A Place To Go

By Rabbi Joshua (elevatingly known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

After the people completed the construction of the mishkan, Moshe saw that they had done it according to all that God had commanded him, and blessed them. Rashi says that the blessing he gave was: “May the divine presence rest on the work of your hands" (Shemos 39:44, and Rashi there). A number of commentators explain this to mean that the divine presence, which, as God has promised, would dwell in the mishkan, would also dwell, as a consequence, or the daily work that people did in their own lives. The commentator Shemen HaTov adds that this effect of the mishkan, elevating the mundane things in one’s life, applies to character traits as well. This is seen, he says, through the example of the tzitz, the golden head band worn on the forehead of the kohein gadol as one of the priestly garments. The Talmud says that the tzitz atones for brazenness. This means that arrogance, at times, can be elevated, used at times in the service of God. This process of elevation, he says, applies to other character traits, as well. However, following the midrash, there seems to be one negative trait to which this process does not apply.

The Midrash Rabbah to parshas Pekudei says that there was a “kipas hacheshbonos”, a charter of calculations, outside of Yerushalayim, where people would go to the make their financial calculations. This was because such calculations can often lead us to sadness, and a person is supposed to be happy in Yerushalayim, which is described in Tehillim as the joy of the world. Why was it so important to be happy in Yerushalayim? Why couldn’t the character trait of sadness be elevated? Rav Kook, in his Oros HaKodesh (3, 243), writes that all character traits can be elevated except for that of “atzvus”, sadness, or depression, which is rooted in anger, arrogance, or worrying in general. Only through elevating the root causes of sadness can the symptom, along with its roots, be resolved.

In a recently published work (Pinkas 13) Rav Kook further says that any sadness in the world comes only because a person does not truly wish to do the will of God. If this is the case, one may ask, why is it specifically discouraged in Yerushalayim? Perhaps we can explain this on the basis of a remark by Rav Yosef Albo in his sefer HaIkkarim, in which he says that a person is happy when he acts according to the nature of his soul. The Rambam, in his Laws of Divorce, chapter two, says that it is the nature of a Jew to wait to do the mitzvos. Someone, then, who is in a state of sadness, is demonstrating that he is not happy with what he is doing, and doesn’t feel that it is part of his nature. Yerushalayim, according to the Ramban, is an extension of the mikdash, the place in the world where a person can come closest to God, performing the mitzvos connected to that holy place. Exhibiting sadness in that environment, then, reflects the kind of attitude that Rav Kook describes. The mishkan, in fact, came as an atonement for the eigel, and the aspect of that sin that led Moshe to break the luchos, was, as pointed out by some commentators, the fact that he saw the people dancing before their idol. This demonstration of happiness while acting in way contradicting the entire Torah reflected a transformation of Jewish nature, which is to find happiness in doing God’s will. Perhaps that is why, in Yerushalayim, in its status as an extension of the mikdash, which is where one’s Jewish nature can best emerge, sadness is discouraged.