Okay, let's take a short break. Uh, we'll do the special study today in memory for the yahrzeit. Mark, what's the name of the yahrzeit? Raizel Bas... Raizel Bas Sarah. Raizel Bas Sarah. The yahrzeit is tonight. We'll dedicate the short class in her memory.
And today, we’ve started to learn the parshas of Terumah. And seems to be a very puzzling question Rashi has. The Torah starts to talk about the material that they needed to build the sanctuary, the Mishkan. So a main part of the Mishkan was the cedar wood or the acacia wood, the atzei shitim. Now, where’d they get atzei shitim, where’d they get acacia wood in the desert?
But it's interesting that one could ask the same question with regards to all the other material. Like for example, the acacia wood, then it says they brought shemen l’maor, they brought oil. So where’d they get olives and they get olive oil? Where’d they get the besamim, the special spices and incense that they needed for the ketoret and for that? How did they get all these different material? It seems like they were sustained in the desert by the manna and the water, and that's basically what they had. Where did they get all the other things?
So the Gemara says in Yoma, actually, the Gemara says that they used to buy from the merchants. I mean this was 600,000 males, there was a couple million people there, and they did business, you know, they got other stuff, they bought other stuff from the other nations around, even though they were traveling in the desert. So they did have access to all the various kinds.
But Rashi asks: where’d they get the cedar wood, where’d they get this acacia wood, where’d they get the atzei shitim from? Rashi comes up with a whole miraculous way that the way they got it is because that Yaakov Avinu actually brought it up with him all the way from the land of Canaan and he planted it in Egypt. And all the years that the Jews were in Egypt, those cedars were growing. And he told his children that "you should know that you’re going to be traveling in the desert and you’re going to need to build a sanctuary," so he instructed them to take along their—the acacia wood, the atzei shitim. So there were people that were carrying the—the acacia wood with them.
Why Rashi says that—the Rebbe has all explanation because that—it seemed like the acacia wood was ready. But the Rebbe’s main question is: why did G-d trouble them for—I mean Yaakov Avinu, for 200 years—they were growing these trees, they were schlepping—I mean those were big beams, you know, they were ten—eser amos and ama v’chetzi, ama rochev—they were huge loads. Later on we read they needed all these wagons, you know, to—to travel all these—this wood in the desert. They were, you know, really—there was the contribution of the wagons to schlep them all. It was a very, very heavy load, very tall load, and a very—um, that was the exact beams that they used, but I’m not sure that they had all the measurements beforehand. I’m just going to assume maybe they didn’t know exactly how many pieces of, how many two-by-fours they’re going to need and how many—maybe they didn’t know, so I don’t know, so they had to carry extra.
So how did they schlep? So the Rebbe asks why did Hashem make them schlep such a heavy load all these years if they were buying all the other materials from the neighbors around them? They could have bought this also from the neighbors around them. Why did they have to schlep all this? It’s hard to think that, you know, maybe it wasn’t available, this kind of acacia wood, maybe they couldn’t get it all.
But the Rebbe has a very interesting suggestion, and the Rebbe says that Rashi hints it with the name of Tanchuma. It was—it was actually a comfort for the Jewish people because during the long exile in—in Egypt, uh, sometimes maybe some of the Jewish people would sort of give up and want to throw in the towel and say, “Enough is enough, we can’t handle it anymore.” So the fact that they kept on seeing these acacia wood, they kept on seeing this atzei shitim and they knew that eventually there’s going to be a Mishkan and they had something physical that they can actually see, it sort of strengthened their emunah, it strengthened their belief, it gave them the—the tangible what they needed to be able to go through the—very difficult times that they experienced.
And I want to say the same thing if we’re talking about the yahrzeit of Raizel Bas, again? Bas Sarah. So, you know, the galus of—of the communist Russia is also a very difficult one and a lot of—a lot of Jewish people unfortunately had a very—very difficult time and—and Judaism was almost—almost forgotten. It was almost—but yet there were people remembered and continued to do the best they could under the circumstances. And then they were able to eventually, with G-d’s help, they had the nechamah because they had the Torah and they had the faith and they had the Yiddishkeit what kept them through so that after coming to this country they made sure to remain Jewish, to give their children a good feeling and a good sense about knowing that they should be proud of their Jewishness and that they should not, G-d forbid, drop it.
And they—Baruch Hashem. So when you have a family that transplanted to this country and then they raise the children and the children are coming to say Kaddish and continue—that is the nechamah. That was—that’s the comfort that we have for our Jewish people, that despite being dispersed and despite being all over and having all the difficulties, the Beis Hamikdash will be built. We can see these kerashim, we can see them, they’re with us all the time. We’re just waiting as—for them to be nisgaleh, for it to be revealed. And we hope that this will actually happen before our own eyes.
And we’re standing Rosh Chodesh Adar—mishenichnas Adar marbin b’simcha—so even Rosh Chodesh Adar rishon. As the Rebbe speaks about, we have 60 days this year—mishenichnas Adar. We have 60 days of joy starting from Adar Aleph. We don’t have to wait for Adar Sheni. We can start already with Adar Aleph. And so we have simcha, so the true simcha will be when we will be zoche to the coming of Moshiach, the building of the Beis Hamikdash, and we’ll see that we’ve been carrying the Mishkan actually all the deeds that we do. We’ve been carrying it all along and we’ll actually build it with the coming of Moshiach bimherah b’yameinu. Amen. Mark.