Completing Ourselves: The Pain That Brings the Shechinah

1“And it was on the eighth day that Moshe called …”¹ This was the day the Mishkan was set up for good, after the seven days of the inauguration. The Gemara says that wherever the Torah says vayehi, “and it was,” it speaks of nothing but distress.² The Gemara then challenges this from our verse, “And it was on the eighth day,” for that was a day of joy: a Baraisa, a teaching from the time of the Mishnah, says: “That day there was joy before Him like the day on which heaven and earth were created.” We must also understand the comparison itself. What does the day the Mishkan was set up have in common with the day heaven and earth were created?

2A few verses later the Torah says: “Moshe said, ‘This is the thing that Hashem commanded you to do, and the glory of Hashem will appear to you.’”³ The commentators, among them the Kli Yakar, point out that the whole verse seems unnecessary.⁴ Moshe had already commanded them about the offerings. What does this verse add? It speaks of a further command, “that Hashem commanded you to do,” but what more was there for them to do?

3The Midrash says: “What is ‘this is the thing’? It refers to milah, circumcision, as it says, ‘This is the thing for which Yehoshua circumcised.’”⁵ The holy Ohr HaChaim calls the Midrash's words “closed and sealed,” beyond our understanding.⁶ Did Moshe circumcise them that day? Did he command them about circumcision that day? If he did neither, what does the mitzvah of milah have to do with the inauguration of the Mishkan?

4Toras Kohanim, Chazal's early Midrash on Vayikra, explains the verse this way: “Moshe said to Israel: Remove that yetzer hara from your hearts, and let all of you be of one fear and one counsel in serving the Omnipresent … If you have done so, ‘the glory of Hashem will appear to you.’”⁷ What do these words mean?

5My holy father and teacher, zt"l, said in the name of the holy Rebbe of Kotzk, zt"l: Bnei Yisrael brought the offerings to be sacrificed. They prepared themselves and gave careful thought to how they should stand so that they would be “before Hashem,” for they longed to attain the high spiritual levels that standing “before Hashem” implies. When Moshe looked into the intention behind what they were doing, he told them, “This is the thing that Hashem commanded you to do”: remove the yetzer hara from your hearts, and then “the glory of Hashem will appear to you,” and the levels will come of themselves. Those are his holy words. My holy father explained this teaching: right after Bnei Yisrael had been granted atonement for the sin of the Golden Calf, they wanted to reach lofty heights at once, even before doing the mitzvos. So Moshe told them that this is not the way: one must serve Hashem not in order to be raised to higher levels, but to do the mitzvos for the sake of their Maker, and then “the glory of Hashem will appear to you.” This is the meaning of “Remove that yetzer hara from your hearts”: they should serve Hashem not for the sake of spiritual insights and attainments, but because Hashem commanded it. That is the gist of his holy words.

6To understand all this, let us first cite what my holy ancestor of Ostrova, zy"a, wrote in his holy sefer Toldos Adam on the verse “And it was on the eighth day.”⁸ As long as a person is not complete in his middos, his character traits, he does not feel what he lacks in avodas Hashem, the service of Hashem. Only once he has been privileged to repair himself does he begin to see how low he stands in that service, and it pains him. That is why, during the seven days of the inauguration, when the service was not yet complete, they did not yet see what they lacked. Chazal tell us that each day they set up the Mishkan and took it apart,⁹ which proves that they had not yet reached completeness. But on the eighth day, when they were privileged to set up the Mishkan for good and had already attained some levels, they began to feel how much they lacked in avodas Hashem. That is why the verse says vayehi, the word of distress. Then, through the humility [that this pain brought them,] the Shechinah could rest in the Mishkan.

7Now we can explain the comparison between the day the Mishkan was set up and the day heaven and earth were created. The world and man were created for the sake of repair: to complete what is lacking. The beings on high are already complete and need no repair, as Moshe Rabbeinu said to the ministering angels, “Is there jealousy among you?”¹⁰ Only here below, in this world, is there anything to repair. On the day of the Mishkan, Bnei Yisrael came to understand that they must repair and complete themselves, and that understanding matches the very purpose for which the world was created.

8aIn the same way we can explain the Midrash's words “‘This is the thing’ refers to milah.” We know the story Chazal tell of Turnus Rufus, the Roman governor of Judea. He asked R' Akiva, “Why do you circumcise?” R' Akiva brought him stalks of wheat and fine loaves of bread. The wicked Turnus Rufus said to him, “If Hashem wants circumcision, why does the child not come out of his mother's womb circumcised?” R' Akiva answered, “And why does his umbilical cord come out with him, hanging from his belly, so that his mother has to cut it? As for your question, why he is not born circumcised: it is because the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the mitzvos only to refine man.”¹¹

8bThe holy sefarim, the Maharal in his Tiferes Yisrael and the Divrei Binah, explain this.¹² Man, the work of the Holy One's hands and the choicest of the lower creatures, is created lacking, and he becomes complete only through his own deeds: it is through the mitzvos of the Torah that he reaches completion. R' Akiva proved this to Turnus Rufus from wheat, a product of nature, which remains incomplete until man completes it. He brought further proof from the newborn infant, whose umbilical cord the mother must cut. This shows that nature on its own lacks completeness, and that is why the child is born with a foreskin: the work of nature is not finished. Hashem meant to show by this that from the moment a person is created he must begin to repair himself, all the days of his life, for this, as we said, is man's task in this world. When the Mishkan was set up, Bnei Yisrael grasped that they must complete their souls, and that is what the verse means by “This is the thing that Hashem commanded you to do.” The mitzvah of milah teaches the same lesson: a person comes into the world in order to complete his soul.

9[¹³Milah shows that nothing in this world is complete, and so, right after we are created, we must begin to complete ourselves. Milah also shows that creation is completed through the power of Shabbos, which is why it is performed on the eighth day. The Zohar explains that milah is done at eight days so that the child will have lived through a Shabbos,¹⁴ for creation is completed on Shabbos, and through that day everything reaches its completion. Now the connection between setting up the Mishkan and the mitzvah of milah is clear. Both fall on the eighth day for the same reason: their completeness comes through Shabbos. This is so of milah, as we have just seen, and of the eighth day of the inauguration, which fell on the first day of the week. Chazal say that one of the “crowns,” the distinctions, that this day received was that it was the first day of the week, the day on which the work of creation began.¹⁵ So the seven days of the inauguration ran from Sunday to Shabbos, and on that Shabbos the work of the Mishkan was completed, by the same power that completes creation.]

10aAlong these lines we can explain the words of Toras Kohanim, that Moshe told Bnei Yisrael to remove the yetzer hara from their hearts and to be united. The holy sefer Maor VaShemesh, by R' Kalonymus Kalman Epstein of Krakow, explains why people travel to the tzaddik. These are its words:¹⁶ “When each one is in his own home, ‘every way of a man is right in his own eyes.’ He considers himself a great scholar, a chassid and a man of fine middos, because he does not see the slightest fault in himself. His yetzer is stronger than he is, and he grows ever greater in his own eyes, until he thinks himself very great indeed. It is different when he joins the gathering around the tzaddik. Then he is brought down to utter lowliness, for at the tzaddik's side he finds people who fear Heaven, people of integrity, great in Torah and mitzvos. Some are younger than he is and toil in avodas Hashem; some are elders advanced in years … When he sees all of them with open eyes, then even if his heart is a heart of stone, it will melt within him and break into twelve pieces before each and every one of them.” Those are his holy words.

10bWhat emerges from the words of the Maor VaShemesh is that when a person sits at home, he does not see what he lacks. But when he comes to the tzaddik and sees the tzaddik's service, and sees many people busy with Torah and mitzvos who have reached high levels, his heart breaks and he feels what he lacks. This is what Moshe meant when he said, “Remove that yetzer hara from your hearts, and let all of you be in fear and in love.”¹⁷ [The yetzer that makes a person great in his own eyes falls away when he stands among others.] These words point to unity and to the love of friends for one another, through which great levels can be reached. We learn this from the Mishkan, which was a place where friends gathered to serve Hashem together.

11[¹⁸This is the meaning of the verse “Who will ascend the mountain of Hashem, and who will stand in His holy place?”¹⁹ One who is privileged to ascend the mountain of Hashem feels that he lacks much holiness, and that he cannot stay standing there without rising higher and higher in his service. That is “and who will stand in His holy place?” This is also what Chazal meant: “The way of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like the way of flesh and blood. With flesh and blood, an empty vessel holds and a full one does not hold. But with the Holy One it is not so: a full vessel holds, and an empty vessel does not hold.”²⁰ That is: once a person has become a full vessel, filled with avodas Hashem, he begins to feel how much he still lacks and that he must go on filling the vessel. May Hashem grant that we always serve Him in this way, and so complete our souls and bring the redemption near.]

12May the Holy One, blessed be He, help us to be truly united, serving Hashem together with others in the bond of friendship. Especially in these days of Sefiras HaOmer, the counting of the Omer, which are days for correcting our middos, we must strengthen ourselves in this. In this way we will prepare ourselves to receive the Torah and be privileged to see the redemption, as Chazal said: “Israel will not be redeemed until they form one band.”²¹ Amen, may it be His will.