Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z’l writes that, “It is hard to understand the depth of the crisis into which the destruction of the First Temple plunged the Jewish people. Their very existence was predicated on a relationship with G-d symbolised by the worship that took place daily in Jerusalem. With the Babylonian conquest in 586 BCE, Jews lost not only their land and sovereignty. In losing the Temple, it was as if they had lost hope itself. For their hope lay in G-d, and how could they turn to G-d if the very place where they served him was in ruins?” (Covenant & Conversation, Exodus, p.189).
Rabbi Sacks notes that it was in Bavel, the very land of the first catastrophic national exile, that an answer began to take shape. It is the navi Yechezkel - unique amongst the prophets, for he prophesied in Bavel, outside the land of Israel - who references “a radically new institution that eventually became known as the Beit Knesset, the synagogue” (ibid., p.190).
Thus, so says Hashem Elokim: מְעַ֔ט לְמִקְדָּ֣שׁ לָהֶם֙ וָֽאֱהִ֚י בָּֽאֲרָצ֑וֹת הֲפִֽיצוֹתִ֖ים וְכִ֥י בַּגּוֹיִ֔ם הִרְחַקְתִּים֙ כִּ֚י שָֽׁם אֲשֶׁר־בָּ֥אוּ בָּֽאֲרָצ֖וֹת, Although I have removed them far off among the nations and although I have scattered them in the lands, yet I have become for them a minor sanctuary in the lands where they have come (Yechezkel 11:16).
Rabbi Sacks teaches that “The synagogue... came into being not through words spoken by G-d to Israel, but by words spoken by Israel to G-d (C&C, Exodus, p.190) ... The Divine Presence lives not in a building but in its builders; not in a physical space but in the human heart. The Sanctuary was not a place in which the objective existence of G-d was somehow more concentrated than elsewhere. Rather, it was a place whose holiness had the effect of opening hearts to the One worshipped there. G-d exists everywhere, but not everywhere do we feel the presence of G-d in the same way. The essence of ‘the holy’ is that it is a place where we set aside all human devices and desires and enter a domain wholly set aside for G-d.
“If the concept of the Mishkan is that G-d lives in the human heart whenever it opens itself unreservedly to heaven, then its physical location is irrelevant. Thus the way was open, seven centuries later, to the synagogue: the supreme statement that of the idea that if G-d is everywhere, He can be reached anywhere... The frail structure described in this week’s parasha became the inspiration of an institution that, more than any other, kept the Jewish people alive through almost two thousand years of dispersion - the longest of all journeys through the wilderness” (ibid., p.192).
May all our tefilos be answered la’tova, from the recesses of our hearts, the thoughts of our minds, the yearnings of our souls and the mikdashei me’at that we have constructed for Hashem in our lands of exile.
And in the merit of our prayers, and our limud Torah, may we welcome the final redemption, and the building of the third Temple, speedily and in our days.
שלום ושבת טובות בשורות בברכת
