A thought on Parshios Vayakhel and Pekudei

"...u'kvod HaShem malae es haMishkan..." "...and the glory of HaShem filled the Mishkan..." (40:35) This verse has drawn the attention of virtually every Rishon whom I have studied over these many years. The difficulty many have with the words is that at a concrete level, the verse would seem to imply that HaShem's Divine Presence filled the holy sanctuary, as if that three dimensional chamber housed or enveloped the Kavayachol. That surely could not be, for HaShem is dimensionless and infinite. A room, now matter how large and no matter how sanctified, could never contain Him! The Gan writes that many verses in the Torah need to be understood as if the words are in a different sequence. The image with which we can best envision this verse would be that "the chamber was filled with HaShem's Presence." We can try to picture this in our mind, yet we would be misled into thinking that the Presence entered into that place, and that the place enclosed the Presence. By writing that the Presence filled the chamber, we need to understand that the Glory was greater than the chamber, and that the chamber was enveloped by the Presence. This is exactly what the Gan taught us last week with the Midrash which says that the universe is subordinate to HaMakom. When the Glory of HaShem was "in" the Mishkan, the Mishkan was within the Glory of HaShem. With these words, the Gan closes his commentary on Sefer Shmos. Many years ago, I took my wife for a walk along the beach at Corona del Mar, where I had often played as a boy. I wanted her to see the seaside cave. At low tide, we used to go in and pretend we were hunting for pirate treasure. At high tide, there was no cave, only the roiling water which took over that space, and turned the cave from shoreline into ocean. At the time, I taught my wife that this is what a Midrash explains about the Shechina in the Mishkan. The Midrash says that we can see where the shoreline ends and the sea begins, yet when the tide comes in, the shoreline disappears and it becomes the sea. When the tide is out, the cave is a cave but when the waves roll in, the cave is part of the ocean. This too captures the image of the Gan. When the Mishkan is a building, its chambers are rooms. When the Glory of HaShem is Present there, the chambers disappear and become subsumed within that Presence. That makom becomes subordinate to the Makom. With these words, I wish us all a Good Shabbos. D Fox The Gan was written by 13th century Rabbeinu Aharon ben Yosi haCohen, Baal Tosfos More pirushim presented by Rabbi Dr. Dovid Fox at http://thoughtonparsha.blogspot.com/