The first is: “there is no reason to His will.” Which is the same as saying, “He creates without purpose.” The second is: “there is a concealed reason to His will,” or we might say, “There is concealed purpose in His act of Creation.” Even though both deny that the Creator would have the same type of limited purpose that a human might have, still, the two statements are different.
The Will to Create and the Will to Dwell
The two formulations regarding God’s purpose would seem to apply to two different types of creation. The first, whereby God creates without purpose is mirrored in nature. The second, according to which God has a concealed purpose in Creation is mirrored in the commandment to construct for Him a dwelling place—the Tabernacle and, later, the Temple.
We began by noting the similarity between the summations of Creation and the construction of the Tabernacle but note that there is one important difference between them: God creates Creation from a place of freedom, but man constructs the Tabernacle by harnessing his will and subjugating Himself to God’s commandments. True, nature too has laws and order that it must follow, so to speak, but these do not define nature. In fact, nature is full of what to human intelligence looks like waste: incomprehensibly vast empty space between planets, stars, and galaxies in the cosmos, thousands of hatchling fish—few of which will keep the species going, etc. Thus, nature is not as subject to order as it would seem.
In fact, nature is destined to return to a disordered state due to the law of entropy, a state in which everything is just one, big, homogeneous soup lacking rhyme, reason, or purpose. Until then, the forces of nature continue to clash with one another, but in the end, does it matter which wins; for the victor too will end up a formless mass. All this reminds us of the meanderings of the Infinite in and within itself (שעשועים עצמיים), which permit Him to squander that which has no value and required no effort—for He knows that in the end, there is none but He, everything is He, and so there is no difference between the victor and the vanquished.
Man Against Nature’s Chaos
But there is another conclusion that can be reached. This one is more personal and urgent. I tell myself that even if God is pleased with His creation, be it as it may be, I would prefer to survive and not be swallowed up and carried off into the tumult of the clash between the forces of nature. If I wish to sustain my “self,” with all its shouting existence, I must battle to save whatever I can from nature’s chaos—whatever can help prevent me from being swallowed up.
It is under this premise that the mind stands in opposition to nature, not as something that would work to complete or perfect nature. The more humanity develops its culture and civilization, the more it invests in personal character, the further it distances itself from hearing the call of the Infinite that permeates reality. It closes itself off and sequesters itself, holding on to small enclaves of security, and forgoing any chance of meeting the vast expanses of nature.
God’s Purpose Revealed Through His Home
Thus, when God commands us to build Him a home, it is through that dwelling that He will be felt and His purpose, reason, and will (i.e., in a sense, His “needs”) will be revealed despite our seclusion from the Infinite in nature. A regular dwelling is like a garment that a person wears, though it is further removed from his body than his clothing. Still, one’s home is considered a garment, and the soul might be said to have more freedom to express itself because the home is not as tight on the body as an article of clothing would be.
The home protects the person like a garment, but its variants are much greater. Because of the variety of options that can make up a home, the fact that it is built one way and not another expresses the will of the owner even more than clothing.
Likewise, when the Almighty commands us to construct Him a “home,” the Tabernacle, down to the last detail, it is meant to express His precise desire. In other words, He cares, He wants it this way and not that. But remember what we said about nature, where the exact opposite is the case.
Man’s Spirit
Because God commanded that all His desires, all His fancies for the Tabernacle, His home, all be artfully made by human beings, and they should be guided by their own craftsmanship, this suggests that human beings have a way of revealing God’s concealed purpose (for creating reality) and can identify with it. Man is not destined to merely fight against the forces of nature his entire life, trying to keep them at bay. Rather, he can access His Creator’s deep, concealed reason and choose to mimic Him.
We have discovered then that God has a vested interest in human beauty, in orderly beauty and not only in the wild, untamed beauty in nature. God yearns to have a place to dwell, one that reflects His affinity with man who seemed to have a desire and need for order only because he is limited. Yet, these limits are now found to have a source High Above. It is only that “like has found like,” God has found man and man has found God.
We are All Furnishings
We can better understand the novelty of the Tabernacle by considering that the Torah does not say, “They shall build me a Tabernacle and I will dwell in it,” it rather says that “They shall build me a Tabernacle and I will dwell in them.” Apparently, every person can feel like a furnishing in God’s House. Our stance, our location, and our cleanliness have significance and can affect the harmony of the entire dwelling and therefore should be considered carefully. The individual who is mindful that his entire body should act exactly according to God’s commandments will soon feel that there is a spirit that breathes through the entire dwelling, providing him with a slight peek into the concealed purpose behind all of Creation.
To conclude, it is not by chance that God yearns to create a place to dwell below and wishes to enter and fill His home—the Tabernacle and the Temple—because it is a home that allows His preferences to exist harmoniously. The boundaries between the parts are what allow them to cooperate and shine out even to the individual who feels estranged and alone in a world of dissociation.
(from Malchut Yisra’el vol. 3, pp. 307-316).
