"They shall make an Ark of acacia wood...." (Exodus 25:10)
The incredibly detailed descriptions of all the architectural and physical details of the Bible's first sacred building, the Sanctuary or Tabernacle (Mishkan in Hebrew), is introduced in this week's portion of Terumah. Elaborating the details of the Mishkan's structure occupies much of the rest of the Book of Exodus; a vast subject which begins with a command in our portion, "They shall make (ve'asu) for Me a Sanctuary, and I shall dwell in their 
The Torah's vision of the Mishkan is not a nomadic Sanctuary for the foreseeable future.
midst." (Exodus 25:8) This verse is followed almost immediately by another command, "And they shall make (ve'asu) an Ark...." (ibid 25:10)
As we see in these opening verses, the stress is on third-person plural, "they shall make". However, with regard to all other Sanctuary accoutrements, the Bible uses second person singular, issuing the commands in terms like "you shall cover", "you shall make", "you shall pour", "you shall place", "you shall bring" - each use of the second person (ve'asita) addressed specifically to Moses. The use of third person plural, "they shall make", is limited to two commands: the Tabernacle itself and the Ark. Why should this be so?
My second question also refers to the Ark, repository of the sacred tablets of stone, the Divine Torah. We read: "And you shall bring poles through the rings on the side of the Ark, in order to carry (lift, bear, move) the Ark by means of them. The poles shall remain through the rings of the Ark; they (the poles) must not be removed from them." (Exodus 25:15)
I understand that at this particular time in Jewish history, when the nation was moving from encampment to encampment in the desert, it was crucial for the Sanctuary in general and the Holy Ark in particular, to be mobile, allowing easy movement from place to place as the situation required it, and hence the significance of the poles. However, the Torah's vision of the Mishkan is not a nomadic Sanctuary for the foreseeable future. The goal was to reach Jerusalem, ultimately arriving at our place of "inheritance and rest" where we would, with the help of G-d, remain permanently, allowing for the Holy Ark and its Torah to be sheltered in a stationery setting, fixed and eternal, not subject to changes or movements either geographically or ideologically.
As the great sage Shammai declares (Mishnah Avot 1, 15), "Make your Torah fixed, steady, unwavering and unmoving (keva in Hebrew)."
So what's the logic behind these poles remaining within the rings of the Ark "forever" (Hebrew: le'olam, Rashi ad loc), as mandated by the Bible as well as Maimonides?
Answering these two questions directs us to the most fundamental path-breaking message of Judaism. The purpose of the Sanctuary is to bring both the Sanctity of the Divine (Mikdash) to the nation Israel, and the Presence of the Divine (Mishkan) to the corporate body Israel. Unlike most religions and neo-platonic philosophies, our G-d does not dwell in the lofty and exalted ethereal heavens, beckoning His children to escape from their physical world, to remove the fetters of their materialistic and bodily "prisons", and somehow ascend in a virtually disembodied state to His place of splendid isolation.
The opposite is true: G-d commands us to bring Him down to earth, to create, or rather recreate, an earthly and worldly environment in which He can comfortably dwell; to utilize His laws of compassionate righteousness and justice to bring blessings into the lives of the people of all the nations of the world (Genesis 18:18,19). Indeed, the rabbis of the midrash maintain that before Abraham, G-d was known as the G-d of the heavens; whereas, after Abraham, G-d was known as the "G-d of the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 24:2, 3 and midrash ad loc).
As we see, G-d repeatedly instructs Moses that he must "go down" from the high mountains and the supernal heavens in order for him to give over the Divine revelation (Exodus 19: 21-25); and the Israelites must make a Sanctuary so that G-d will be able to dwell in the midst of the entire nation. And ultimately, through Israel, the entire Earth must become a Sanctuary for G-d's presence, penetrating every aspect of life, both the spiritual and the material (Genesis 12:3, Exodus 19:6, Isaiah 43:10, Micah 4). And since our religion is not merely comprised of a scattering of individuals reaching up to G-d from isolated caves and mountaintops, but rather of an entire nation devoted to bringing G-d down to the entire Earth, the Sanctuary must be made by the whole nation - va'asu.
Maimonides provides a different nuance, emphasizing the fact that Torah belongs equally to every Jew, to the entire congregation of Israel, and therefore the plural verb: "the crown of priesthood was conferred upon Aaron; the crown of kingship 
Maimonides provides a different nuance, emphasizing the fact that Torah belongs equally to every Jew.
was conferred upon David; but the crown of Torah is for all of Israel.... whoever deserves it, let him come and take it." ("Laws of Torah Study" 3,1) For this very idea, and ideal - that every Jew must have equal access to Torah - Rabbi Yehoshua ben Gamla, close to 2,000 years ago, introduced compulsory education from age six (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 15). The Talmudic sages praised Rabbi Eliezer for opening up the Talmudic academies of higher learning to anyone who wished to enter (Brachot 28b; see Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation, February 2004, for these sources and more).
I'd like to consider two additional approaches to explain the plural verb form "and they shall make the Ark", as well as the eternal nature of the poles. When G-d forgave the Jews for their sin of the Golden Calf and agreed to give them a second set of stone tablets, it was Moses - symbolizing Jewish religious leadership in partnership with G-d in the creation of an Oral Law - who hewed out the stones and wrote the words. The plural verb includes the human input that G-d has empowered Israel to complete His Torah. And just as the sanctuary must bring G-d down to corporate Israel, so must the 'poles' bring the Torah to the Jewish people.
Secondly, we learn from the 'poles' that the Oral Torah must "move" with history: Judaism 'moved' from a Temple-centered faith to a synagogue- and study-hall-centered faith after the destruction of the Second Temple; it had to revise the laws of the Sabbatical year and provide women with inheritance rights after the world changed from agriculture to industry; it had to account for different possibilities of fertilization and the establishment of time-of-death with new scientific discoveries; and it has to properly respond to the great possibilities wrought by our miraculous return to our homeland. The very term Halakha - just like the poles - reflects movement; a movement which insists that "the old must be renewed and the new must be sanctified." (Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook)