FEBRUARY 3 • 2022 | 51
and spiritually purified, and to
draw close to the Creator in an
unprecedented way.
Friends, God is everywhere, but
there are certain places on Earth
where we feel His presence with
greater intensity. The Mishkan
and the Temple were places
imbued with God’s presence in
this intense manner. And, even
today, the land of Israel retains
this spiritual potency, as do the
“miniature temples:” the shul and
the beit hamidrash.
The effect of these physical
spaces is deeply felt. In general,
human beings are strongly influ-
enced by the places they occupy.
A home, with its architecture and
furniture, but, more importantly,
its atmosphere and values, has a
profound impact on those who
occupy it. So, too, the physical
space of a shul or a house of Torah
learning directly influences those
who enter it. These holy spaces,
dedicated purely to the service of
God, are so important to us. They
inspire us to be better — to be
holy ourselves, and to strive for
spiritual greatness and Godliness.
And, through them, we connect
not just with God, but with each
other, because these are not just
spiritual places, they are com-
munal spaces. The enterprise of
building the Temple was a com-
munal one, as is, today, the enter-
prise of building a shul or a beit
hamidrash. These are places in
which, and through which, we feel
closer to God and closer to the
people who gather there with us.
According to the Ramban, the
Mishkan had a very specific func-
tion: to keep the flame of the Sinai
experience alive. When the Jewish
people stood at the foot of Mount
Sinai and received the Torah, they
had an unprecedented and intense
prophetic experience; they heard
the “voice” of God Himself. Says
the Ramban, the Mishkan brought
the intensity of the Sinai expe-
rience into the day-to-day lives
of the Jewish people. Just as the
Shechinah rested on Mount Sinai,
it rested in the Mishkan. And just
as the Jewish people experienced
Divine revelation at Sinai, they
experienced it in the Mishkan.
HOLY PLACES
And, of course, we can extend this
concept to the modern-day shul
and beit hamidrash. These, too,
are places where the presence of
God is concentrated, where we
can access the Shechinah and be
sanctified and inspired by their
holy atmosphere, where we can
reconnect with the original Sinai
experience that has always defined
the Jewish people, and from which
we draw our identity and our
spiritual vision as Jews. Hearing
the voice of God at the mountain
gave us a mission for all times and
all places — to live in accordance
with His will and bring light and
sanctity into the world through
His Torah. The Mishkan, and
later, the Holy temple, and today,
the shul and the beit hamidrash,
are the places we enter to re-ignite
that sense of vision and mission.
Crucially, however, the Temple
or Mishkan, or shul or beit
hamidrash should be places that
inspire us to lead a sanctified
life and serve God outside their
walls. In his commentary on the
Book of Isaiah, Rabbi Samson
Raphael Hirsch explains that God
destroyed the Temple because
people were using it as a vehicle
to justify what they were doing
outside of it. Their outlook was
that you could do whatever you
wanted outside the walls of the
Temple — be unethical in busi-
ness, do harm to people, neglect
your responsibilities to God,
to other human beings and to
society — and then come to the
Temple to offer your sacrifices of
atonement. Essentially, they had
inverted the entire purpose of the
Temple. They’
d forgotten that the
real arena for the service of God
takes place “on the outside,
” and
that the role of the Temple was to
inspire us to live up to that task.
Rav Hirsch explains that in
today’s times, when there is no
Temple, the shul performs precise-
ly this role. It’s not simply a place
where we express our Jewishness;
it’s a place to be inspired so we
can become great Jews and live a
full Jewish life outside of shul. We
come to shul to reconnect with
the values of Sinai — and then
we go out and implement those
values in our daily lives. In so
doing, we infuse our homes, our
workplaces, wherever we happen
to be at any given point, with the
holiness of space.
The same principle applies to
the beit hamidrash. We gather in
shul and in the beit hamidrash,
as a minyan, as a community,
praying together, learning togeth-
er, enveloping ourselves in the
Shechinah, immersing ourselves
in the holiness of space. And we
emerge as people more inspired
and closer to God, closer to our
fellow human being, more con-
nected to the mitzvot and mission
God gave us at Sinai. We emerge
as people ready to infuse every
aspect of life with Godliness and
sanctity.
A DEEPER DIMENSION
There is a deeper dimension. Rav
Yosef Dov Soloveitchik says rather
than building a home for God, the
Mishkan is really about creating a
home for man. According to Rav
Soloveitchik: “God is not home-
less; man is homeless. God feigned
homelessness in order to induce
man to build a home.
”
He says that as human beings,
we all feel a sense of homelessness
born from our vulnerability and a
certain helplessness. He puts it this
way: “Man is vulnerable, exposed
to disease and death. The beast is
similarly vulnerable, but he is not
homeless because he is unaware of
his existential situation.
”
Furthermore, says Rav
Soloveitchik, the human being is
besieged by a “restlessness and
boredom ... searching without
finding, yearning without achiev-
ing,
” thereby compounding this
sense of rootlessness and alien-
ation.
So, what do we do? What is the
solution to our dislocation? Where
do we go to find a refuge from our
homelessness? Rav Soloveitchik’s
answer: the Mishkan/Beit
HaMikdash, and in today’s world
— the shul. When we enter these
places, we come home. Within
these sanctified walls, through the
process of prayer, we reconnect
with our Creator. In doing so, we
soothe those feelings of homeless-
ness, because through kindling
our connection to God, we feel
that we have roots in this world
and that we aren’t just adrift in an
existential void. Through calling
out in communal prayer in shul,
through immersing ourselves in
Torah learning in a beit hamid-
rash, we connect to the One who
is Eternal and reconnect with our
own eternal selves. In a world
of existential loneliness, we find
a sense of stability, comfort and
rootedness.
Rav Soloveitchik says one of
the reasons people become disen-
chanted with shul in today’s times
is that they don’t see it as a place
of connection. He remarks how, in
pre-war Europe, Jews would walk
into shul and there would be that
sense of coming home, of putting
all of one’s troubles aside and feel-
ing held in God’s warm embrace.
“Why do we need a synagogue
at all?” he asks. “Why not pray in
the field? The Jew does not need a
house in which to pray ... We need
a structure not for its architectural
value, but for its psychological
effect. We do not need a house;
we need a home. The synagogue
should be called not the House
of God, but the Home of God,
or more accurately, the Home of
Man ... The synagogue as an idea
represents man’s home on Earth.
‘
And they shall build for me a
sanctuary and I shall dwell in their
midst’ (Exodus 25:8). The syna-
gogue is God’s home because it is
man’s home.
”
Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein, who has
a Ph.D. in Human Rights Law, is the
chief rabbi of South Africa. This article
first appeared on aish.com.