Anne Frank, the Mishkan, and the Dust of Memory (Pekudei)
This morning I visited the Anne Frank exhibit at the Center for Jewish History in New York City, representing UJA-Federation of New York, which has been instrumental in bringing this powerful and immersive experience to life. The The New York Board of Rabbis gathered an interfaith clergy group for a tour, and it was profoundly moving to be present in a space dedicated to Jewish memory, testimony, and learning.
Surrounded by Anne Frank’s story — a story that continues to teach the world about resilience, hope, and the human spirit — I found myself thinking about Parashat Pekudei, the final portion of the Book of Exodus. After weeks of intricate details describing the construction of the Mishkan, the sacred space is finally complete. And yet, completion is not enough. The Mishkan must be infused with something beyond its physical structure; it must be animated, connected, given purpose.
At its heart, in the Holy of Holies, sits the Aron, the Ark of the Covenant, containing the tablets of testimony. But what, exactly, does it hold? The Torah tells us that Moses placed the tablets — ha-edut — inside the Ark. The word “edut” means testimony, and it is written in the plural. The rabbis wonder: why the plural? What does this testimony include?
We know our story. Moses descended Sinai holding the first tablets, only to shatter them upon witnessing the Israelites’ betrayal with the golden calf. Later, he ascended again and returned with a second set. The Talmud teaches that both the whole tablets and the broken ones were placed in the Ark together. The sacred was not whole alone; it was also shattered. The Ark held both perfection and brokenness within it, carrying testimony to the complexity of human experience.
This, too, is the story of our people. We do not leave our brokenness behind; we carry it with us. Perhaps, over time, as the Ark traveled with us through the wilderness and into our evolving destiny, the broken pieces continued to crumble, their dust dispersing into the air of our community. Perhaps we breathe them in even now, embodying the fractures of our history as we strive toward wholeness. The rabbis teach that after the destruction of the Temple, the Holy of Holies was relocated — from a physical space to the human heart. If that is true, then the Ark is within us as well, holding both the whole and the broken parts of our collective story.
And there I stood, in the Center for Jewish History, a space that does not merely preserve the past but carries it forward. It is a place of living history, which we are still writing, still building. And if we are to do this sacred work authentically, we must let the past in — not only its beauty but also its brokenness. Even the dust of our pain is part of our story, and every time we tell it, we grow.
In this recreated space, where Anne Frank once hid and hoped, we can learn from her final words: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” This is not naivety. This is a belief worth cultivating. To believe in the possibility of goodness, even in a fractured world, is not to ignore reality but to insist on the godliness within each person. The rabbis teach: “In a place where there are no people, strive to be a person.” In a world that does not always show up in its full humanity, our task is to do so anyway — to be deeply, truly human in the way we act, in the way we build, in the way we remember.
One day, please God, the world will do the same. Imagine that world.
