A.
וידבר ד' אל משה לאמר: דבר אל בני ישראל ויקחו לי תרומה מאת כל איש אשר ידבנו לבו תקחו את תרומתי: וזאת התרומה אשר תקחו מאתם וגו' (“And Ha-Shem spoke to Moshe, to say: Speak to the bënei Yisra’él, and they will take for Me a donation [tëruma]; from each man as his heart moves him shall you take My tëruma. And this is the tëruma which you will take from them....”). So begins our parasha.
After enumerating the various materials of which the tëruma was to consist, G-d goes on to say, ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם: (“And they will make for Me a sanctuary [miqdash] and I shall dwell [vë-shachanti] in their midst”; XXV, 8). He then proceeds to detail the various accoutrements with which the Mishkan (from the same root as shachanti, the tent which would serve as the miqdash until the permanent structure was raised by King Shëlomo in Yërushalayim) was to be furnished: The aron qodesh which would house the tablets (10-22); the shulhan, on which the lehem ha-panim would be displayed (23-30); the mënora (31-40), and only thereafter the Mishkan itself.
Hazal record that Bëtzal’él ben Uri, who would be commissioned to supervise all this work, questioned this sequence: כלים שאני עושה להיכן אכניסם שמא כך אמר לך הקב"ה עשה משכן ארון וכלים אמר לו שמא בצל א-ל היית וידעת (“The items which I am making, where shall I put them? Perhaps the Holy One, Blessed is He, said to you, ‘Make a Mishkan, an aron, etc.?' [Moshe] told him, 'Perhaps you were in G-d’s shadow [the literal meaning of the name Bëtzal’él], and you know!'”; ברכות נ"ה.).
This peculiar passage raises several questions: First off, Moshe was the chief of the prophets and teacher of all Israel: How was it, then that he apparently reversed the order in which G-d told him that the work should be done? More than that: What precisely was the point of Bëtzal’él’s objection? What did it matter what the order in which things were to be made was? Surely Bëtzal’él could have made the various items and stored them in some other tent until the Mishkan was erected!
B.
What follows is based on a beautiful insight of the ‘Arvei Nahal.
We begin by citing a comment of the Alsheich on Song of Songs III, 9: אפריון עשה לו המלך שלמה מעצי הלבנון (“A pavilion did King Shëlomo make for Him of the trees of Lebanon”). As Rashi ad loc. makes clear, the reference is to the miqdash of which Ha-Shem spoke in the passage from our parasha, and this prompts the Alsheich to ask: Why, precisely, does the Al-Mighty require any sort of building li-shkon sham Shëchinatho, so that His Presence might dwell there? Is it not that case, as we read, that השמים ושמי השמים לא יכלכלהו (“The heavens and heavens of the heavens do not contain Him”; II Chronicles II, 5 )?
He answers by noting that every single member of Israel responded to the call for dona-tions with great love, reverence, and heartfelt willingness. These, he goes on to say, are the choicest and noblest of human qualities, and are what underlie the essential sanctity of the Jewish soul, וידוע כי בהיות אדם מקדש עצמו במדות אלה ממשיך בזה על עצמו השראת שכינה כי השי"ת אוהב מדות אלה (“and it is known that when a person sanctifies himself by [developing] these qualities, he draws down in this manner on himself an infusion of the Divine Presence [Shëchina], for Ha-Shem loves these qualities”).
However, the sacred capacity of a single individual cannot be compared to the collective capacity of a large number of people to draw down an infusion of the Shëchina, and in this lies the basic purpose of the tërumoth for the Mishkan and. later, the Béyth ha-Miq-dash: To serve as the focal point for the enthusiastic devotion of each and every individual member of Israel, a great capacitor or (to use an older term) condenser, concentrating the individual inputs so as to maximise the potential for gilluy Shëchina, the revelation of G-d’s Presence in this world.
C.
‘Ad kan the Alsheich. The ‘Arvei Nahal continues: והנה נודע כי בה"מ הוא ציור כל העולמות וידוע גם כן כי האדם גופו עולם קטן וכן נפשו כלול מכל העולמות כו' ואומר אני כי מבואר בזה"ק כי בה"מ הוא לבו של עולם ואמצעותו כו' והוא החיות של כל העולם כלב שהוא חיות כל הגוף (“and it is known that the Béyth ha-Miqdash is a representation of all the realms of the cosmos, and it is also known that a human being is himself a microcosmos, and that his soul is comprised of all the worlds... and I say that the holy Zohar explains that the Béyth ha-Miqdash is the heart of the universe and its center... and is the [source of] the entire universe’s vitality, as the heart is the [source of] the vitality of the entire body....”).
The heart circulates blood through all of the constituent limbs and organs of the body, bringing sustenance and necessary nutrients to those various limbs and organs, which blood then returns to the heart, bringing fresh materials. such as oxygen from the lungs, nutrients from the digestive system, and so on, through the heart to be redistributed throughout the body, making it stronger. There is, in short, a feed-back loop in operation between the heart and the rest of the body through the blood.
Like the physical feed-back loop, there is a parallel metaphysical one. Hazal note that there is a one-to-one correspondence between each of the 613 mitzvoth and the limbs and organs of the human body as they count and describe them, a fact to which, e.g., King David alludes as well כל עצמתי תאמרנה ד' מי כמוך וגו' (“All my bones say, Ha-Shem who is like You....”; Psalms XXXV, 10). As each limb performs its mitzva, the metaphysical energy flows back to the heart, whence it is recirculated back to the limbs, invigorating them and making them stronger and more able to do yet more mitzvoth. This is what Hazal mean when they declare, שמצוה גוררת מצוה, “that a mitzva draws [in its wake another] mitzva”;אבות פ"ד מ"ב).
The very same analogy applies to the relationship between Israel and the Béyth ha-Miq-dash at our national center: It serves to gather and concentrate the collective qëdusha of all of the individual mitzvoth being performed, which is then redistributed amongst the nation as a whole, strengthening each individual, raising him to a higher and more capable level than where he started.
But this gives rise to a “chicken and egg” sort of question: How does the feed-back loop get started? Does it begin with the individual inputs which are sent to the heart, or does it begin with the hith‘orëruth, the initial stimulus of the heart to the constituent members?
Hazal address this question in several places (עיי' למשל סוטה מ"ה: ויומא נ"ד: בין השאר), in which they discuss, e.g., whether a fetus starts its development from an external limb or from its center, or whether the universe was created from it centre outward or from the periphery inward; in all cases, there are Tanna’im on both sides of the question.
The ‘Arvei Nahal says in the name of the Arizal that both answers are correct, and explains himself in this way: There are great tzaddiqim, yëhidei sëgula, precious, treasured individuals, who possess love and reverence and heartfelt willingness to such a vast degree that they are, as it were, self-starters; they perform mitzvoth with such a degree of dedication that they influence events. Hazal say of such giants, צדיקים לבם ברשותם (“the hearts of tzaddiqim are in their control”; בראשית רבה פל"ד סי' י"א). And then there are the rest of us, who also basically wish to be ‘avdei Ha-Shem, but who require some impetus, some inspiration and initiative to get us going. We need the hith‘orëruth ha-lév, that initial stimulus of the heart to get our “limbs” into action.
D.
If we now re-examine our parasha’s initial passage, we shall find that it quite clearly reflects this dichotomy: “Speak to the bënei Yisra’él and they will take for Me tëruma...” As Rashi explains, הפרשה יפרישו לי מממונם נדבה (“A separation will they make for Me from their wealth [as a] gift”); this is the “general” or “collective” tëruma. It then goes on to say: “...from each man as his heart moves him...,” the sacred “donation” of Israel’s collective sanctity is gathered at its “heart,” at the Béyth ha-Miqdash to which it is directed, and is then redistributed, to move and inspire yet more sanctity. “And this is the tëruma which you will take from them....” – these individual efforts are again gathered, condensed, and redistributed in the feed-back loop to generate yet more sanctity, and so it goes on.
This, then, is the difference between Moshe’s vision and Bëtzal’él’s; precisely because he stood at the pinnacle of human potential, Moshe viewed reality from the standpoint of those relatively rare tzaddiqim whose “hearts are in their grasp”; he saw the individual objects, the mitzvoth which those unique individuals would provide which would then be gathered into the Mishkan.
Bëtzal’él, surely also a tzaddiq, was nonetheless not on Moshe’s level. A bit closer to the rest of the people, he saw the need for the “heart,” the collected, concentrated qëdusha of the Mishkan to inspire and motivate all of the furniture with which it would ten be filled.
And Moshe readily saw his point, and readily admitted that he was right, concerning all the rest of us.
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