Dear {{first_name}},
This week marks the second Shabbat of The Three Weeks of the Jewish Year during which the Jewish people mourn as a nation. Last week I discussed the importance of feeling grief and the need to push away the inclination to hide and ignore the grief we feel. As a Jewish people, we’ve been mourning the loss of the two Temples for thousands of years. We’ve also added a great deal to that grief through recognizing a number of other mournful occurrences in our history and I’ll be writing about them next week. This week, I want to offer an understanding of what was lost when the Temple was destroyed.
What was the Temple? It was a central locale for the Jewish people to gather and commune with God. It was a place of ritual and reflection. It was a place that represented God to the world. Where does the location come from? We learn in Deuteronomy 12:10 – 14:
“(10) When you cross the Jordan and settle in the land that your God, HaShem, is allotting to you, and [God] grants you safety from all your enemies around you and you live in security, (11) then you must bring everything that I command you to the site where your God, HaShem, will choose to establish the divine name: your burnt offerings and other sacrifices, your tithes and contributions, and all the choice votive offerings that you vow to HaShem. (12) And you shall rejoice before your God HaShem with your sons and daughters and with your male and female slaves, along with the [family of the] Levite in your settlements, for he has no territorial allotment among you. (13) Take care not to sacrifice your burnt offerings in any place you like, (14) but only in the place that HaShem will choose in one of your tribal territories. There you shall sacrifice your burnt offerings and there you shall observe all that I enjoin upon you.”
These verses are the basis for a central location of Jewish worship in the Land of Israel. God didn’t want us to have individual alters and places to worship but to create a singular place for all of us to come together and serve and commune with God. The place we understand was chosen is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and it’s a place that traditionally we understand we have a very deep connection with as a people. According to Rambam’s Mishneh Torah (The Chosen Temple 2:1) it is the location of the foundation stone, the place where all creation began and a stone that covered a hole in the earth that were it to be exposed all of creation would be sucked back into it. Our tradition also understands that it was the location of Abraham’s binding of his son, Isaac. It was also the location of Jacob’s dream about the ladder connecting earth and heaven. All of these understandings of the Temple provide us with a clearer picture of the relationship we have with the Temple and its origins.
There’s a story I want to share with you that paints the clearest picture for us today:
Among the great achievements of Solomon, first place must be assigned to the superb Temple built by him. He was long in doubt as to where to build it. A heavenly voice directed him to go to Mount Zion at night, to a field owned by two brothers jointly. One of the brothers was a bachelor and poor, the other was blessed both with wealth and a large family of children. It was harvesting time. Under cover of night, the poor brother kept adding to the other’s heap of grain, for, although he was poor, he thought his brother needed more on account of his large family. The rich brother, in the same secret way, added to the poor brother’s pile, thinking that though he had a family to support, the other was without means (to support himself).
This happened for many nights, over and over again since every morning they both discovered equal piles, and both desired that the other have more, for their own secret reasons. One night they bumped into one another while secretly transferring the grain and they both were shocked. Immediately they dropped what was in their arms and hugged each other. (Source: This is a folktale in the Jewish tradition with Talmudic and Midrashic influences. It’s most easily traced back to various folk traditions in Europe and the Middle East. This version was found in: Ginzberg, Louis. The Legend of the Jews: Vol. From Joshua to Esther. United States of America: Jewish Publication Society, 1941. Section V, Page 154 (some items are not in the version cited here, but are true to the traditional versions).
I share all of this to explain we as a people are givers and creators. We need to find the deeper meaning of our world and our traditions. The Temple could only be built in a place where two brothers displayed such caring and thoughtfulness. The Temple needed to be built in a place of selflessness to combat the inherent selfishness that ran, and still runs, rampant in the world. Each of us needs to step forward and see that if we’re not part of the solution, we’re part of the problem. We need to step forward and see that we, as a society and as a people, need to stop demanding the world look as we, as individuals, want it to be. We need to see that in order to have societies and relationships, we need to give up some of our sense of self and embrace the worldview of those around us and their needs.
The Temple represented so much to us. It was the place of our communal longing and our communal history. It was the place of our communal relationship with the Divine. What made the Temple sacred was that it was a place where we were together and not each doing our own thing. Grief for the loss of the Temple can be better understood today, in our world of enormous ego and unwillingness to commit to the betterment of our world and society, as a warning. What God desires of us is to live together and grow and create together. Judaism will always be the expression of the relationship with God through the group and not merely the individual.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Hearshen
