Parshas Terumah

BS"D

This week's Torah Portion is Parshas Terumah (literally "offering", from the verse which reads, "The Lord spoke to Moses saying: Speak to the children of Israel, and have them take for Me an offering; from every person whose heart inspires him to generosity, you shall take My offering" (Exodus 25:1-2)), which speaks of the building of the Tabernacle in the Desert, and the Temple in Jerusalem. Specifically, this parsha includes the commandment to build the Temple, when the verse states "And they shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell in their midst" (Ibid 25:8). About this Commandment, the commentators ask a simple question: Why does it state that Hashem will dwell amongst the Jewish people ("in their midst") and not in the Temple (i.e. "and I will dwell within IT")? One answer given is that the Torah is teaching us that each Jew is himself a Holy Temple and that within his Temple Hashem dwells. This corresponds to the famous Chassidic teaching that each Jew has within him an actual piece of Hashem, which is the Jew's soul. From this perspective we can now understand one of the the more perplexing aspects of Modern Jewery: The Torah speaks at length about various services and activities to be performed in the Holy Temple, from animal sacrifices, to the burning of Inscense, to the lighting of the Menorah, to the Showbreads, etc. Nowadays, however, we have no Temple, so what use are these hundreds of verses in the Torah to me now? Comes the verse and tells us, "Make of yourself a Temple and I will dwell within you", teaching us that each of the services performed in the Holy Temple have a corresponding "service" that we can and must apply in our daily lives. For example, we read in the parsha this week, that Moshe instructed the Jewish people to bring "gold, silver, and bronze" (in this order) for the building of the Tabernacle. Seemingly the order should be reversed: first (like an auction) he should ask for the least valuable (bronze), which even the poorest amongst the Jewish people could contribute, and then move to silver, and finally gold, which only the wealthiest could offer. What can we learn from this when it comes to the service of our "personal Temple"? A person might look at the Torah or at the mitzvos and think to themselves, "613 mitzvos, what a burden, surely this is only for very holy people! For a simple person like me Rosh Hoshana, Yom Kippur, and and matzah on Pesach is OK". Comes the Torah and tells us, FIRST BRING GOLD! Shoot for the moon! If we want to light shabbos candles or put on tefillin, we don't have to first do once/month, and then every other week, and then a year or two down the line we can be ready to light every week or put on tefillin every day, rather we have the ability to make a commitment and right away "bring gold"! In this way each mitzvah that we do will not only reveal that which dwells inside, but will also bring about blessings of wealth in the simplest meaning, that each of us should literally have gold to offer for the building of the Third Temple, may it be speedily in our days.