Follow Your Heart

With so many details, so many materials, and so many measurements, the 21st century Jew has to ask, “Where do I fit in to Parshat Terumah?” The endless instructions for building the Bet Hamikdash are somewhat overwhelming, but the parsha’s first pasuk is key to finding yourself amongst the construction:
“… they shall take to Me a portion, from every man whose heart wills him, you shall take My portion” (Exodus 25:1)

His heart? What on earth does this have to do with one’s heart? After all, the service done in the Bet Hamikdash seems so… ceremonial and material oriented. And yet, part of the mitzvah in donating to this place is of an emotional nature. A few psukim later, the Torah says something else puzzling:
"They shall make a sanctuary for Me, so that I may dwell among them. According to what I will show you, after the form of the Tabernacle and the form of all its vessels, and so shall you do." (Exodus 25:8)

Why doesn’t the Torah say “among IT” if it’s referring to the sanctuary? The gemara says that the Torah specifies “them” to mean the people themselves, the people of every generation. Does this mean we are violating a major mitzvah de’oraita (from the written Torah)? How can we possibly observe this mitzvah today?

Each one of us is a Bet Hamikdash.

Just like the temple was a multilayered building, a physical place that housed the essence of the spiritual reality, our bodies house our Neshamot. The korbanot (sacrifices), songs, and services performed in the Bet Hamikdash were the ways in which the Jews served Hashem and nurtured their relationships with Him. For us, it is through our actions, the melacha of daily life that we nurture our neshamot (our holy of holies) and serve Hashem. This is both an internal and an external mitzvah. This service cannot be “faked” or only carried out through the mitzvot parallel to the actions that were done in the bet hamikdash, this service must be felt. Strange that a commandment is demanding of how we feel, but similar to teshuvah, our hearts are essential to the completion of this mitzvah.

Rabbi Akiva Tatz says that there are two ways to kill your neshama. You can destroy it by poisoning yourself with mitzvot lo ta-aseh (negative mitzvot), or you can starve it by not doing mitzvot aseh (positive mitzvot)… both aspects are key to serving Hashem in your own personal Bet Hamikdash today. You cannot connect to Hashem by simply not doing anything wrong. The Bet Hamikdash was a place of activity, people literally traveled days to reach the temple in order to serve Hashem. It was a tangible reminder that Hashem’s presence in the physical world is constant. Today, our work is really cut out for us because our awareness of Him is completely dependant on our own actions.

The Kabbalah explains that between Ein Sof (Hashem himself) to the world and reality that we live in, there are many different worlds. Each one becomes less and less transparently spiritual, with more and more layers of physicality masking it. By our world, Hashem is almost entirely hidden (Olam, the word for “world” has the same soresh as “ne-elam” meaning hidden). But He is just as present in this world as the others. Only the layers which cloak him are thicker and harder to peel away. The poet Raphael Simon wrote, "To fall in love with God is the greatest of all romances; To seek him, the greatest adventure; To find him, the greatest human achievement."

That is our mission, and our challenge. Each person does this in his or her own way, and anyone else’s journey would not satisfy another’s. It is both an incredibly personal and private experience, as well as a communal one which cannot be completed without every single person together. In the Bet Hamikdash each individual was responsible for bringing their own sacrifices during the year, but come Yom Kippur, the Kohen Gadol entered the Holy of Holies, and he alone begged for forgiveness on behalf of the entire nation. The risk was death. Today we must each straddle the same line between worshipping Hashem through our individual temples (our bodies and neshamot), and accepting the fact that we are not complete as individuals without the Bet Hamikdash.

May we all open our hearts in order to receive Hashem’s love, and in order to give Him our own. I hope to see everyone in The Bet Hamikdash any day now… Shabbat Shalom!