=Interpretation.= The Biblical passages dealing with the construction of the Tabernacle and the nature of its appointments and the services conducted therein are scattered through a number of chapters of our Bible, but for pedagogic purposes it is best to consider them together. Before discussing any details we must realize the significance of the Tabernacle in general. We are to see in it the parent of the temple and the synagogue and understand its significance in the light of the importance of these institutions to later Judaism. "Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them". (Exodus 25. 8.) Our rabbis paraphrase this by the words, "that I may cause My _Shekinah_ to dwell among them." Inasmuch as the _Shekinah_ meant the Divine Presence made manifest, we may render their meaning in more modern terms by declaring that the function of tabernacle, temple and synagogue is to make us realize the presence of God, for though we may theoretically admit His existence without such institutions, we should not feel the reality of His presence were it not brought home to us by the organized worship that they cultivated. But even if it is possible to realize the presence of God merely by the direct communion of the individual without any organized communal worship in a community sanctuary, the God we should then worship would not be the God of Israel and our religion would not consecrate life to the service of His Torah. And just as the Tabernacle, to which every animal that was to be eaten had to be brought for sacrifice, weaned the people from the habit of sacrificing "to the satyrs," (Leviticus 17. 7) so in later times the Temple was the center of the national worship as against the rival cult of Baal and Astarte associated with the "high places", and so today the synagogue is the institution upon which we must depend to guard the purity of Jewish religious thought from the influences of our non-Jewish environment. In view of the significance of the Tabernacle and its daughter institutions, we cannot begrudge the space that our Bible gives to its construction and its ritual.