Timeless Torah

Once upon a time there was a people with no land, though their need for a home was no less than those of other nations. Thus it came to pass that their leader, Moses, received instructions from on High to build a Sanctuary that would accompany the Jews on their desert wanderings.
The chief architect of this travelling Temple was amazingly enough a young lad named Betzalel Ben Uri, who himself had just become Bar Mitzvah. The Torah itself attests to the professional capability and integrity of this child/man when it states that the son of Uri, “did everything that Hashem commanded Moses.” Our Sages however wonder why the phrase commending the architect does not more appropriately read that Betzalel, “did everything that Moses commanded him.”?

Never one to lose an opportunity at Biblical exegesis, the commentaries explain that Betzalel intuitively implemented several instructions he had not received from his leader, although they had in fact been commanded by the Almighty to Moses. One of the discrepancies between what Hashem commanded Moses and what Moses relayed to Betzalel was the chronology of construction.

Moses, as recorded in this week’s reading, first taught the young man the measurements for the construction of the Ark, then for the other utensils and finally for the Tabernacle itself. This order made no sense to Betzalel who argued that it is customary to first build the house and only afterwards consider the furnishings. “However, if I follow your procedure,” said Ben Uri to his teacher, “where will I place the Ark and other vessels when I’ve finished?”

Jewish history does not shy away from revealing the mistakes of the great ones, including Moses. In this case, Moses ultimately conceded that Betzalel was indeed correct and in fact that was how he had been instructed by G-d. Why then did Moses reverse the order? Was it simply an oversight?

The story is told of a sheik whose oil rich desert kingdom was missing one crucial necessity, water. The sheik decided he would travel to America, a land where there were solutions for people who didn’t even know they had problems. Certainly there, he thought to himself, he would find the answer to his country’s water shortage.

The sheik spent some time studying American culture and wandering through the shopping malls. Slowly an idea began to develop. Wiring as much money as his country could spare, which was considerable, he went to every plumbing supply outlet he could find and bought every available faucet. Needless to say the plan didn’t work out exactly as hoped.

Moses was not interested in conveying building protocol. Rather, he spoke conceptually, stressing the purpose and main feature of the Mishkan. The holy Ark was the Sanctuary’s masterpiece. It contained the Ten Commandments and the original Torah scroll. So although building regulations might warrant putting up the walls first, Betzalel was to bear in mind that the raison d’etre of the Sanctuary was not its external, visible structure. Therefore if one were to remove the Ark and its sacred contents, the Temple would be an empty edifice, a dry faucet devoid of the living waters of the Torah.

May our Synagogue, whose groundbreaking is this Sunday, be built with the spirit of our Torah as its fulcrum. Otherwise, what have we if not a beautiful palace whose taps runneth empty.