Chazaq on the Parsha: Rabbi Pinchas Landis

[Music] when it comes to understanding this week's parsha parshas vyakapakude it can be very difficult first of all the sheer size of the parsha is daunting as one of the largest parshas in the entire torah and then the subject matter doesn't make it much better because we read in this week's partnership about the building of the mishkan now no jew has seen a mishkan or a temple in the past 2000 years and we haven't seen it in its idealistic state since the first temple 2500 years ago so how do we relate to such a parsha we have one of two options one option is to say this is ancient this doesn't speak to us this is what my ancestors used to do it's archaic barbaric and any other adjective we can think of or we can look at and say 25 or more of the whole entire written torah is given over to the discussion of the mishkan and the corbanos and then we can look at the talmud and say that over a third of the oral tradition is given over to the discussion of the temple and the sacrifices that happened there within and we can say that if the almighty gave so much real estate to this topic of the mishkan and the temple and the korbanos the sacrifices then there must be significance to it the problem is we just don't have a full understanding out there so often in life when there's something that is daunting that scares us that we can't relate to we have a knee-jerk reaction to say oh it's not for me can't take a meaning out of it can't take a lesson out of it but what we should really do is say okay it's daunting i don't understand it it takes some work it's gonna take some study but if so much real estate is given over to this topic from the almighty it must be that it's significant and it must be that there is a meaning let's all work together in finding the deeper meaning in every single word of the torah i thank you for listening foreign