

?and the secret interpretation of the mishkan is that the Glory that rested upon Mt. Sinai will dwell hidden within it [the Tabernacle]? the glory of God that appeared to them on Mt. Sinai, will be always with the Israelites in the mishkan?.?

In essence, Ramban is saying that the glory and fanfare of the Mt. Sinai experience is not good enough. Mt. Sinai is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, a singular moment, an unrepeatable phenomenon. But it will not and cannot last. If the giving of the Torah is going to have ongoing relevance, it will need to be portable. It will need to be accessible.

Ultimately, then, the Book of Exodus ends in the perfect place. The final verses, as God?s glory settles onto the mishkan, presents a mini-Sinai experience for the Jewish people. They can take God?s hidden presence in the mishkan with them throughout all of their wanderings, whether it?s a 40-year jaunt through the desert or a 4,000 year trek through history. A little bit of revelatory inspiration will always be within arm?s reach.

The true message of the end of Exodus is that what happens AFTER the fireworks is critically important. Pretending that Sinai is the end of the story is madness; Sinai is only the very beginning. Sinai has to be recreated every day or it will lapse quickly into desuetude.

In our own lives, we will also have to take the Mt. Sinai experience with us. Connecting to our tradition once every Yom Kippur is not enough to keep us going a whole year. Leaving our spiritual welfare in the hands of a few isolated spiritual moments is worse than risky. We have to find ways of daily tapping into our Judaism, our spirituality, our Torah.

We have to find ways of bringing the revelatory days of our lives into the quotidian days. We have to find ways of continuing the story long after the movie producer would have made the final cut. The most important work in our spirituality and our Judaism is the ongoing work, the daily exercise. The extra chapters ? long after the fireworks have been put away ? will determine whether or not the message of those fireworks remains etched in our hearts or simply fades away. Shabbat Shalom!