Kedem or Kadimah?
On Tisha B’av we read the Book of Lamentations, the scroll composed by the prophet Jeremiah about the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the First Temple. The entire book (or scroll, as it is referred to in Hebrew) is painful to read. It is full of very difficult descriptions of the unimaginable suffering the Jewish people went through during the Babylonian siege and ultimate destruction of the city. Still, one might ask, what is the saddest, most painful verse in the book?
There is a principle in Torah that, “all follows the conclusion.” The Jewish custom is to always conclude with something positive. The final verse of the Lamentations reads, “For truly, You have rejected us, bitterly raged against us.” Since this would not be a very good ending, the previous verse is read a second time after the last verse. The previous verse is, “Take us back O’ God, to Yourself, and we shall return; Renew our days as of old.”
The phrase, “Renew our days as of old” seems to be very positive. But if we contemplate these words a bit, we may well come to the conclusion that they are actually the saddest part of the entire book.
How can I make such a preposterous claim? The idea behind these words, “Renew our days as of old,” is that I remember and have studied the floorplan and architecture of the First and Second Temples. I have even spent my time well and carefully studied the description of the future Third Temple as it appears at the end of the Book of Ezekiel (chapters 40-43). One of the conclusions from my learning is that at least architecturally, the Third Temple is similar to the Second, with some differences. But in principle they are similar.
Now, when I say the phrase, “Renew our days as of old,” instead of facing the future and striving for it, I am yearning that God bring back the past. The Hebrew word for the past, for “the days of old” is kedem. Perhaps I would like to relive the past in a slightly better version, but still my mindset and my heart are set on the past. It is the exact opposite of what the prophet describes as, “their faces are set eagerly forward,” describing someone whose intent is on the future, which in Hebrew is a very similar word, kadimah—forward!
The Plight of “What Was Is What Will Be”
What is the plight of those who cling to Torah? That their ideal is what was in the past. Among the futile and empty vapors described by Ecclesiastes is a verse that reads, “What was is what will be..., and there is nothing new under the sun.” This is a futile ideal, an ideal that is entirely meaningless.
It is true that the initials of the phrase, “What was is [what will be]” are “Moses,” but even in if you yearn for Moses who will remain the same as the first Moses—that too is futile. For, the Torah of this world, of the reality we are currently living, is the Torah of Moses. And yet, the sages say that this Torah [i.e., its interpretation] “is like vapor before the Torah of the Mashiach.”
Therefore, there can be nothing more lamentable than picturing the future Third Temple as a copy of the Temples of the past, without any inner sense of how it will be infinitely greater qualitatively than all that was in the past.
The sense of how the future is meant to be infinitely greater than the past is the inner core of Jewish faith. Faith, by definition, is the expectation and belief in a reality that is incommensurably greater than all that we have experienced. If all I am able to do is picture the future as another version of the past, then I have no need for faith in that which is above nature. The past can be reconstructed naturally. No need for miracles, no need to ascend above the natural course of reality, no need to transcend our present understanding. All it takes is more of the same. The world can just continue coasting forward and follow its course. We must not think this way!
We need to consider the Rambam’s description of the times of Mashiach. He interprets the phrase, “renew our days as of old” according to their literal meaning—a return to the past. This can be seen from his description of the early part of the times of Mashiach, when the world will continue following its course. This would seem to include the third phase of the Mashiach’s exploits, “building the Temple in its place.”
Why does the Rambam use the terminology of “in its place.” The simple answer is that for the Temple to be sanctified, the location of the external altar must be precise—exactly in its place. But it also means that the Temple (at this stage of the Redemption) is still what we would call in physics a “local phenomenon.” It is limited to being, “the location where [God] will choose to make His Name dwell there.” This is still not the dwelling place of He whom the sages describe as “He is the space of the world, but the world does not contain Him.” That can only be the true location of “I will dwell in them,” “within the heart of each and every one of them.”
Corruption Leads to Destruction
During the Three Weeks, and particularly the Nine Days, it is customary to learn Torah that is connected to the topic of the Temple, but we are thereby limited to learning about what was. So, why was it that God destroyed the Temple time and again? A simple reason is that those who were in charge of the Temple (or the Tabernacle), like the sons of Eli or the priests of the end of the Second Temple period were corrupt. The Temple was rife with corruption and corruption is what God hates deeply. This was the corruption of the heads of the religious establishment of the people. That was a cause of the Temple’s destruction. Indeed, the corruption—the cause—was worse than the effect—the destruction of the Temple itself. It is from this cause that people came to baseless hatred, everything started with the corrupt management of the Temple.
Now, if we are to imagine that we will build another Temple, we should ask: who will run it? From the point of view that “the world continues on its course” and that nothing really changes, we might notice that it is the same type of people that ran things in the past and the same type of people that run things today. Who can guarantee that they will not be corrupt like their predecessors 2000 years ago. I certainly cannot offer any such guarantee, and I do not believe anyone can. The Holy Temple, for all its good, can last for 410 years (the First Temple), for 420 years (the Second Temple), but in the end, nature follows its course including the natural tendency for corruption in those in charge of the establishment and the Temple cannot last and its good does not persist. That is why our wailing and crying on Tisha B’av lasts for generations. We wail and cry that indeed, “what was will be,” and that inevitably, “You will renew our days of old” and corruption will return.
The Temple of the Primordial
For all that we have said regarding the inadequacy of yearning for the past, for “kedem,” there is a more essential interpretation of kedem (the past) that can connect it with kadimah—the future. The word kedem can also refer to God Himself who is known as “the Primordial One of the World.” This is the true source of kedem as alluded to in the verse, “God has possessed me from the beginning of His course, the primordial of His exploits of old.” If it is for this primordiality—the Primordial One Himself—that I am yearning, then the phrase, “renew our days as of old,” becomes a very positive statement, for I am yearning for the return of God’s very being, for His Presence in reality as it was before the world was created when only He and His Name filled all of reality.
But according to the literal meaning that we are yearning for the past, even if it imagines the past Temple with the old sacred vessels and priestly garments, etc. If this is all that I yearn for—for our present reality to resemble the past—there can be no cry for the future Temple that is less appropriate for bringing about its construction. Indeed, it is because of the pitiful history of the past Temples that we have yet to perform the commandment to construct a Temple, as explained by the Rogatchover.
The Vision of the Temple
Rebbe Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev famously taught that on the Shabbat before Tisha B’av, known as Shabbat Chazon (lit., the Shabbat of the Vision), God shows each of us the Temple. What is the Temple shown to each soul? Every person sees something else depending on his level.
There are those who see a picture or a three-dimensional model of the Temple’s physical construction. This might be an intellectual ‘photograph’ of something a person may have seen in a book. Such a vision of the Temple’s exterior is actually a reference to the Temple as it was in the past and was destroyed.
Then there are those individuals who merit seeing a vision of the Temple’s more essential aspects. That might manifest as a vision of some valuable object. In Rebbe Levi Yitzchak’s teaching, he describes it like seeing a very expensive suit (because that is something that a child can relate to more than a building, but the principle is that each person is shown a vision of something they would recognize as valuable). The more spiritually advanced the soul, the more abstract the valuable object might be: it might appear as a beloved friend, family member, or even a lofty spiritual state.
A truly futuristic manifestation of the Temple will appear as a vision of standing before God Himself, as it were. When we stand before God, we are already in the Temple. Standing before God includes the experience of personal Divine Providence in every detail of my life and of my surroundings. It includes the experience of God’s infinite love for every soul, and the experience of hearing God speaking to us, in what is described by the sages as, “A new Torah will emerge from Me.” This follows the superposition of the two phrases, “May the Temple be built speedily in our days,” and “Give us our portion in Your Torah,” where “Your Torah” refers to the Torah as it is with God, intimately private. It is about this Torah that we pray, “Open my eyes so that I may see the wonders of Your Torah.”
Every individual is shown a vision of the Temple in his or her mind’s eye relative to their perception of Godliness. Knowing that the vision we receive of the future Temple is personal is somewhat comforting. If we are frustrated that our vision of the future Temple seems limited, we can rest assured that if we open our minds to higher aspirations, we will be shown a more exalted and meaningful image of what the future will hold. This is the fulfillment of the sages’ statement, “Who is wise? He who can see the future.” As King David said, “to envision the pleasantness of God.”
