Falsehood and Boards

Everyone aspires for truth. Yet it is so elusive because of the obfuscating nature of our physical world. To break out of falsehood we must use the instruments of utter truth. These instruments are the G-dly commandments, which represent objective Divine truth. TERUMAH TERUMAH

Divine Providence on Every Detail

The Mishkan, the portable temple the Jews constructed in the desert was made of boards. These boards were known as Kerashim, or keresh in the singular.

One of the central teachings of the Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidic movement, was that there are no coincidences in our world. Everything, literally, everything that occurs, the Ba’al Shem Tov stated, happens by Divine providence. Nothing happens without a purpose.

If there is precision in everything that occurs within the physical world, there is certainly more precision and purpose with everything that occurs in the Torah. Certainly a detail concerning the Mishkan, G-d’s sanctuary, was TERUMAH significant and conveys an important lesson for all times.

Turning Falsehood into Truths

The Hebrew word keresh, rearranged reads: sheker, falsehood.

The obvious lesson to be derived from the use of the keresh for the structure of the Mishkan, is that one must transform falsehood into truth. This means that we must take something negative, a falsehood, rearrange it, reconstruct it and elevate it to the point that it can be used for the ultimate truth and reality - the making of a sanctuary for G-d.

Defining Falsehood Truthfully

What does this mean? How do we take falsehood and turn it into truth?

The answer lies in a better, more authentic definition of falsehood. Falsehood does not necessarily imply a lie. Rather anything that lacks consistency is sheker. For something to TERUMAH be regarded as emes, which we generally render as truth, it must be consistent from the beginning through the middle to the end.

Indeed, the Jerusalem Talmud points out that the Hebrew letters of the word emes are the first, middle and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This informs us of the true nature of truth. Anything that falls short of this definition of emes, anything that wavers is, by Torah standards, sheker.

Thus, all of our mundane activities, everything that occurs within our physical and material world, which are here today gone tomorrow, are, by definition, associated with sheker.

By contrast, the afterlife, where the soul exists outside of the body in a totally spiritual “environment,” is characterized as “Olam ha’Emes,” the “World of Truth.” It is so called, because in a spiritual existence, there are no inconsistencies, nothing is relative, everything is for real.

Is there Truth in this World of Falsehood?

TERUMAH

Does this mean that we cannot rise above the sheker of this world? Do we have to wait for the afterlife to enjoy truth and an authentic existence?

This week’s Torah portion tells us that, to the contrary, the very purpose of our existence here is to take the sheker of our temporal, finite world and transform it into the supports and a frame of a structure that becomes G-d’s “dwelling place” on Earth - the ultimate expression of emes!

The Prvious Rebbe, in his landmark discourse, Basi L’Gani adds another powerful point with respect to the word keresh. In addition to finding the word sheker when letters are scrambled, one could also find the word kesher¸ which means “knot” or “bond.”

When we transform our sheker-falsehood into a keresh-board, we create a kesher-bond with G-d, who is the epitome of truth.

The Holy Temple: Concentrated Truth

The Mishkan, and subsequently the Bais Hamikdash, the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, TERUMAH were havens from the distractions of a fleeting world. These were places were one could truly feel this ultimate experience of truth. To the extent that a person lived his/her life in consonance with the message of the Temple, one was turning the sheker into a keresh, falsehood into the foundations of principle and truth and thereby forging a kesher-bond with the source of truth.

Indeed, the ultimate truth is when there is absolute harmony between the physical and spiritual realms. For as long as truth exists only in the spiritual state of the soul in the afterlife and cannot extend to the physical state of the body, it too does not constitute absolute emes.

So while the afterlife is characterized as the World-of-Truth, there is no absolute truth unless it permeates this physical world as well.

When and how can that occur?

The Truth of the Future

TERUMAH

The answer is that it will happen in the future age of Redemption, when the spirit that permeated the Mishkan and Bais Hamikdash will extend to the entire world. At that point the entire world will experience the ultimate expression of truth.

And the “how?” has already been answered by thousands of years of chipping away at the outer false crust of existence through the observance of the Mitzvos, which are G-d’s instruments of truth. Beneath the surface of everything is the Divine essence which is the ultimate truth.

At this time in history, we have essentially removed but the very last vestige of falsehood. With one more Mitzvahinstrument of truth, we will remove the final obstacle to the world realizing its true G-dly nature.

As we stand on the threshold of the Redemption, we should try to live our lives in a way that reflects this ultimate expression of G-dly truth. We should endeavor to create our own Mishkan, wherein the otherwise falsehoods of our physical existence are used TERUMAH for higher purposes and are transformed into supports (Kerashim) for G-d’s sanctuary in our midst. This is the way we prepare for the ultimate age when the “Truth of G-d will be forever.”

TERUMAH

TERUMAH

From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Terumah by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.