February 19, 2021
Terumah, 5781
Make a Sanctuary
Engraved prominently on the façade of our shul is a verse from our portion—"veasu li mikdash veshachanti betocham, you shall make for me a sanctuary and I will dwell amongst them” (25:8).
Rambam understands this verse to be a commandment not only to build the structure that is the direct subject of our portion—the tented sanctuary of the wilderness (Mishkan)--but also the roofed temple (Beit Hamikdash) on the Temple Mount (Mishneh Torah, Beit Habechirah, 1:1).
I have been thinking a lot about this verse lately as we are coming up on the one-year anniversary of where on account of Covid-19 we shockingly had to leave our roofed sanctuary and enter into our own wilderness.
Rashi explains that the commandment to make a sanctuary is a commandment “to make a place of holiness” (25:8). A few months after leaving our building we were thankfully able to install a tent in our parking lot and since then we have been praying in our tent three times a day. Our tent is a place of beautiful holiness. It is a place where people have shown their dedication to praying with our community by braving the extreme natural elements. Indeed, last Shabbat I was so inspired as we prayed together in an ice storm. It is a place where people have come to name their babies and celebrate bnai mitzvah. It is a place where people have come to receive individual holiday packages before the holidays. It is also a place where people have come to sit shiva and recite the mourner’s kaddish for their loved ones.
Even though our tent is but a shadow of the Mishkan, our sages teach us that each of the parts of the mishkan must be studied carefully to learn their deep and powerful symbolism and to reflect on how it can be applied to our own spiritual lives.
For example, the verse states: “You shall make the planks of the Mishkan of acacia wood, standing up” (26:15). Rashi explains: “This means that the planks of the Mishkan shall be standing upright along the walls of the Mishkan.”
Rabbi Yitzchak Zilberstein told a story to explain the symbolism of this Rashi.
One time the mohel, Rabbi Shlomo Miller, was walking in an unsettled part of Israel with his rebbe. The rebbe pointed to a young Bedouin boy of around ten years old who was leading a flock of sheep and asked Rabbi Miller if he noticed anything unusual. Rabbi Miller could not figure out what his rebbe had in mind. The rebbe explained: “This young boy is greatly outnumbered by this flock of sheep. How come he doesn’t get down on all fours and walk like a sheep? Instead, he stands upright and all the sheep follow him. This is because he knows he is a boy and not a sheep. He knows that he is not supposed to follow the sheep.” The rebbe continued, “So too, we Jews must always walk upright in our belief in the teachings of the Torah and secure that our path is pure and righteous.”
Rabbi Zilberstein thus explains that we learn from the planks of the Mishkan that we must always be ready to stand upright in support of our beliefs and the values of the Torah (Aleinu Leshabeach, 429-430).
In a year where we ourselves have moved into a tent the symbolism of the Mishkan takes on extra meaning for us.
For me the lesson this year is powerful and profound and relates to three texts that we came across in our daf yomi studies this week.
As part of our daf yomi studies, our tractate cited a Mishnah:
“There were two rods for measuring cubits in the chamber called Shushan the Capital, one in the northeast corner and one in the southeast corner” (Pesachim, 86a, citing Kelim, 17:9).
The Mishnah is telling us that there was a special room in the courtyard of the Beit Hamikdash called the Shushan Habirah room. We know about Shushan Habirah. It appears prominently in the upcoming holiday of Purim. It was the capital of the Persian empire and the seat of Achashverosh’s throne. Why would the Beit Hamikdash have a room dedicated to Shushan Habirah?
The Talmud in Menachot tells us more about the Shushan Habirah chamber:
“The Gemara discusses the depiction of Shushan the capital: We learned in a mishna there (Middot 1:3): One of the five gates of the Temple Mount was the eastern gate upon which Shushan the capital was depicted. The Gemara asks: What is the reason that Shushan the capital was depicted on a gate of the Temple Mount? There is a dispute with regard to this matter between Rav Ḥisda and Rav Yitzḥak bar Avdimi. One said that Shushan was depicted so that those who passed through the gate would know from where it was that they had come back to Jerusalem. The Jews returned once Persia had conquered Babylonia, and therefore they should give thanks to the Persian Empire for releasing them from exile. And one said that it was depicted so that the fear of the Persian Empire would be upon them, to prevent them from rebelling” (Menachos, 98a, with translation and editing from Sefaria).
Rabenu Chananel explains that the Beit Hamikdash had a drawing of Shushan –a symbol their time in exile--in order to remind the Jewish people not to rebel against the King of Persia (commentary to Pesachim, 86a).
There was a prominent mural of Shushan that one encountered upon entering the Beit Hamikdash that served as a reminder not to rebel against Persia. That hardly sounds like redemption. That sounds more like exile. We have to recognize that even when the Second Beit Hamikdash was standing the Jewish people were still very much lacking sovereignty. Redemption was very far from complete.
The message of the Shushan mural in the Beit Hamikdash is that we should not expect redemption to be an all or nothing circumstance. Partial redemption is still a redemption. Complete redemption is actually an impossibility as the only perfection that exits is Gd and all we can aspire for is closeness with Hashem.
Just as we need to realize that when the Beit Hamikdash was standing, we still were missing a complete redemption and we needed to work to achieve that goal, so too, even when our Beit Hamikdash was destroyed and we were sent into exile, we should not view it only as a harsh exile (although it was often harsh and bitter), but also as an incomplete redemption.
The Talmud views our time in exile as purposeful and as a necessary step for complete redemption.
“Rabbi Elazar said: The Holy One, Blessed be He, exiled Israel among the nations, only so that converts would join them, as it is stated: “And I will sow her to Me in the land” (Hosea 2:25). Does a person sow a se’a of grain for any reason other than to bring in several kor of grain during the harvest? So too, the exile is to enable converts from the nations to join the Jewish people” (Pesachim, 87b).
In this passage, the Talmud explicitly states that it is necessary for the Jewish people to leave their Beit Hamikdash in Jerusalem and be scattered around the world in order to gather more converts to the cause of serving Hashem. How, then, can exile be a punishment if it is necessary? Being sent by Hashem outside the land of Israel is less a punishment than a holy mission. Just like Chabad Shluchim travel to the far corners of the world to spread Torah, so to we were sent outside of Israel by Hashem for the purpose of teaching about the message of the Torah to the nations of the world.
The Talmud also offers a second reason for why the Jewish people were scattered amongst the nations of the world. According to this second reason it was a defensive measure to ensure our security, as the following story from the Talmud makes clear:
“Rabbi Oshaya said: What is the meaning of that which is written: “The righteous acts of His rulers [pirzono] in Israel” (Judges 5:11)? The Holy One, Blessed be He, performed a charitable deed toward Israel in that He scattered them [pizran] among the nations; had He exiled them to one place, they could have all been destroyed at once. And this concept is that which a certain apostate said to Rabbi Ḥanina: We gentiles are superior to you Jews in that we have patience. It is written of you: “For Joab and all Israel remained there six months until he had cut off every male in Edom” (I Kings 11:16), whereas we, although you have been with us for several years, are not doing anything to you. He said to him: With your consent, let one student deal with your assertion and answer you. Rabbi Oshaya dealt with his assertion and said to him: This is not a sign of your righteousness but is simply because you do not know how to do it, to destroy us. If you seek to destroy all of the Jewish people, you cannot because they are not all with you in your kingdom. If you destroy only those Jews who are with you in your kingdom, you will be called a severed kingdom for murdering part of its own population. The apostate said to him: I swear by Gappa, god of the Romans, with this problem we lie down and with this problem we rise up, for we are constantly struggling with the dilemma of how to eliminate the Jewish people” (Pesachim, 87b).
In the Talmud’s understanding, the very act of exile is our redemption. While we are in exile we are redeemed because we can gather more people to our faith. And we are redeemed because in some ways we are more safe and secure.
In his introduction to the Book of Shemot, Ramban refers to this book as the Book of Redemption. He writes that “the redemption was not complete until they returned to their proper place.” What is the proper place that Ramban is referring to? Rav Shlomo Wolbe, zt”l, explains:
“We might have understood from Ramban’s statement that the redemption was not complete ‘until they returned to their proper place’ to mean that in order to be considered redeemed, Bnei Yisrael had to enter Eretz Yisrael. However it is clear from his subsequent words that this was not the case…the redemption occurred when Hashem placed his Shechinah upon Bnei Yisrael in the desert” (Rav Wolbe on Chumash, 177).
Redemption occurred while the Bnei Yisrael were still wondering in the wilderness and the Shekhinah rested upon their nomadic tent. The First Beit Hamikdash was built 480 years after the Bnei Yisrael entered the land of Israel and it remained standing only for 420 years. During those 480 years the Jewish people worshipped in the Mishkan. So the redemptive state of the transitory and less secure Mishkan outlasted the more “permanent” Beit Hamikdash. True redemption does not require a permanent Temple. It requires a state of mind and connection to our source. As the Talmud states, each of us can achieve an individual redemption by refraining from sin:
“What is the meaning of that which is written: ‘We whose sons are as plants grown up in their youth; whose daughters are as corner pillars carved after the fashion of a palace’ (Psalms 144:12)? The Gemara interprets each phrase of this verse: ‘We whose sons are as plants” indicates they are healthy and undamaged; these are the young men of Israel who have not tasted the taste of sin. ‘Whose daughters are as corner pillars’ indicates that they are sealed; these are the virgins of Israel, who seal their openings exclusively for their husbands. ‘Carved after the fashion of a palace’; the verse ascribes to both these and those, the young men and women who vigilantly preserve their modesty, as though the Sanctuary were built in their days” (Pesachim, 87a).
Every moment of our life holds a possibility for redemption. Many of us are longing for the day when we can reenter the comforts of our synagogue building and daven and sing together as a larger community. I too share that longing. But in the meantime, let us all appreciate whatever situation we currently are in. Where ever we are, no matter the situation, we all have the ability to achieve a redemption on some level “as though the Sanctuary were built” in our days. From being cast outside our shul into our tent, we have learned that even our tent can give us many possibilities for moments of redemption. Let us be aware of the many opportunities for redemption that are around us at all times.
Shmuel Herzfeld
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