The Mishkan as a Continuation of Mount Sinai

The Ramban takes a very heartwarming approach to the Mishkan, one that on the face of it seems to be less reflected in that taken by the Rambam. Whereas the Rambam sees the mishkan or Hashem's desert abode as a result of the Jewish people's sinfulness with the sin of the golden calf, the Ramban stresses Hashem's ever-present love for the Jewish people: "The deeper meaning of the mishkan," he writes, "is so that Hashem's glory which rested on the Jewish people at Sinai, should always be ensconsed among them." (Ramban's Introduction to Parshat Teruma)

The idea the Ramban shares here, is a very powerful one. Hashem only revealed himself in full glory to the Jewish people once. Only once did our people - each and every soul - hear Hashem's voice reverberate within us. That echo, that heavenly voice - or bat kol - is something we hear within ourselves, and which we convey to our children, our students and all future generations. But what is it, the Ramban stresses, that enables us to hear that voice? It is the mishkan, Hashem's anthropomorphized self, embodied by Hashem's continued ever-presence within us, one that will never leave us, that will journey with us in the emotional isolation of the desert, be with us when we feel alone, when we feel abandoned, in a tundra so desolate that we feel there is no one else there. 

The mishkan's guiding light - the illumination of the aron - which housed the luchot, the tablets of the covenant, are what have kept our people going through thick and thin, through desolation, destruction and near demise. 

My grandfather, Moshe Barth, may he live and be well, had a dear friend, Rabbi Shalom Mark Z"L, also a holocaust survivor. He accentuated that the Torah, its warm light, hope and truth, are what keeps our people going. In his book, "Choose Life," he shared that without the Torah our people would have long been gone - and thus, not faltering, even in the wake of the horrible destruction he himself experienced, he taught others to let themselves experience that light. 

The Rambam takes a different approach in his interpretation to the building of the mishkan. But in a certain respect, they reach the same result. For the Rambam, the mishkan exemplifies the force of teshuva. We know that teshuva was created before the world even came into existence, one of the reasons we state the blessing of teshuva in our daily shemone esrei prayer before we ask for forgiveness for our misdeeds. Thus, in a certain respect, both the Rambam and Ramban were stressing the vitality of two different primordial forces or entities without which the world could not subsist. As our sages teach us, "Hashem looked at the Torah, and then created the world." In effect, though oppositional in their approach, both the Rambam and Ramban were teaching us that teshuva and the Torah are one and the same. The same way the Torah would be meaningless were we to not be able to repent, there would be no drive to repent if life was devoid of eternal meaning, the message Rabbi Mark honed so beautifully by action and deed. 

Shabbat shalom,

Yoav