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Dear Yeshiva Family:
This week's parsha opens with the call for donations toward the building of the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary that would accompany the Jewish people in the desert. Gold, silver, copper, fabrics, skins and then atzei shittim omdim, acacia wood that was standing upright.
The Gemara in Sukkah 45b explains that the Torah could have simply said "acacia wood", but it emphasized that it was "standing" because these beams are destined to stand forever. One might think that once the Mishkan was dismantled and replaced, its materials were gone for good. The Gemara reassures us to not worry because they are still in existence and will return[1].
How are we to understand this? Once something has fulfilled its function, we normally move on. We do not preserve the scaffolding after the building is complete. We do not hold on to the prototype after the finished model exists. So why must the beams of the Mishkan remain? Why are they not simply part of history?
I saw an answer[2] that the Mishkan was not meant to be the final stage of our relationsip with Hashem. It was not the permanent resting place, what the Torah later calls (Devorim 12:9) "el ha-menuchah ve'el ha-nachalah," "the place of rest and inheritance," referring to the Bais HaMikdash. The Mishkan was temporary and transitional. It was, in a sense, a starter home for the relationship between the Jewish people and Hashem, a silhouette of what would one day become the Bais HaMikdash.
However, the Mishkan represented something that even the Bais HaMikdash could not fully replicate. If the Bais HaMikdash is the home after marriage, then the Mishkan represented the engagement period. And while a marriage is deep and textured, nevertheless the engagement carries something else — anticipation. Freshness. Passion. The electricity of something that is about to unfold.
True, a happily married couple possess a depth and stability that is not there before their shared history. But the intensity, the excitement, the constant anticipation that characterizes an engaged couple is unique. It is filled with longing and forward movement. The Jewish people knew that there would one day be a permanent and stable Home for their relationship with Hashem. And therefore, in the desert, with the Mishkan, they were living in that earlier stage, the stage of becoming, a relationship still charged with movement.
The Torah preserves the Mishkan, and it will eventually return to us to teach us that the early fire, the original excitement of connection, is not meant to fade. Even as we build stable institutions, communities, and routines, we must protect and rekindle the energy of the desert — the sense that we are still on the way to something greater.
In fact, this language appears explicitly in the haftarah read before Shavuos, from Hoshea. There the verse says, "Ve'erastich li le'olam" — "And I will betroth you to Me forever." Why are we talking about an eternal betrothal, an engagement and not an eternal marriage? Like we are explaining, engagement is the stage of promise, of anticipation, of future-oriented love. Yes, there are elements of a long-term marriage that are far deeper and richer than engagement but engagement has the intensity of anticipation, the electricity of becoming and Hoshea is saying our long term relationship should have the passion of an engaged couple.
If a person ever wants to strengthen his marriage, a very practical exercises is to look carefully at his wedding or engagement pictures. Study the faces. The smiles that are not forced. The way the kallah and chassan are looking at each other — almost with disbelief at their own good fortune. Try to remember that version of yourself. Remember the anticipation. The nervous joy. The sense that something extraordinary was beginning. Revisit those images and ask yourself: can I reawaken even a fraction of that amazement? Can I see my spouse again with the same sense of blessing and gratitude that I felt then? Those feelings do not have to disappear. The pictures can serve as anchors.
The engagement period is not more real than the marriage. But it reveals something true, how deeply we valued the other person before life became complicated. It is a great idea to have these pictures or albums very handy and accessible, displayed privately but prominently, and do this exercise often.
The hidden Mishkan functions in a similar way.
It preserves the engagement energy of our relationship with Hashem. It captures the moment when we first built a home for the Divine Presence — when the nation was filled with longing and anticipation. Even after the Bais HaMikdash was built, even after centuries passed, that early passion was not erased. It was hidden, like a photograph carefully stored, waiting to be revisited.
With this understanding, we can address another question.
Why, when it came to the Mishkan, was there such an insistence that the donations be given willingly? The parsha opens with the words, "Take for Me a contribution from every person whose heart moves him." The giving had to come from generosity of heart. Years later, when it came to the Bais HaMikdash, there were communal obligations. Dovid and Shlomo made a tax requiring everyone to donate (Melachim 1:5:2). When building a Shul, Halacha rules that members of a community can be compelled to contribute (O.C. 150). Why, then, was the Mishkan different that it be built only from voluntary contributions?
We can now explain based on this above insight. In the Mishkan, people did not simply donate money into a general fund. They donated the actual materials that would become part of the structure — the gold that would form the vessels, the silver that would form the sockets, the wood that would stand as beams. Nothing was donated merely to be exchanged for something else. What a person gave was what entered the Mishkan.
Now that we are saying that the Mishkan and its vessels were not destroyed but hidden away, we can understand that those donations themselves are meant to serve as eternal testimony to our initial love and dedication. They are the photograph meant to remind us of our initial feelings, to love freely given. Therefore, it could not be from forced obligations. The picture has to be perfect. Hashem wanted our engagement picture to be of people saying, "I want to give."
May we learn to revisit the sacred photographs of our beginnings — in marriage and in faith — and allow that original sense of wonder to illuminate the life we are building now.
Have an amazing Shabbos!
Rabbi Moshe Revah Mrevah2@touro.edu
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[1] See also the Gemara in Sotah 9b that teaches that the Mishkan was not destroyed but hidden away. [2] I saw this answer by R' Yisrael Reisman quoting R' Shaul Alter, but I could not find the original source. | 
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