Terumah

Elliot Eisenberg and Yaakov Linder                                                               Parsha Trumah

Did the Chet Ha’Egel happen before the mishkan was built, or after? There are four sections in this part of the torah: 1) ma’amad har Sinai 2) G-ds commandment to build the mishkan 3) Chet Ha’Egel 4) the wrap up. Rashi’s position is clear. He says that the third section happened before the second. This means that the chet ha’egel happened before the mishkan. Ramban says that the torah recorded it accurately. The order should be the way that it is right now.

Now we need to understand Ramban’s position in order to fully appreciate Rashi’s. We can ask: what was the purpose of the first forty days? We know that the reason was to get the luchot torah, and the mitzvoth. According to Ramban this makes sense. We have the luchot at ma’amad har Sinai, and then the very next section is for the mitzvoth and the torah. These mitzvoth must be referring to the mishkan.

While this approach is sound, notice how none of the commentators say it. This is because it would not take forty days to give Moshe the laws of the mishkan, and many commentators imply that there were other mitzvoth given on har Sinai, other than the laws concerning the mishkan.

Rashi says that the mitzvoth to build the mishkan were given  after the chet ha’egel. In fact, he says that the reason that we got those laws were because of the chet ha’egel. He also says that moshe got all of the mitzvoth on har Sinai, and then he got the mitzvoth of the mishkan afterwards.

Rashi follows the approach of “ein mukdam umeuchar batorah. He usually follows this principle. He believes that the torah is based on conception of the stories and not on the chronological order of them.

Rashi believes that the reason that we got the mishkan mitzvoth because of the fact that we did the chet haegel. This was our atonement for the sin.

Now that we know the approaches of both rashi and ramban, we can ask whether it would have been preferred for bnei yisrael to have the mikdash even if the chet haegel had never occurred. Obviously, according to his logic before, ramban says that it would have been imperative for bnei yisrael anyways. Surprisingly, rashi concurs with ramban and says that a mikdash was always going to be built, even if the chet haegel had not occurred.

In order to explain rashi, we have to examine the terminology of the torah. There are two separate words: mishkan and mikdash. The mikdash was to be permanent, while the mishkan was to be temporary. Due to all of the references in the torah, rashi must agree that a mikdash had already been decided on. Rashi does say, however, that the jews would not have needed a mishkan had they not sinned. His reasoning is that they were originally going to conquer the land supernaturally and swiftly. If that would have happened, there would have been no reason for a temporary mishkan. Since bnei yisrael blundered and they sinned, there became a need for a mishkan.

Rashi seems to make a ton of sense. Now we ask why, if this is the case, then why doesn’t ramban agree with him??!?!? Ramban doesn’t agree because he doesn’t feel that the similarities between the egel and the mishkan warrant a change in the chronological order of the torah.

In conclusion, they both agree that there would have needed to be a mikdash. The only thing they disagree on is whether there would have been a need for the MISHKAN.

Elliot and Yaakov

1: We believe that this is a very strong question. This is important because it shows us how much of a difference chet haegel actually had. This is interesting because we see from here how much of a consequence our actions have. But it also shows us something else. It shows us that even when we sin, G-d gives us a second opportunity to do the mitzvoth. At least according to rashi, we received an extra mitzvah because we sinned. Although it would have been better had we not sinned, it shows G-ds mercy.

2: There are good arguments for both sides. Both rashi and ramban bring valids points. The evidence that was brought to the table was solid all-around as well. They do answer the question based on the evidence. There is no evidence we would bring to the table, but there is one thing we would say to rashi. if Moshe had received all the mitzvoth on har Sinai, it would be safe to assume that G-d told him how many mitzvoth he would receive in total. According to that logic, G-d would not add a mitzvah to negate the sin.

3: The shiur doesn’t really bring any messages to our lives. It was based entirely around the torah itself. They weren’t using the way that the torah was written to tell us anything.

4: We would say that this was a very good shiur. At first it was difficult to understand, but once we got started with it, we figured it out pretty quickly. It was quite interesting to see the reasons that ramban and rashi had for their approaches. Elliot would not share this at his Shabbos table because this involved a person to have a visual with them. Yaakov says that he would give this as a shiur because he feels that he would be able to convey the entire dvar torah without the visual aid.