I seem to be suffering from pareidolia, perceiving meaningful visual patterns in random ways. I took a bite from a sandwich and, when I hold my head at a 47' angle with my left eye closed, and my right eye open only 32.4%, I can see an image of the Ark of the Covenant! I'm thinking of selling it on Ebay, and if I get what Diana Duyser got for her "Virgin Mary Cheese Sandwich," I won't have to do any fundraising for a few weeks! Of course, I suspect that if I do sell such a "vision sandwich," most of you will stop reading these emails.
I wonder whether people were more susceptible to such visions when visiting the Temple in Jerusalem or the Tabernacle in the desert. How does one deal with such intensity? I wonder more about returning home after spending time in the Temple; how does one readjust?
I just returned from observing Shloshim for my mother z"l with my siblings, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Most of the participants knew the house as my mother's, a few remembered it as my father's, and even fewer as my grandparent's home. Each associated the house with different eras of our family's history. Each piece of furniture reminds me of different homes; I see our home in Baltimore before 1964 when we moved to Canada, our apartment in Toronto and so on. I look at pictures displayed and remember homes in which I've lived as an adult. I enter my mother's house and reconnect with all the stages of my life. It is not my mother's home as much as the place where I connect to every part of my life.
"Make for Me a Sanctuary and I will dwell in their midst." The Sanctuary, or Mikdash (Temple) comes first. The benefit of the Sanctuary is that God will dwell, as the Sages teach, "in the heart of each person." While most believe that the Temple in Jerusalem was a more elevated home than the traveling Tabernacle, perhaps the Tabernacle, Mishkan, or, Place of Dwelling, is higher than the Temple; the purpose is not the building, but the ability to carry God's Presence with us wherever we go. The Temple in Jerusalem was to prepare us to carry God's Presence, the Mishkan, with us throughout the exile. It was the person who experienced God's Presence only in Jerusalem who was in exile after the Temple was destroyed. The person who enters the Temple and reconnects with every stage and aspect of his life, can carry the Mishkan with him.
When we focus on the Temple, we begin to seek visions of the holy. When we live Mishkan oriented lives, we need not look for visions, for we will discover the holy in our daily lives, in our homes, in our hearts.
Yes, I have visions, even in my sandwich, not visions of the extraordinary, but of the magnificence of the everyday things in my Mishkan oriented life.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Simcha L. Weinberg
President
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