This week’s parashah is deeply instructional, yet confounding. It discusses the requirements for the Mishkan, with the central items including the Aron, Menorah, Shulchan, Kerashim, Mizbe’ach, and the coverings of the Mishkan.
As I reviewed the parashah, two questions stood out. One is asked by virtually everyone, and the other is asked by virtually no one.
The parashah begins with the mitzvah of terumah, however the wording is strange:
וְיִקְחוּ לִי תְּרוּמָה — “They should take for Me a donation.”
A bit later the purpose becomes clear when Hashem commands that they make Him a Mikdash, “so that I may dwell amongst them.”
There are 2 questions that are asked by the meforshim.
First, why does the Torah say, “Tell Bnei Yisrael to take for Me gifts”? Hashem is instructing Moshe to collect donations, and it seems it should say, “Tell Bnei Yisrael to give Me gifts.”
Second, why does the Torah say, “And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them” (ושכנתי בתוכם)? It seems it should say, “that I may dwell in it,” meaning in the Mishkan.
These questions trouble virtually all commentators, and many answers are offered. A common approach is that, when a person gives with the right mindset and intention, he is receiving more than he is giving. That is why the Torah says “take” rather than “give,” because when they donate to build the Mishkan, they are the ones who gain.
This leads into the second point: Hashem does not say, “I will dwell in it.” He says, “I will dwell among them.” Who is “them”? The answer is the nation. The Mishkan is not for Hashem, since Hashem does not need a physical structure; the Mishkan is for the people, as their way of demonstrating that they are prepared to incorporate Him into their lives.
If you want Hashem to be present in your life, you have to make yourself into a keli, a receptacle. You build the Mishkan not so Hashem can exist there, but so you can become the kind of person and community in which His presence can be revealed. In other words, in order to receive from Hashem, we first have to give. We do that by building a structure that illustrates readiness to receive Hashem’s presence.
This brings me to my next question, which I have not seen asked by anyone.
As part of the instructions for many of the keilim in the Mishkan, are the instructions to create rings and poles (badim) so they could be carried during travel. The Menorah, however, seems to be the exception to this rule.
The Menorah had no badim; in fact, when they traveled, it was placed in a box1. Why is the Menorah different? Why can it not be carried the way the other keilim were carried?
I’d like to share an idea from the Beis Yaakov2 that I think is basic and beautiful, but often overlooked.
He quotes a Zohar3 that teaches a powerful distinction: The effort involved in Torah is such that anyone who wants can merit it, because Hashem grants it. Anyone who wants can receive it without payment.
The Beis Yaakov explains that Hashem relates to each Jew personally in two distinct ways.
Sometimes Hashem gives a gift: a flash of clarity, a quieting of inner noise, a moment in which emunah and purpose feel obvious. This was the case at Matan Torah. Hashem, so to speak, lowered the volume of the world, so we could hear Him. This is Hashem’s initiative, and it comes for free, even though it rarely lasts. What remains is a residue, a spark. In his words, this is “אשתדלותא דקוב״ה למנדע ליה,” the Divine initiative to let a person know.4
Then comes the second stage: “אשתדלותא דקוב״ה דקיימא בעובדא,” a Divine initiative that becomes anchored through action. Here the goal is not another flash of insight, but a kinyan, so that the truth is absorbed into a person’s heart, and even into the body, until it becomes steady and lived. That cannot happen without cost: patience, restraint, effort, and the daily tests life brings.
Whenever there is revelation, a person, in the moment of light, imagines it should remain forever. It does not, yet its imprint remains as a spark of vitality. Hashem wants that spark to create longing and hope, so that, when a person needs to be awakened, he remembers, “I have stood here (in this light) before.”
Within every Jew there is love for Hashem, and the will of the Jew is that everything should be before Hashem. As far as our awareness reaches, we do not protest that reality. What, then, is terumah? Terumah means: take what you were given, and by investing yourself, your time, your money, your attention, your self-control, turn it into something you actually own.
ושכנתי בתוכם means the point was never that Hashem should dwell in a structure. The structure is the training ground for Hashem to dwell in them, inside real people with ordinary lives.
Rav Tzadok5 sharpens the same idea. Torah is meant to light up the heart, והאר עינינו בתורתך, yet to truly merit Torah and its light there is a price of ahavah and yirah. After Matan Torah, the Torah itself is accessible, but for the Torah to become lived (naaseh) - absorbed into the body and behavior, and not only understood (nishma), it requires yirah and ahavah.
He explains that Hashem often begins with ahavah before yirah, giving a person a taste of closeness first; when it becomes our turn to make that closeness last, the work often begins with yirah. That means bending our desires, pushing back the yetzer hara, and choosing Torah again and again until it becomes who we are, and until Hashem makes His dwelling within us.
The Beis Yaakov says this plays out daily through Shema Yisrael. In the morning, a Jew accepts ol malchus Shamayim with mesirus nefesh. That awareness comes easily to the soul, it is ahavah, but the body only holds it when it is translated into action, which is yirah. During the day, in the marketplace of life, Hashem sends distractions and pressures that force a person to resist and choose correctly, and through those acts the morning awareness of Hashem becomes absorbed into the limbs.
Now I would like to return to the Menorah. Aside from lacking badim, there is another anomaly: each of the keilim was built by Betzalel, with the exception of the Menorah.
The Midrash6 tells us that Moshe Rabbeinu struggled in a unique way to understand the construction of the Menorah. Hashem showed it to him in multicolored fire (white, red, black, green), and Moshe still could not grasp it. Hashem even etched it for him on his palm, like a tattoo, and Moshe still could not do it.7 Finally, Hashem told Moshe to throw a piece of gold into the fire, and the Menorah emerged miraculously. (No, this was not an AI spoof.)
What was it that Moshe needed to understand about the Menorah, something he understood about the other keilim, but could not understand here?
I found a hint from Rav Yerucham Levovitz, the mashgiach of Mir. He writes8 that Moshe was able to define the form of each object and its spiritual essence, its neshamah. Regarding the Menorah, however, Moshe could not determine its essence.
The way I understand this is that each keli in the Mishkan served a different purpose. The Aron represented Torah, the Shulchan represented parnassah and brachah, and the Mizbe’ach expressed avodah. The Menorah, by contrast, was a vessel for light itself, a keli for Divine illumination, the Ohr Ein Sof, to be revealed in the world.
The light of the Ohr Ein Sof is not something that can be fully grasped.
It can be portrayed with multicolored fire, it can be shown as a diagram, and one can even hold the image in one’s hand, yet the inner meaning, its neshamah, stays beyond capture. Therefore, Moshe could not create it on his own, because he could not grasp its full essence. When we can understand the essence of something, it becomes ours, and we can carry it and transport it like a possession, like something mastered.
The Menorah, however, represents a light we cannot fully own. It must be protected, mediated, and encased, carried with awe. It travels with us, but not as something we own. It is carried in a box like something precious, like a secret we guard.
That is exactly the Beis Yaakov’s point: the initial light, the revelation, is a gift, but whether it stays with you depends on whether you build further, whether you translate it into action, or you turn the spark into a kinyan. What Moshe found difficult to comprehend was how a Menorah, a physical object, could spread the spiritual light of Hashem to the outside world.
Hashem essentially confirmed Moshe’s hesitation: using physical objects to spread Divine awareness is beyond what we can do on our own. Nonetheless, Hashem wants us to be co-creators with Him. Therefore, He told Moshe to do his part, to cast the gold into the fire, and Hashem would do the rest.
We are given the power from Hashem to transform our material pursuits and possessions into sources of Divine light. Like Moshe, we may wonder how our physical talents or possessions can illuminate the world, yet the Menorah teaches that all Hashem asks is that we cast it into the fire, into the fire of our hearts through effort, sincerity, restraint, love, and consistency. When we bring the fire, Hashem causes the light to rise by itself and to spread.
That is the deeper meaning of Terumah: we take by giving. We build a Mishkan so Hashem can dwell among us, within real people, in ordinary life. When we do that, we merit hashra’as haShechinah.
see Targum Yerushalmi / Targum Yonasan to Bamidbar 4
Terumah §5
Terumah 128
As an aside, Purim is almost the inverse: a renewed kabbalas haTorah, but “ad d’lo yada.” It was not a quieting of the world so we can hear clearly, but a way for the Torah to get absorbed through hiddenness, amidst the noise.
Pri Tzadik Terumah 2
Tanchuma, Shemini 8:2
Rav Chaim Kanievsky explains that this was not literally a tattoo; rather, Hashem created it as an innate part of Moshe’s body, analogous to the creases and folds that are naturally found on a person’s hands; Ichud B’Chidud (5777).
Daas Torah, Terumah
This was beautifully developed!