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By Rabbi Tuvia Bolton, Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim, Kfar Chabad, Israel

This week we learn that there is a commandment to build a “Mikdash”; a holy house for G-d.

It begins here as the Tabernacle (“Mishkan”); a portable structure of wood and curtains in the desert. But its real goal was to be (480 years later) a permanent “Holy Temple” in Jerusalem.

Other religions also have their temples but one interesting thing about ours e, is that even today, almost 2,000 years after it was destroyed, we still pray toward the place where it used to stand!
At first glance this does not seem like a very Jewish thing to do. Isn’t G-d found everywhere? Isn’t G-d spiritual? Why are we praying to a PLACE? Maybe when the Temple stood it had some psychological effect, but why pray to it now?

Especially when we consider that really EVERY Jew is a Holy Temple. As G-d tells Moshe in the beginning of the section “Make me a Mikdosh and I will dwell in THEM”. In other words, G-d will dwell not only in IT (the Temple) but in THEM i.e. in EACH and every Jew as well.

As we see in the following story:

Once there was a Chassid of the Baal Shem Tov that longed to travel to Israel. But the Besh’t (short for Baal Shem Tov) would not give his permission. Several months later the Chassid again asked, and then a few weeks after that and again a week later, until he felt that his desire for the Holy Land was driving him insane. It got to the point that every day he wrote once, and even twice, to the Besh’t asking for permission, until finally the Master reluctantly agreed.
Elated, the Chassid bought boat tickets, and packed his bags; finally he would leave Mezibuz, the town of the Besh’t and kiss the soil of Eretz Yisroel!!
The day of his departure arrived. He woke early and before the Morning Prayer he went to immerse himself in the Mikva. He found himself alone in the small room where the Mikva was, it was a perfect chance to really purify his thoughts for the big trip. He removed his clothes, entered the water, took a deep breath, put his head under the water and when he briefly opened his eyes he saw the most amazing thing; it was as though he was looking from a distance at the shoreline of …Israel!
He looked until he could no longer hold his breath, came out of the water, took another deep breath and submerged once more with open eyes. This time it was as though he was on dry land and looking in the distance at the Holy city of …Jerusalem! He couldn’t believe his eyes!
Once again, he came up for air, and the next time under he saw that he was approaching the Holy Temple and entering the outer courtyard, passing the Large Altar, then entering into the Holy inner room passing the small Incense Altar standing before the curtain in front of … The Holy of Holies!!
He emerged once more trembling with excitement! He was about to look into the Holy of Holies… to see the unseen; the Holy Ark containing the Ten Commandments!
He filled his lungs with as much air as possible and slowly immersed, eyes open, filled with trepidation. There he was again. He grabbed the curtain, carefully pulled it aside and beheld something that completely defied his wildest imagination; amidst a blinding light, in the place of the Holy Ark, was sitting … the Baal Shem Tov!!
The Chassid came out of the water, dried himself, dressed and headed straight back to the Baal Shem. “If the Holy Ark is here in Mezibus, why should I travel to Jerusalem?”

So the Besh’t, and potentially is EVERY Jew, is a Holy Temple. So why do we face Jerusalem when we pray?

To answer, here is another Chassidic story.

Reb Yisroel was exhausted as he walked along the moonlit road. For several days he hadn’t really slept. He was a Chassid, a follower of the ideas of the Baal Shem Tov, who believed that we must connect every Jew with G-d and His Torah. But there seemed to be no end to the troubles of the Jewish people. Sickness, poverty, and anti-Semitism loomed over their heads like an ugly black cloud. Pessimism and depression were pushing tens of thousands of souls away from Judaism into the beckoning arms of intellectualism and even to outright conversion. Trying to restore optimism and joy seemed impossible, but the Baal Shem Tov said that it was the only solution.
It was cold, and the moonlight didn’t warm up the forest. He longed to just lie down for an hour or so. Then, suddenly in the distance, he saw the inn he had been told about.
In minutes he was inside warming up by the stove. He paid for the night in advance, and after saying his evening prayers he went to his room and laid down to rest. His body was aching from fatigue.
But he couldn’t sleep. The ticking of the clock on the wall caught his attention. Suddenly it filled him with an uncontrollable joy. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt that in any second the Moshiach would arrive to redeem the Jewish people!
He stood and began humming and quietly clapping his hands, moving his feet to the rhythm of the clock until he was dancing and singing in uncontrollable joy. When he was out of breath and couldn’t dance any more, he took out a tractate of the Talmud from his back pack, sat down and joyously learned aloud until the morning, filled with new life and optimism.
He put on his Tefillin, prayed the Morning Prayer, packed his things, took his bag and left the room to continue his journey. As he walked past the front desk on the way out, he turned to the owner of the inn and asked,
“Tell me. That clock on the wall in my room, where did you get it? Do you remember? Can you describe the person that you got it from?”
“Ahhh! You like that clock, do you?” answered the owner, “I like it too. It’s a sort of happy clock, isn’t it? When I hear it, it makes me think of good things. Where did I get it? In fact, I got it from someone that looked a bit like you. He got stuck here for a few days because of a snowstorm, and didn’t have enough money to pay the bill, so he gave me that clock instead. I think I remember how he looked.”
From the description, it was obvious that it was none other than the Holy “Chozeh” (Rabbi Yakov Yitzchak) of Lublin.
Later Reb Yisroel said that with every tick, he heard the clock announce that the Moshiach was one second closer, and it filled him with immeasurable joy.

This answers our question about why we pray to the site of the Temple.

The purpose of Judaism is to imbue this physical world with “holiness”. In fact, ONLY in THIS WORLD can there be true holiness. That is why the Torah was given here in this physical world, and why the Torah deals entirely with physical things (Even the “spiritual” commandments of Loving G-d or believing in Him must be felt in the physical heart and brain) in order to transform this world of “lies” to a world of Truth.
The prototype of this was the Holy Temple; a physical building that revealed G-d. The holy Temple showed the Jews what it is possible for EACH of them to do, namely to make the PHYSICAL ETERNAL.
So that is why we pray to the place where the Temple was. Because just as the clock in our story retained its holiness even AFTER it left the Tzaddik, so also the land where the Temple stood is holy even after the Temple is gone.
The first story is no contradiction to this. True, every Jew is a Holy Temple and our leaders are examples. But they are only EXAMPLES while we are praying not only to where the Temples WERE but also where the Third and FINAL Temple WILL be built by G-d and will stand forever.
(Accompanied by and similar to the “Raising of the Dead” when we will see that every commandment that we did really had an ETERNAL effect on our PHYSICAL bodies and our bodies will exist for ever.)

All this will be brought about by Moshiach because he too will defy death (Avodat Ha Kodesh by Mair n’Gabai 2:19)).

It all depends on us to bring Moshiach even one moment sooner.

We are standing on the merits of thousands of years of Jewish hopes, prayers and suffering. Now it could be that just one more good deed, word or even thought will bring…

Moshiach NOW!!

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