An Open Letter to University Presidents
6 min read
The Torah portion teaches the laws of kosher food, outlining which animals are permitted and forbidden to eat. The Seforno suggests a very novel insight with regard to the timing of commandments pertaining to kosher food. Before directly discussing kosher food, the Seforno opines that before the Sin of the Golden Calf, there was no necessity for a Tabernacle (Mishkan) or even a Temple (Beit HaMikdash). The primary purpose of the Tabernacle was to serve as a necessary conduit between the Jewish people and God. However, the Seforno, like Rashi1, holds that this was only the case after the Golden Calf. Before that sin and immediately after the Giving of the Torah, the Jewish people attained such a high level that they had direct access to the Divine Presence (Shechinah). This, he explains is the meaning of the verse, “Wherever I permit My Name to be mentioned, I shall come to you and bless you.”2
This means that wherever a Jew may have been, the Divine Presence would rest upon him. Likewise, Rabbi Daniel Glatstein3 writes that initially when God commanded, “they shall make a Dwelling (Mikdash) for me so that I will dwell within them, it meant that the Mikdash actually dwelt within each member of the Jewish people. Therefore, at that elevated point in time, there was simply no need for a conduit or intermediary to bridge the gap between each Jew and God because they were directly connected.
The Seforno adds that at this point in the history of the Jewish people, after the Giving of the Torah and before the Golden Calf, each Jew was on such a lofty level that he did not require the spiritual benefit of that a strictly kosher diet would offer. Accordingly, it was permitted to partake of all foods.4 However, after the Golden Calf the Divine Presence departed and the body of each Jew was no longer on the level of serving as a place for It.
Moshe prayed to God and He agreed that His Presence would return to the Jewish people. However, from now on in, it would only be present through the medium of the Tabernacle or later, the Temple. In addition, the Jewish people had fallen to a level where the Divine Presence could not rest directly upon their physical bodies, and required the spiritual support of purified kosher foods.5 Thus, according to the Seforno, it emerges that the whole concept of eating only kosher food would never have come about were it not for the sin of the Golden Calf.
The Seforno concludes that when the Messiah will come, we will revert to the state of before the Golden Calf and God will directly rest His Presence upon the Jewish people without the need of any medium. In this vein, the Chatam Sofer6 asserts that the only purpose of the Temple at this point will be as a place in which the sacrifices can be offered to God.
The Chatam Sofer uses this idea to explain a Talmudic passage: When Yosef was finally reunited with his brother, Binyamin, the Torah relates, “Then he fell upon his brother, Binyamin’s necks and wept, and Binyamin wept upon his neck.”7 Why does the verse say that Yosef fell on Binyamin’s ‘necks’ in the plural, as Binyamin only had one neck?! Rashi, based on the Talmud8, explains that the necks referred to in the verse actually alluded to something of great significance. When Yosef cried on Binyamin’s two necks, it means the was crying about the destruction of the two Temples that would be built in Binyamin’s portion. And when Binyamin cried on Yosef’s neck, it means that he was crying about the destruction of the Tabernacle of Shilo, which was located in Yosef’s portion.
The obvious question is why does the Torah choose to represent the neck as alluding to the Temple and Tabernacle?9 Citing the Chatam Sofer, Rabbi Glatstein explains10:
“Anatomically, the neck serves as the conduit between the head and the heart, connecting the rosh, head, to the rest of the body. The neck itself is not an organ; it merely serves as a medium whereby the body connects to the head… the Holy One, Blessed is He, is our Rosh…Klal Yisrael is the guf, the body. What connects the Holy One, blessed is He, to the Jewish people? It is the Temple. The Temple serves as the neck… that attaches the Jewish nation to God, providing the connection of the body to the head. In this capacity, the Temple served as the conduit by which all prayers ascended to Hashem…the same is true in the opposite direction: Whatever shefa, bounty, Hashem sends us, whatever He grants us, travels via the neck as well.”
The neck is a conduit between the head and the body. The Temple is the conduit between God and the Jewish people. Thus, when Yosef cried on the necks of Binyamin he was crying over the loss of that conduit, and Binyamin was crying over the same idea. However, as the Seforno notes, the necessity for the Temple as a conduit between God and the Jewish people is not permanent. Interestingly, the Chatam Sofer writes that the lofty level we will reach when we no longer need the Temple in that sense, is knows ‘dag’, fish. This is because the fish is the entity in which the head is fused directly to the body without the medium of a neck. Thus, it is symbolic of the level we reached before the Golden Calf and will reach when Mashiach comes.
Needless to say, until that time, we all need to utilize the conduits that we need to connect us to God, yet the lessons of the Seforno and Chatam Sofer teach us of the ultimate goal to be directly connected to God without needing any intermediaries.
