YOU SHALL MAKE A MENORAH OF PURE GOLD; THE MENORAH SHALL BE MADE OF HAMMERED WORK; ITS BASE AND ITS SHAFT, ITS CUPS, CALYXES, AND PETALS SHALL BE OF ONE PIECE... MAKE ITS SEVEN LAMPS - ITS LAMPS SHALL BE SO MOUNTED AS TO GIVE THE LIGHT ON ITS FRONT SIDE.

(Shemot 25:31, 37)

 

to give the light on its front side - fashion the six lamps which are at the tops of the shafts which come out of its sides so that they face inwards, in order that when you light the lamps they shall give light on its front side; their light is turned towards the central shaft, which is the body of the Menorah.

(Rashi Shemot 25:37)

 

...He further commanded that the Menorah be placed there. Everyone agrees that it alludes to the light of learning and knowledge, and I have already written that the Ark alludes to the wisdom of the Torah and of prophecy, which is the wisdom that comes only by the appearance of God in revelation. The Menorah, in contrast, alluded to that which a person can learn on his own, understanding gained through the power of his own intelligence. That is the difference between wisdom and understanding. The wisdom of Torah does not reside in the angelic realm; they [the angels] asked for the Torah but it was not given to them. Rather it is found in those who are naturally endowed with intelligence and understanding, and they emanate intelligence and understanding of this sort to human beings...the fruit of this understanding are the seven sciences which humans invented using their own minds. It was represented by the seven shafts which allude to the light of intellect, all of which faced the central lamp, which was the divine wisdom...

(Malbim, Rimzei HaMishkan Shemot 25:37)

 

 

God's Room

Nahem Ilan

What degree of precision is it possible and proper to attain in the comparison between a parable and that to which it alludes? How correct is it to set up a close and exacting comparison between them? Does the deep message lie in their similarities or in teir differences? Where does the darshan achieve his most focused expression - in the parable or in its explication? These and other questions arise whenever an idea is not expressed directly, but rather "clothed" in parable form. The beginning of Midrash Rabbah for parashat Terumah offers a powerful stimulus for the clarification of these issues.

While discussing the verse, you shall accept gifts for Me (Shemot 25:2), the midrash says:

...is there something, which when one sells it, he himself is sold with it?

The Holy One blessed be He told Israel:

I sold you My Torah, it is as if I were sold together with it, for it is said you shall accept gifts for Me.

It is like the [story of the] king who had but a single daughter.

One of the kings came and took her.

He asked to return to his land, taking his wife with him.

He [the father] told him: "I gave you my daughter, she is my only child. I cannot separate myself from her, yet I cannot tell you 'Do not take her,' for she is your wife. Just do me one favor - everywhere you go build a small room for me, so that I can live with you, for I cannot leave my daughter."

So said the Holy One blessed be He to Israel: "I gave you the Torah. I cannot separate Myself from it, neither can I ell you 'Do not take it.' But everywhere you go, make Me one house to live in, as it is said and make Me a sanctuary (Shemot 25:8). (33:1, pg. 89 in the Merkin edition)

The parallels can already be established in the first reading: God - the father; Torah - the daughter/bride; Israel - the groom. If so:

1) There is a "genetic" connection between the Holy One blessed be He and the Torah. The Torah is represented as God's direct descendant, and a father-daughter relation holds between them. The Torah is, then, an independent entity. In contemporary parlance, one might say that the Torah has an independent personality and existence.

2) An erotic relationship exists between Israel and the Torah, like the connection between man and wife. This image also assumes that each of the participants in the relationship has his or her own independent existence and autonomous personality. Their life together results from a willed decision, and it does not cancel the uniqueness and independent existence that they each maintain as individuals.

3) It would at least appear that even if God were not present the Torah would still enjoy a certain status and value, and that some basis for its observance by Israel would remain. The father might be left without a room, and in any case, his room would merely be an appendage to the home.

4) The Tabernacle - and years later, the Temple - do not fulfill a human need but rather a divine need; it is a human gesture of compassion for Gods "weakness'!

5) In any case, the Tabernacle (and afterwards, the Temple) is not an essential, and it is certainly not a central component in the relationship between Israel and the Torah. Rather, it is an expression of the close yet separate presence of the father/God.

Did the darshan really have all of these consequences in mind when he related his parable? It seems quite doubtful. It is, of course, possible to claim that this derasha should be treated as is any other literary creation; the moment it is published it anyone can interpret it as he wishes, and no particular reading can be deemed "truer" than the others. It is possible to continue in this spirit and claim that the writer himself is not always aware of all the deep meanings that lie hidden in his own works. The deepest inner meanings are often those which are not known consciously to the writer, as is alluded to by the expression, "The heart did not reveal it to the mouth."

On the other hand, the consequences listed above may produce some degree of consternation. Is that due to the consequences, or to he who draws them? In other words: do the defects, the confusions, the distortions or the deflections belong to the conclusions and the way they were derived, or do they belong to the spiritual world of he who draws the conclusions - the listener or reader? I will leave this question to the side for the moment.

The parable serves more than one function for those who use it; I shall mention the two which seem to me the most basic:

1) The parable serves as an illustration, it helps making a point intelligible. In such a case, the explanation contains more than the parable, and an overly detailed comparison of a parable with its explanation will damage and coarsen the latter. The general idea of the parable, and not its details, is of the essence.

2) The parable is a medium for the veiled and allusive expression of ideas that the author wants to avoid setting out directly and explicitly. He might employ a parable because the ideas he wishes to express are complex, abstract, or overly charged. In that case, the parable contains more than it would seem to on a first reading. The parable offers the end of a thread which the reader or audience can follow as far as they wish. Such a parable allows us to peek into its author's inner world. It does not give us an uncomplicated or straightforward view of his world, and that is exactly its principle value.

The parable with which I began this discussion can be interpreted along at least three different lines:

1) It comes to symbolize and make concrete both how vital the Tabernacle is as well as the unmediated nature of the relationship between God and Torah.

2) It comes to warn us against attributing exaggerating significance to the Tabernacle, to the Temple, and to ritual objects in general. In hindsight, it is clear that this is a real danger in religious life, as cults of the dead and their graves - currently so popular - demonstrate.

3) It can elicit thoughts of the possibility of finding significance in the Torah even if God were not present, and perhaps even if He were missing from the world of the "husband." This interpretation would seem to be obviously wrong, since God's words and deeds are founding every page of the Torah. Then what? I would cautiously suggest that the author of the parable holds that a reciprocal and equal relationship between Israel and the Torah remains possible even when God is not present. This interpretation even seems to be supported by history. Justice, equality, sensitivity to the rights of the weak, consideration for the motives behind transgressions, and most importantly, consciousness of the responsibility that is demanded from every adult - all of these are values that have long been adopted by many societies whose world views have been shaped by scriptural foundations, even though those societies do not belong to the Jewish People.

This line of thought finds expression in other derashot that are unconnected to the one presently under discussion. I shall cite but one of them:

R. Huna and R. Yirmiyah said in the name of R. Hiya bar Abba: It is written, they left me and did not observe My Torah (Jeremiah 16:11) - would that they had left Me and observed My Torah! Being occupied with it, its "leaven" would have rehabilitated them. (Eikhah Rabbah, Buber edition Petihta 2, pp. 2-3; J. Hagiga 1:7 or page 3 line 780 in the Academy for the Hebrew Language edition)

This datum teaches us that the Sages entertained the idea that the Torah can have value even in the absence of a connection to God was present, and that idea was not the opinion of a lone darshan. Its documentation in a group of mutually independent midrashim and in the Jerusalem Talmud shows that the editors of those books did not find anything unacceptable or shameful in it that would have otherwise led them to edit it out.

It turns out that our parable inspires quite a bit of interpretive creativity. The nature of its inspiration and the directions it takes are a matter that every one must determine for himself: it can teach something about the darshan, about his views and rhetorical gifts. It can, at the same time, show us things about the reader, about the daring or lack of such that he brings to the literary and philosophical adventure offered by the parable, as well as to the challenge offered by the Torah.

Prof. Nahem Ilan teaches in the MA program in Jewish Studies at the Lander Institute in Jerusalem (belonging to Touro College)

 

Make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them - not in it, but among them

It does not say that I may dwell in it, but rather among them, in order to teach that the Shekhinah [Divine Presence] does not rest upon the Sanctuary because of the Sanctuary, but rather because of Israel - for the Temple of the Lord are these [these good ways mentioned in the previous verse] (Jeremiah 7:4).

(Tzeidah La-Derekh as quoted in Prof. Nechamah Leibowitz's Iyyunim be-Sefer Shemot, p. 353)

 

He commanded each person to build the chambers of his heart into a temple, that he should prepare himself to be a tabernacle for God and a fortress for His mightiness to dwell in, and also an alter on which to offer up all the parts of his soul, until he devotes his soul to His glory at all times.

(Malbim Shemot 25:8)

 

If you follow my laws (Vayikrah 26:3)... I will establish My abode in your midst (26: 11). If we meditate upon these verses, two things will become clear to us as absolute certainties:

1. The meaning of that I may dwell among them goes way beyond the mere indwelling of the Shekhinah in the Tabernacle. In reality, it refers to God's immanent closeness to us that came with the fulfillment of the covenant between Him and Israel, the closeness which is revealed when His protection and blessing influence the flowering of life for the individual and collective.

2. That being said, the building of the Tabernacle and its pains-taking maintenance do not lead God to allow His Shekhinah, His protection, or His blessing to rest upon us. Rather, this results from the sanctification of every aspect of our private and public lives for the sake of keeping His commandments. This was not demonstrated only by the historical events of the destruction of the Sanctuary at Shilo, and of the two Temples in Jerusalem; Scripture itself speaks of it clearly and with explicit warnings... In any case, Scripture proclaims that I may dwell among them will occur in the wake of let them make Me a sanctuary. Therefore, the sanctuary is but an expression of the more general role whose fulfillment is the condition for the indwelling of the Shekhinah in Israel to be assured.

(R. Samson Raphael Hirsch on Shemot 25: 3-8)

 

After having taken the laws and teachings upon themselves, and the Lord was King in Jeshurun, it was proper for them to make Him a sanctuary, as if their King lived in their midst, for that would be a strong factor to preserve national and national adherence to the Torah. Even though it had not yet been decreed that they tarry forty years in the wilderness God did not want them to postpone construction of a Temple until they conquered and divided the land and a place was chosen to serve as the center of the kingdom. And so, He commanded them to make a portable Tabernacle that they could continue to erect in the land wherever they wanted according to the needs of the hour. That Tabernacle served for four hundred and eighty years until the Temple was built in Solomon's days (I Kings 6:1).

(ShaDaL on Shemot 25:1)

 

Make Me a sanctuary and I may dwell among them (Shemot 25:8). It should have said [and I may dwell] in it. But it says dwell among them because every person is required to create a Sanctuary; and this [obligation] is always in practice. The Zohar writes of tefillin, which are the secret of the Divine Chariot, that when a man dons them he becomes the Sanctuary, and that a person should purify himself and all of his limbs, and then he takes on the form of a Tabernacle and sanctuary.

(Sefer HaShLaH by R. Yishayahu Horowitz, Massekhet Ta'anit 28)

 

The plain understanding is that as soon as Israel said we shall perform and hear they had accepted the Torah in their hearts and with such willing spirits that they mentioned performance before hearing. Immediately, the Holy One blessed be He said accept gifts for Me, etc., i.e., to make a Sanctuary, as is written later, Make Me a sanctuary and I may dwell among them. In their hearts these are the Temple of the Lord (Jeremiah 7:4), and they merited that their hearts would be under their own control...

(Yitav Panim part two, 12b)

 

Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotzk would say: The Divine Presence is found in every place it is allowed to enter...

 

Life, Death, and Holiness Are In the Power of the Tongue

The sin of language is one of speech, not of thought. It [the priest's robe] had pomegranates and bells [on the hem] - which made sounds - to atone for the tongue which is in the mouth, similar to the clapper inside the bell, and the atonement for speech is that one no longer break his pledge and should speak only of holy matters, as is written: And his voice will be heard when he enters the sanctuary, and he will not die, because lashon ha-ra - slanderous speech - kills three (Arakhin 15). From this we derive that one who is careful not to speak slanderously will be spared death, as in the story of the vendor who used to announce "Who wants to buy the elixir of life, etc."

(Kli Yakar, Shemot 28:31)

 

Regarding the Tabernacle, it is written (Shemot 25) Gold and silver and copper, no iron whatever was used; regarding the Temple it is written: no hammer or ax or any iron tool was heard in the House while it was being built. Iron was used for the making of the sword, which destroys the world, but the Temple preserves the world.

(Rabeinu Bahayey, Bereishit 27:40)

 

 

 

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