|
Terumah 5760 - February 11, 2000 |
Home
Home is where you can make faces at the mirror, wear an old green sweater with a hole under the armpit and eat pickles with peanut butter -- because you feel like it.
G-d, too, desires a home, a place where He can be fully and uninhibitedly Himself. Our sages tell us that G-d created the physical world because He wanted "A dwelling in the lower realms."
| FROM THE CHASSIDIC MASTERS |
The Anatomy of a Dwelling
The Kabbalists describe the Tabernacle (the portable sanctuary built by the Children of Israel in the Sinai Desert) as a model of man, of the physical universe, and of creation as a whole.
Maimonides sees the world as consisting of three strata: unrefined matter, refined matter, and wholly spiritual beings. This three-fold division also exists in the realm of time, and in the human soul. In the Tabernacle, these three domains are represented by the Chatzer ("courtyard"), the "Holy" (the outer chamber of the Sanctuary), and the "Holy of Holies" -- the inner chamber behind the "Veil."
One On One
We set out from Homel to Lubavich in four wagons, each carrying some fifteen Chassidim: several sit in two rows inside the wagon, others along its sides, two on its steps, and another two up on bench alongside the wagon-driver. I sit in the first wagon with my father, a successful businessman who was financing the entire trip, opposite the great Rabbi Eisel.
The wagons merely serve as a resting place for an occasional hour or two, for the Chassidim make their way largely by foot. They sing as they walk, and those in the wagons answer in song.
The Discovery of Planet Earth
I want to tell you about the greatest discovery of the millennium. It wasn't the printing press. It wasn't America. It wasn't even vaccination. The greatest discovery of the millennium happened near its very end.
We were trying to get away from Planet Earth--ever since we had to leave the garden. We built temples reaching to the heavens, cities to lock out the earth's wildness. We ravaged her, raped her, paved her. Until finally, in the ultimate of all dreams, we escaped her.
Confessions of a Fundamentalist
There it was. The dreaded word of the intellectual world. Everyone literally gasped in horror. It meant you believed there might actually be something higher than the human mind, even higher than the mind of a professor. If I was a fundamentalist then I was an academic heretic.
| POSTCARD FROM S. FRANCISCO |
Hearing the first news report that an Alaskan airliner had crashed off the coast of San Francisco, Rabbi Yosef Langer of the Chabad Center of San Francisco immediately headed to the airport...
|
POSTCARD
from S. Francisco
Terumah
Exodus 25:1-27:19 Week of February 6-12, 2000
The Parshah In A Nutshell
Full Parshah Summary With Commentary
THE REBBE: 50 YEARS
THE REBBETZIN
PREVIOUS ISSUE
NEXT ISSUE
MAGAZINE ARCHIVES
|
