Dear Friends:
“They shall make a sanctuary for Me, so that I may dwell among them….
“They shall make an ark….
“You shall make a Cover of pure gold….
“You shall make two Kruvim….
“It is there that I shall set My meetings with you, and I shall speak with you from atop the Cover, from between the two Kruvim that are on the Ark of the Testimonial tablets, everything that I shall command you to the Children of Israel.” (Shemos Chap. 25)
We have entered the Month of Adar. “Mishenichnas Adar marbim b’simcha …. With the coming of Adar simcha increases.”
What is so special about Adar?
During Adar, the hidden becomes manifest. The earth begins to warm up. Frost melts as the sun returns from the south. Buds appear on the trees. Flowers poke up through the earth.
But more than that! During Adar, the promise of G-d becomes reality. Just as the promise of spring, which sustained us during the winter, becomes reality before our eyes, so the Redemption of the Children of Israel, which had heretofore been a promise, is realized with the story of Purim and the downfall of Haman, who sought to “destroy, to slay and to exterminate all the Jews, from young to old, children and women, in one day … and to plunder their possessions.” (Megilas Esther 3:13)
We know that G-d promised to sustain us forever. “The mountains may depart and the hills may be removed, but My kindness will not depart from you, neither will My covenant of peace be removed.” (Isaiah 54:10) Now we see with our own eyes the promised redemption. Is there greater simcha than to see the fulfillment of prophesy? When G-d saved the Children of Israel at the Red Sea, Moses and the Children of Israel sang to G-d! During Adar, we all sing to G-d as we witness the reality of His Redemption! The earth itself rejoices! “When Israel went out of Egypt, Jacob’s household from a people of alien tongue … the sea saw and fled; the Jordan turned backward ... the mountains skipped like rams, the hills like young lambs….” (Psalm 114)
The Sanctuary, specifically the Holy of Holies, is the place where the Reality of G-d was manifest every day, continuously. This is the exact location from which the creation of the world began (Yoma 54b), and this is the location from which the Ruler of the Universe makes His Presence manifest in this world. G-d spoke with Moshe Rabbeinu from that place, and the Voice of G-d was directed from that place to where Moshe Rabbeinu could hear it. “The voice (of G-d) would emerge from the heavens to the space between the two Kruvim, and from there it would go out to the rest of the Tent of Meeting.” (Rashi on Bamidbar 7:89) “It is there that I shall set My meetings with you, and I shall speak with you from atop the Cover, from between the two Kruvim that are on the Ark of the Testimonial tablets.” (Shemos 25:22)
That is one of an infinite number of reasons why the destruction of the Sanctuary was a calamity of such galactic proportions, beyond our ability to express. But the kedusha of the Sanctuary remains! As the verse says, “My eyes and My heart shall be there always.” (I Kings 9:3; II Chronicles 7:16) That is one reason, for example, why we are not permitted to ascend there today, because we lack the requisite state of ritual purity. And that is why we gather at the Western Wall, because we are trying to gain the closest possible proximity to the Holy of Holies, toward which our prayer is to be directed.
One could say this place is the “interface” between heaven and earth, between G-d and man, the eternal and the temporal, the Creator and His creations. “G-d commanded us to establish a site that should be pure and clean to the ultimate degree of cleanness, there to purify the thoughts of people and to rectify and perfect their heart toward Him…. Then by the worthiness of deed and the purification of thought that we would attain there, our intelligence would ascend to find adherence with the supernal [Divine] intelligence.” (Sefer ha Chinuch, Mitzvah 95) The Holy of Holies was entered only once a year, on Yom Kippur and then only by the High Priest, who was prepared and purified for this moment to the highest degree of purification.
But, through our prayer, we can enter it every day!
Just the way the month of Adar is a time of manifestation of the Divine Presence, so the Sanctuary is a place of manifestation of the Divine Presence, and no place more than the Holy of Holies. And just as the voice of G-d emerged from between the two Kruvim, the figures atop the Cover of the Ark, so it seems that this is the place for us to direct our prayers. “When one proceeds to pray … he should turn to face towards … the Cover [of the Ark].” So says the Shulchan Aruch (94:1), to which the Mishnah Berurah adds a reference from I Kings (8:35), “And they will pray towards this place.”
I had the zchus recently to clarify this concept with Rabbi Yaakov Hillel Shlita”h, who corroborated that we should in fact direct our prayers toward the same place from which the Voice of G-d emanated in the Sanctuary. G-d made a particular location where His Presence became manifest in physical form in the creation of the world! That place is prepared, so to speak, as a location at which the spiritual and physical meet. When we direct our prayers to that place and pray with spiritual intention, then we can reasonably hope that our prayers will ascend to G-d and be heard in His Presence.
This is a source of unlimited simcha!
G-d is not distant! This is the simcha of all simchas! We are directing our tefillos, our prayer, our deepest communication, to the Source of all life and the King of all Kings! He hears us! “Baruch ata Hashem, shomea tefilla … Blessed Are You, G-d, Who hears prayer!” (Shemoneh Esreh)
These words are mind-boggling. We have direct access at all times to the location at which the Ribono shel Olam apparently makes Himself constantly accessible to us, the “interface” between Heaven and earth. We can pray with the conviction that our communication can ascend through that location to the Throne of the King of Kings!
May we soon see the rebuilding of the Holy Temple on the Holy Mountain, the emplacement of all its Holy Vessels in their proper locations and the return of the Shechina to Zion! Then our simcha will be eternal and complete! “Baruch Ata Hashem … Blessed are You, G-d, Who restores His Presence to Zion!”
May we see it soon, in our days!
Roy S. Neuberger
© Copyright 2010 by Roy S. Neuberger
