The Power of Again

Should our eyes glaze over?

This week’s Torah portion, Pikudei, details the Tabernacle’s construction—again. Have we not already heard a lot about the specs for the Tabernacle? How is it that the narrative of the Torah is so concise, compressing worlds of meaning into a few phrases, while other parts—instructions for Temple sacrifices and the sacred buildings—are so detailed, and not only detailed, but repetitively detailed?

In these “list of details” chapters, always look for the clearing in the forest. Pikudei expressly picks up the narrative by explaining that the Israelites continued on their journey with God’s guidance. The rest of the story will unfold in later chapters, but there will be times when God’s light is present and urges them forward, and times when darkness descends and they must remain in place.

The Bible also artfully deploys the concept of variations on a theme: a balance of sameness and dynamism. The sameness is the backdrop against which changes can have context and meaning. In the Amidah, the core text in the Jewish daily prayers, there is often a balance; the Amidah can be read out loud in standard form, with precision, or silently when the devotee can insert their own thoughts and hopes.

In The Art of Biblical Narrative, Robert Alter points out that characters in the Torah sometimes repeat a verbal package—say, Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, almost repeating the instructions from Abraham about finding a wife for Isaac—and the variations then pack a punch. Abraham’s practical instructions shift in Eliezer’s retelling to divine guidance: “The Lord… will prosper your way” (Genesis 24:40). This frames his mission as fulfilling not just Abraham’s command but God’s will, proven by Rebekah’s providential arrival. Repetition serves this purpose beyond narrative—in sacred construction too. Just as in Pikudei we are told that the Tabernacle has been built as designed with no misallocation of contributions, creation’s “and it was so” repeats seven times too, echoing divine order across Torah. In Pikudei, the term repeated seven times is “as God commanded.”

But there are other uses of repetition. One of them is to give the impression of solidity and permanence. A physical building can be visited and revisited in person. The repetition of words evokes that same sense of permanence.

Abraham Joshua Heschel taught that repetition in the prayer service renews our sense of wonder, keeping it from fading after the initial encounter. We may have moments of awareness to live again.

I offer a different use for repetition: not hoping that the ordinary becomes wonderful, but making the wonderful ordinary. The Jewish prayer service is filled with faith and optimism; it assures us that there is a power behind this world that is just and merciful, that our dreams of a personal afterlife may be true, and that there will be a redemption of our people in the times of a Messiah. All of that can be hard to believe in the face of science and the hard realities of human experience, including—especially—that of the Jewish people.

Yet… if you repeat the verbal embodiment of these hopes and assurances at least three times a day… perhaps the implausible, perhaps scientifically impossible, starts to feel ordinary—like a simple observation of a concrete fact, like the sight of a building that stands in plain view, still there in your mind when you close your eyes… still there when you open them again.