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.

