Divrei Terumah
A Golden Symbol
Anyone searching for deeper meanings to the Mishkan and its components will slake his thirst with the commentary of Harav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch zt”l, on the Chumash. Through his systematic proof of the unity between the Written and Oral Laws, Rav Hirsch unearths many concepts that would otherwise lay hidden from us.
For example, the Menorah is described in this week’s parsha as being decorated with golden flowers, cups, and spheres. (Shmos 25:31-37) While it is easy to run through these posukim (after all, we already know what the Menorah looks like), Rav Hirsch stops and explains how those decorations bring other dimensions of meaning.
Rav Hirsch shows how the shape of each ornament corresponds to a different facet of our intellectual/spiritual development. Just as a goblet holds liquid, so also does the mind collect and keep knowledge. The knobs are shaped like seeds, from which sprout new plants independent of the mother plant. They symbolize the human ability to do research, make decisions, and put power into action. The flowering of human capabilities, as realized through knowledge and awareness of Hashem, is depicted by the blossoms.
The placement of these decorations on the central branch of the Menorah, which is eighteen tefachim high, goes as follows: an undecorated base; a flower at the third tefach; a flower, cup, and knob (all in miniature, to fit in one tefach) at the sixth tefach; knobs each with two branches going upwards at the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth tefachim; and three cups, a knob, and a flower in the highest three tefachim.
Says Rav Hirsch: the Menorah shape resembles that of a tree. Perhaps its design corresponds to the blossoming of the Tree of the Mind. Accordingly, each tefach of height corresponds to a year, and its ornamentation describes the potential areas of growth during that year.
For the first several years of life, the mind slumbers in darkness, unaware of the Divine. Then, around age three, if the home environment is conducive, the child becomes aware of a Divine Being. (As HaRav Shlomo Wolbe points out in Binyan uZeriah BaChinuch, if a child sees his parents making brochos, he is seeing them talking to no one – therefore, the child reasons, there must be Someone!) The ornaments in the sixth tefach are smaller than the others; as the child enters school age, he is given an opportunity to begin practicing all three mental powers, albeit in a small-scale, childlike way. The elementary school years give the child opportunities to explore his world and to branch out into different areas. As the teenager matures, he receives even greater powers: to absorb and process more information, to begin significant actions on the adult scale, and to acquire an intellectually-based awareness of Hashem. The light at the top symbolizes his spiritual accomplishments.
Six branches, jutting out from the main shaft and curving vertically, also have three cups, a knob, and a flower at the top. They correspond to the study of the physical world. Rav Hirsch advocated Torah im derech eretz, that studying Hashem’s world was no contradiction to Torah; if done right, it actually enhanced the spirit. In fact, one student at Rav Hirsch’s Realschule, the first modern day school, later said that his limudei chol teachers there taught him even more yiras shmayim than did his limudei kodesh teachers (who taught him plenty!).
Finally, why was the Menorah all solid gold? Says Rav Hirsch, Hashem is telling us the intrinsic importance of children. They are not mere “adults in training,” and their childish ways are not to be looked down upon as empty. On the contrary, a child’s simple yirah is no less valid before Hashem than the sophisticated awareness of an adult. Furthermore, an adult’s complexities are based upon the simplicities of his childhood. “What is once good and true,” he writes, “remains for all time, good and true."
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