Shabbat Parashat Terumah - 5782

Shabbat Parashat Terumah - 5782

Rabbi Hal Miller

You shall cast for it four rings of gold and place them on its four pa'amot

and two rings on its one side and two rings on its second side. [Shemot 25:12]

In our portion the Torah describes the construction of some big furniture for the

Sanctuary. An issue arises, but is not addressed, that applies to the Ark, the beams,

the Table, and in next week's portion, the golden Altar. Just using the Ark as an

example, the amount of wood and metal involved, plus the contents of stone,

wood, and parchment, the total weight of this Ark is easily in the many hundreds,

if not thousands of pounds. To move them around, as happened constantly over

the forty years in the desert, and occasionally after until Shlomo built the Temple,

there were two poles per item, each pole slipped through a pair of cast rings.

For the copper altar, this was probably not an issue as copper is a pretty strong

metal. But gold is highly malleable, and can easily be stretched to the breaking

point. Within laws of nature, there is no way these heavy objects could have

made it through all that jostling around. So, why gold, and why did this work?

Rav Yosef B. Soloveitchik starts us off by asking what the purpose of the Ark was.

He answers two things. First, it is to restore the relationship between man and

God, which had been damaged by so many inappropriate actions on the part of

man. Second, he notes that the Ark is called either the Ark of Testimony or the Ark

of the Covenant, both of which refer to the Tablets upon which were written the

Ten Commandments.

Rav Hirsch tells us that "metals, in accordance with their physical property of hardness

are used as a metaphor for firmness and strength, in accordance with their being valuable

as a metaphor for valuing spiritual values, and in accordance with their metallurgical

properties as a metaphor for goodness and truth in every stage. They designate various

degrees of moral purity and truth." Thus, copper is strong, but silver (although weaker)

is more valuable. Further, gold, weakest of all is also the most valuable. Combining Rav

Soloveitchik and Rav Hirsch, we see why these valuable items are worked with gold.

There was a very powerful, non-nature type element to these pieces of furniture. In

fact, the Gemora in Sotah [35a] says, "The Ark carried its bearers." How could four men

carry a multi-thousand pound item through the shifting sands for forty years? They didn't.

It carried them. The gold rings did not need to support many hundreds of pounds each,

rather only a hundred or so, and gold can handle that, especially when aided by the feet

of the carriers.