Parshas Tetzaveh
The Mishnayos* of Seder Moed (Tractate Chagigah) conclude with the law that the Golden Altar and the Copper Altar "אינן מקבלין טומאה" ("are not susceptible to ritual impurity"), "מפני שהן כקרקע, דברי ר' אליעזר; וחכמים אומרים: מפני שהן מצופין" ("because they are like the ground — these are the words of Rabbi Eliezer; and the Sages say: because they are [merely] plated"). The simple meaning of this is: the Golden Altar that was in the Sanctuary, as well as the Copper Altar that was in the Sanctuary, did not contract ritual impurity. Rabbi Eliezer explains that the reason for this is that the Torah likens them to the earth, and earth does not contract impurity. The Sages say that they do not contract impurity because they were no more than covered with gold or copper; consequently the covering is subordinate (batel) to the interior, and the interior does not contract impurity.
The holy Torah (which was given by G‑d, Who is Ein Sof, infinite) is also infinite, and it applies with the same force in all places and at all times. Just as it was strong when G‑d gave it to the Jewish people through Moshe Rabbeinu on Mount Sinai, so is it equally strong in our times of dark exile, and in every place on the globe. The Torah is also infinite in that every matter of Torah has infinite interpretations, which are divided into four categories: Pshat, Remez, Drush, Sod (the plain meaning, allusion, homiletic interpretation, and the mystical secret)1.
The allusion and moral lesson that we can learn from the Mishnah at the end of Seder Moed and apply in our everyday life:
Each and every person, in his city and according to his situation, is a Sanctuary in which the Shechinah rests — "ושכנתי בתוכם" ("and I will dwell within them"). In the Beis HaMikdash there are various vessels; likewise, in every Jew there are various faculties: intellect, emotions, etc. Into these faculties an ulterior motive may mix itself — a mundane, unholy thought — and it can also happen that what mixes in is not merely something mundane but even something impure, something connected with a sin, G‑d forbid, that is, the opposite of the will of G‑d, blessed be He, the opposite of Torah and mitzvos.
In other words: a person's vessel — the intellect, or thought, or some other faculty — has become impure, and one must seek ways for it to become pure again and once more become a vessel of the Sanctuary, for G‑d's Sanctuary — every Jew, man and woman — must be pure.
People are divided (materially, or spiritually) into rich and poor. Of the rich man it is said that with him everything is gold2, and of the poor man — that his coins are copper3. But in every Jew without exception, whatever his state in his inner or his outer matters and feelings, the nekudas haYahadus — the pintele Yid, the essential Jewish spark — which wants to do G‑d's will, always remains whole. As my revered father-in-law, the Rebbe, of sainted memory, may his merit protect us*, said: a Jew neither wants to, nor is able to, be torn away from G‑dliness. And this is what is called by the name mizbeach (altar). Mizbeach means slaughtering (zevichah) and burning an offering to G‑d, blessed be He.
The Mishnah says that both the Jews who are the Golden Altar — the wealthy Jews — and those who are the Copper Altar — the poor Jews — when they remember that they are an altar, that their innermost being, their true will, is to slaughter the evil inclination and to do G‑d's will, "they do not contract impurity." And the reason given for this is "מפני שהן כקרקע" ("because they are like the ground"): just as the earth is trodden upon by everyone, so too (as we pray, "ונפשי כעפר לכל תהיה" — "let my soul be as dust to all") one has no will of one's own, only the will that G‑d has revealed to us in the holy Torah.
These are "the words of Rabbi Eliezer" (ben Hurkenos), who is called Rabbi Eliezer the Great, who was equal to all the sages of Israel4, and yet, despite his greatness, he took up no room of his own, to the extent that, as the Gemara says5, "מעולם לא אמר דבר שלא שמע מרבותיו" ("he never said anything that he had not heard from his teachers"). Consequently, he also saw in every Jew, straightaway, his inner essence, the nekudas haYahadus — "ישראל ואורייתא וקוב"ה כולא חד" ("Israel, the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are all one")6 — that the entire life of a Jew is to fulfill Torah and mitzvos. And he taught his students the path in which tremendous intellect goes together with complete self-nullification (bittul), as expressed in the approach "he never said anything that he had not heard from his teachers."
"וחכמים אומרים" ("And the Sages say") — the other Sages held that this path is too demanding for everyone, and not many are able to carry out this approach. They therefore took into account also the externality, the outermost layer of Jews: it sometimes happens that one stumbles, G‑d forbid — especially the "Golden Altar," who is often so absorbed in golden things that this leads him, for the time being, not to do G‑d's will; and also among poor people (the Copper Altar), because of how hard it is for them to earn their money, they too sometimes transgress the will of G‑d. Nevertheless, say the Sages, the nekudas haYahadus (the altar) does not contract impurity, "מפני שהן מצופין" ("because they are [merely] plated").
For both the gold of the wealthy man and the copper of the poor man are only a covering on the outside, but the inside is pure and cannot contract impurity. And the inner essence is so strong that, in the end, the plating is subordinate to the inner essence, and he will certainly, in the end, do teshuvah and arrive at the truth: that the life and existence of a Jew is nothing other than G‑dliness, which one attains only through the study of Torah and the fulfillment of mitzvos.
And these are also the vessels for the material blessings that G‑d has assured in the Torah: "אם בחקתי תלכו ואת מצותי תשמרו גו' ונתנה הארץ יבולה ועץ השדה יתן פריו גו'" ("If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments… the land shall yield its produce and the tree of the field shall yield its fruit…")7.
(From a letter of 15 Marcheshvan 5701)
Notes
*) Since the end of Parshas Tetzaveh speaks of the Golden Altar, and the preceding sidrah — Parshas Terumah — speaks of the Copper Altar, we print here an excerpt from a letter of the Rebbe shlita (which he wrote to a "Chevras Mishnayos" when they made a siyum on Seder Moed), in which the two altars are explained.
1) See Shaar HaGilgulim, Introduction 17.
2) See Bava Basra 25b: "From the north comes gold" etc. — "one who wishes to become wealthy should turn northward."
3) See the Mishnah at the beginning of chapter 4 of Bava Metzia, that there are three kinds of coins: gold, silver and copper.
*) This letter was written in the year of the passing of the Rebbe (Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak), of blessed memory.
4) Avos, end of chapter 2, Mishnah 9.
5) Sukkah 27b; 28a.
6) See Zohar III, 73a.
7) The above matter, in greater depth and in very brief form: see Sefer HaMitzvos of the Tzemach Tzedek, the mitzvah of building the Sanctuary, chapter 2, that there were four principal vessels in the Sanctuary — the Menorah and the Table, the Inner Altar and the Outer Altar — and they correspond to Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferes and Malchus. With this, the first part of the above Mishnah is understood: that the Menorah and the Table are susceptible to impurity, whereas the Inner Altar and the Outer Altar are in the middle line (see also Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar 60a; ibid. 51a), which rises into the inner dimension of Keser — the Ark (which was hidden away, since no [hostile] dominion over it is possible, G‑d forbid) in the Holy of Holies, in which the Tablets lay. Even so, a reason is needed for this, since these are attributes of the middle line; and the reason is that "they are like the ground," like the nothingness and naught of Keser (Hosafos to Torah Or, beginning of Megillas Esther). Even so, an explicit verse stating that it resembles the ground exists only regarding the Outer Altar, [which is] Malchus — "מזבח אדמה תעשה לי" ("An altar of earth you shall make for Me") — for "their end is wedged in their beginning and their beginning in their end." To the extent that even in the shattering of the vessels, "the earth was (only) nullified." And in the second… [Continues on the next page.]
Key Lesson
Every Jew is a Sanctuary, and at his core is an "altar" — the pintele Yid, whose true will is to do G‑d's will — which can never become impure. Whether one's outer layer is "gold" or "copper," and even when it stumbles, it is only a plating; the inner essence ultimately prevails and brings a person back, through Torah and mitzvos, to the truth that his life is G‑dliness.