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Dear Parents and NCSYers,
This week we have special dvar torah from Israel written by Yaakov Wolff:
In this week's parsha we read about the execution of the mishkan that was commanded over the course of the last few parshiyot. The Jewish people donated gold, silver and other materials to be used. In fact Bnei Yisrael were so generous that they gave more than was actually needed! Because all of the necessary materials were already donated, Moshe commands the people to stop the donation. The pasuk says "…and the people stopped bringing. And the [donations] were enough for all of the work, and there was leftover." Whats the deal with these leftovers? Couldn't Moshe have stopped the campaign at the right time? And even if he couldn't, why not return the leftovers to their previous owners? And if he couldn't do that, why does the pasuk need to tell me about them?
A number of Hassidic rabbeim [cited in Imrei Baruch by Rav Baruch Simon] explain as follows. The point of the Mishkan was for God to rest His Presence there. In order for this to work there could not be any arrogance involved in the building. If there would be a perfect amount of material then the people that donated would claim "God rests his presence on MY gold!". But now that there are leftovers, the people could not be sure- maybe their gold was leftover and wasn't used at all in the mishkan.
We all are commanded to build a mishkan within ourselves. If we want to have Hashem's Presence rest on our personal mishkan, we need to make sure that we uproot any arrogance and improve on our humility.
Have a fantastic Shabbos! |
