Kavanot: פרשת ראה תשפ״ה

This week’s parsha introduces המקום אשר יבחר ה׳:

Note that there is no mention of Yerushalayim. The Sifri makes the point that we—human beings—decide where this place is, and then we ask ה׳ for confirmation.

And in fact, Rashi says that the location that this pasuk is talking about is not Yerushalayim, but Shilo:

In context, the paragraph is redundant: פסוק ה has המקום אשר יבחר ה׳ and then והבאתם שמה עלתיכם וזבחיכם, and פסוק יא has המקום אשר יבחר ה׳ and שמה תביאו…עולתיכם וזבחיכם. So it makes sense that the first one refers to the first place that עבודת ה׳ was centralized:

So to review history (based on the סדר עולם‎): בני ישראל entered the land and Yehoshua set up the משכן in the camp in Gilgal where it remained for 14 years. At the end of that period, when the first wave of settlement was completed, he moved the משכן to Shilo. It remained in Shilo 369 years until it was destroyed when the Plishitim take over Israel in the beginning of ספר שמואל. Shmuel then sets up the משכן in Nov, where it remained for 12 years until Shaul wiped out the city in his paranoia; Shmuel then set it up in Givon. It remained there for 45 years until Shlomo built the בית המקדש in Yerushalayim.

When the Moshe says לא תעשון ככל אשר אנחנו עשים פה היום; איש כל הישר בעיניו he is referring to the immediate future; the people are about to enter the land but until the establishment of a permanent central site for worship, everyone can have their own altars. It was only at Shilo that a real, permanent building was built. It was still called the משכן because it still used the curtains of the original משכן as its roof.

And then Moshe says כי לא באתם עד עתה אל המנוחה ואל הנחלה. There are two different things: המנוחה and הנחלה.

The obvious question is, why two? Those two sites, Shilo and Yerushalayim, are the most obvious places to say לשכנו תדרשו ובאת שמה. We have cited Rav Medan’s idea that Shilo was the site outside of Bethel where Yaakov camped:

And, of course, Yerushalayim was the place of the עקידה:

Yehosha picks Shilo as the site of המקום אשר יבחר ה׳…לשכנו תדרשו and there is nothing in the text that says it would ever have to move. But clearly there are two stages: the משכן, symbolically temporary without a roof, and then, when הניח לכם מכל איביכם מסביב וישבתם בטח, it would be time to turn it into a בית המקדש.

And the reason that the בית המקדש was not built in Shilo was because of the sins that led to its destruction; that’s the whole plot of ספר שופטים.

Why? Why are there two stages of מקדש:‎ מנוחה and נחלה?

The reason is that, for most nations, הניח לכם מכל איביכם מסביב וישבתם בטח, is the sum total of their raison d'être.

But for us, that’s only the beginning, only a temporary respite: a מנוחה not a נחלה. We have a mission. Once we have a nation, we need to spread the message to the entire world.

As Rabbi Shulman said in his last shiur here, the ultimate boundaries of the land will extend far beyond the limited boundaries of ארץ ישראל.

From the Nile to the Euphrates isn’t a geographic boundary, it’s a toponym: from one end of civilization to the other. Your influence, ethical monotheism, will reach all the world.

That is our נחלה and that is what we hope for when we ask for יהי רצון שיבנה בית המקדש במהרה בימינו אמן.