A Dwelling for Hashem in Everyday Life

1“Speak to Bnei Yisrael, and let them take for Me an offering.”¹ The Midrash teaches: “This is what is written, ‘For I have given you a good lekach; do not forsake My Torah …’² The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel: I sold you My Torah, and, as it were, I was sold along with it, as it says, ‘and let them take for Me an offering.’³ It is like a king who had an only daughter. Another king came and married her, and wanted to return to his own land … So the Holy One said to Israel: I have given you the Torah. I cannot part from it, and I cannot tell you not to take it. Rather, wherever you go, make Me one small room where I may dwell, as it says, ‘And they shall make Me a Mikdash.’”⁴ But surely “the whole earth is full of His glory,” and, as the Tikkunei Zohar says, “there is no place empty of Him.”⁵ How, then, can one speak of Hashem “parting” from a gift He has given, so that He would need one small room to dwell in?

2The commentators, the Alshich and the Kli Yakar, raise a further question on the verse “And they shall make Me a Mikdash, and I will dwell among them.”⁶ They look closely at the words “among them.” Since the Shechinah rested in the Mishkan, the verse should have said “within it.”

3We may explain this as follows. The proper way is to have Hashem's Name in mind not only when we are engaged in Torah and mitzvos, learning and doing them for their own sake. Even when we are busy with permitted, everyday matters, with all the needs and affairs of human life, we must direct these too to the honor of His Name. The Shulchan Aruch explains this on the basis of the verse “Know Him in all your ways” and Chazal's teaching “Let all your deeds be for the sake of Heaven”:⁷ “Even permitted things, such as eating, walking, sitting, standing, talking and all your bodily needs, should all be for the service of your Creator, or for something that leads to His service … Whoever conducts himself this way serves his Creator constantly.” So far the words of the Shulchan Aruch.

4We can explain that this idea is contained in Bnei Yisrael's words “We will do and we will hear.”⁸ The word na'aseh, “we will do,” also carries the sense of repairing and completing. We see this sense in the verse “and the souls that they had made in Charan,” which the Targum renders “whom they had brought under the Torah.”⁹ When Bnei Yisrael said na'aseh, they took it upon themselves to bind themselves to the Torah's way at every hour of the day and night, and so to make themselves whole as they rose ever higher along that way. Then, because they would stay bound to Hashem's will even while busy with physical things, “We will do and we will hear” would come true in them: they would always carry within them a longing to hear more and to do more mitzvos. It is in the spirit of our request after the Shemoneh Esrei, “and may my soul pursue Your mitzvos.”¹⁰

5This lets us explain a passage in the early Midrash Tanna Devei Eliyahu: when Bnei Yisrael said “We will do and we will hear,” the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moshe, “And they shall make Me a Mikdash, and I will dwell among them.”¹¹ That was the point of Bnei Yisrael's putting “we will do” before “we will hear.” Saying na'aseh includes the commitment that all their deeds, even physical ones, would be for the sake of Heaven. Through this they would be privileged to reach nishma, [derhern],¹² to hear, to learn and to teach the holy Torah. And through this, in turn, they are privileged to make a Mishkan for Hashem within each and every one of them. For at its heart the Mishkan is not a place where the Shechinah rests on mere wood and stones. Its real purpose is that each person make himself a dwelling, a Mishkan where the Shechinah can rest, since the Shechinah rests above all within Bnei Yisrael themselves. This happens when, in all their affairs, even physical ones, they prepare a place for Hashem, as it were, by doing them with the intention of serving Heaven. That is why the verse says “and I will dwell among them,” and not “within it.”

6This is what the verse means by “and let them take for Me an offering”: Bnei Yisrael are to take their permitted, everyday affairs to Hashem. The word terumah, “offering,” means something raised up, and they are to raise these affairs high by doing them for His sake. In this way they will be a dwelling and a holy place for Hashem even while they are busy with everyday matters.

7The same idea explains the Midrash Rabbah we cited, where the Holy One, blessed be He, says, “I cannot part from it; make Me one small room and I will dwell in it.” He is asking us, as it were, to live with the gift of the holy Torah at all times, not only while we are learning. What He wants is to dwell within us, as it were, permanently, through our doing all our deeds for the sake of Heaven.

8[¹³This is also what Rashi means by his comment on “And they shall make Me a Mikdash”:¹⁴ “For Me: for My Name, a house of holiness.” Even the physical matters that belong to human life must be done “for My Name,” for the honor of the Creator. For this is how they prepare themselves to be a fitting vessel to receive the Shechinah when the Mishkan is set up. That is the hint in Rashi's phrase “a house of holiness,” when he could have said “a Mishkan for holiness.” A “house” hints at the permitted, everyday things of life, in the spirit of the teaching “Just as his house is in his domain, so too anything in his domain.”¹⁵ For the main thing is to sanctify what is permitted. As the Ramban writes on the mitzvah “You shall be holy,” a person must not be “a scoundrel within the bounds of the Torah”; the holiness of the Torah must be brought into everything.¹⁶ Through this they will be privileged to attain “and I will dwell among them”: they will be ready to greet the Shechinah within their own private Mishkan. That is why the verse says “among them”: they are to prepare themselves to greet the Shechinah. May Hashem grant us the privilege of sanctifying all 248 of our limbs, and so bring near the coming of the Redeemer.]

9May Hashem grant that we be privileged to practice what we teach. In reward for this, may the Holy One, blessed be He, say “Enough!” to our troubles and hasten our redemption and the deliverance of our souls. Amen, may it be His will.