Symbolism in the Ark of the Covenant

In the first of this week's parshas, Vayakhel Verse 37:1, it states: "Bezalel made the ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high."

The ark of the covenant, along with all of the surfaces and fixtures in the mishkan, had dimensions with symbolic import. 

The Kli Yakar famously taught that the half-dimensions are symbolic of our pursuit of Torah; when we don't feel whole, we are inspired to learn more, and never feel fulfilled. In Hebrew, the term for half-dimensions is shavur or broken, and as such, the feeling of lacking inspires us to fill the void, or the lacunae that are part and parcel of the recognition of one's lacking and the successive attempts to grapple with incompletion. 

I would like to share, perhaps, another approach, that I feel is equally valid - and in doing so, I would like to mention the name of my great-grandfather, Netanel Sulimannof of blessed memory. R' Netanel was a simple, impoverished Jew, like so many of Jerusalem of old. He was a milkman who went from house to house with a huge jug or canister of milk from which he would pour into his clients' pitchers. At the end of the day, the story goes, he would wash out his jug of milk - not with water - but rather, with milk, so as not to steal from any of his customers for fear that some of the water could seep into the cracks of the jug, and thus he'd be selling diluted milk, if only infinitesimally, so. 

This very same great-grandfather, my great aunt, Yaffa Keren Zvi, told me, would always repeat the following statement, "The middle is perfection, because that way, each side only has to give up half." 

My grandfather, Moshe Barth, relates the following joke: "A person asks his friend, 'Can you lend me $100'?" His friend answers, "I'll give you $50," to which his friend retorts, "Why just $50?!" to which the lender to be says, "That way you lose half and I lose half!" 

The Yiddish humor aside, the salient point that I would want to make is that given that the Holy Ark represents our Torah observance, and our observance is emblematic of the statement, "Its ways are the ways of pleasantness," in a certain respect the ark is representative of not only our Torah learning but also the manners and comportment which must precede it - and are ancillary to it - and thus, perhaps we have here another reason that the measures have to be half measures, to show that Torah is predicated on proper behavior and a desire to understand our fellow man.