The Holy Temple Was the Center of the Universe - Rabbi Ori Strum

You know, many of us might still be feeling the creeps from stories that we've heard and read as children. Stories that have been called children's stories. Stories of Goldilocks and the three bears. Why did she go steal things that weren't hers? And stories of of Humpty Dumpty falling off a wall and three blind mice. Why were they blind? And the list goes on and on of strange, detailed stories. But I do want to dwell on the Goldilocks and the Three Bears one. You know, if you're not familiar, Goldilocks goes to a forest and there's a deserted home. It's not really deserted. The bears who own the joint, they they went out and about probably looking for food and Goldilocks has the audacity to go into their home and she tries out all their stuff, right? The porridge and the chairs and the beds. And eventually the bears do come back and they're like, "What are you doing here?" and she freaks out and she runs away never to be seen again. But backtrack a few moments into the story, Goldilocks when she was trying out the mother and the father's and the baby bear's stuff, she always went for the baby bears, claiming it was just right. It was the perfect condition. It was just right. And you know, beyond the scariness and the randomness for a children's story, scientists and behavioral psychologists actually point to Goldilocks to tell us something about our planet and the human psyche. Scientists, NASA included, they claim that Earth is actually what's called the Goldilocks zone of the solar system. The Goldilocks zone represents the place, the area in our solar system that's just right. that's suitable for you for life. And if Earth were to be where Pluto is, it would be frozen. Life as we know it would not be able to exist. If Earth was [clears throat] anywhere closer to the sun than it currently is. It would not be able to sustain life. It would completely um heat up and it would turn into steam or what have you. Earth where it's placed, exactly where it is, where obviously where God placed it. Yes, it's 93 million miles away from from the sun. It's the perfect place for human life. It's the Goldilocks zone. And in behavioral psychology, psychologist use this rule. It's called the Goldilocks rule or the Goldilocks principle, claiming that the human being thrives on focusing on challenges that are just right. Things that are too extreme, either too hard or too easy, we don't do. But we go for the challenge that's in that perfect condition that's just right. It's just challenging enough, something that we can do. This is what's called the Goldilocks principle. And it's a principle, like we said, that's used in in in the science. It's a principle that's used to understand our psyche, but it's also something that we as Jewish people understand very deeply. Um, and I want to share with you the Goldilocks zone, the spiritual goldilocks zone of the world. You know, we said Earth is the Goldilocks zone of the solar system. But what is the Goldilocks zone? What is that perfect at just right place of earth? And the answer, my friends, is Aratel, the land of Israel. The pak the verse in Ezekiel calls the land of Israel the tabets the navl of the earth. The rad the commentary points out that just like the navl the belly is the center of the human being so too aris the holy land of Israel is the center of the world. But my friends if we want to find the center of the center we got to keep exploring. Yes is the center of the earth. Earth is at the center of the solar system and saw the land of Israel is the center of earth. What is the center of Israel? The answer is Jerusalem, the city of Jerusalem. And in the center of your lies the base Hameikdesh, the holy temple. And I think now we could begin to understand the seriousness of the day of Tishab. It wasn't just some random hotel in Miami. It wasn't some random skyscraper in Dubai. It wasn't some random structure in the heart of Manhattan. The bay mikdash, the holy temple was a structure that stood in the center of the center of the center of the universe. And it represented the ultimate goldilock zone. It was the place that was the epitome of what's just right. Perfect harmony, perfect balance between two worlds, perfect balance between heaven and earth. We would take carbonos. We would take animal offerings and bring them up on the altar in the bay mikdash holy temple as a means of getting closer to God. We took the lowest of the low and brought it to the highest of the high. The word carbon in Hebrew means kiru. Korv means close. This place the basis mikdash represented the center of the center of the center. The ultimate goldilock zone. the ultimate or the ultimate connection between the two worlds which is really our calling and our purpose and our mission as Jewish people on planet earth. We don't live in the extreme. You know even earth if you look at what earth looks like earth itself has extremes. It's called the north pole and the south pole. And there's a reason why those two areas are white. It's because they're frozen. It's because they're extreme. They're on the It's on the top and it's on the bottom. And that besides for some narwhals and penguins and maybe some polar bear bears, that's not where life is sustained because life is not sustained on the edges. It's not sustained on the extremes. God doesn't want us to be in the extreme. He wants us to be in the center. He wants us to live with the embodiment of Eritusel, with the embodiment of Jerusalem, the embodiment of the Bamedish, the holy temple that represented a connection between the two worlds, between heaven and earth, between spirituality and physicality, between Shmay and you don't have to look too far. The very first verse of all of Tanakh tells us eliminated the heavens and the earth. And our rabbis tell us that the shamay the heavens represents spirituality and arets the earth represents the the physicality gashmas but both were created. Shamayim and were meant to be connected. They were meant to be infused. They were meant to be a connection. The bame mikdesh the holy temple stood as a representation for that a repres representation of our calling. But my friends, when we veered off center and we went too extreme, too extreme spiritual, too extreme physical, then what happened? The basis mikdash needed to be destroyed. And our calling to bring it back is to bring ourselves back to the middle ground. The Rambam says when it comes my manities teaches when it comes to to character development we always have to find the der mammuda the middle path the middle ground because that is the way to go not to veer off yin or small not to go too right or too left but to be in the middle that's where life is that's the embodiment of our national homeland of Erit Israel the land of Israel of its holy city of Jerusalem which David tells us it was a city of a city of a city that joined these two worlds together. And in that center of the center of the center, the ultimate spitz paragon example of the Goldilocks zone of this universe was the holy temple, the Bikdish, that place of ultimate place of ultimate connection. But we veered off, we were veered off kilter, offc center. How did we do so? My friends, the period of the three weeks is a period of 21 days, which means there are bookends. The beginning of the three-week period was Shiva Batamas, the 17th day of Tamas. And the end of the three-we period is tisha, the nth of And what happened on those two bookend those two extreme dates? What happened? Something extreme happened on the 17th of Tamuz. Moses, Mosher Rabenu, came down the mountain and he saw us dancing around the Aigel, the golden calf, and he broke the tablets. That was the 17th day of Tamas, marking the beginning of the threew week morning period for the Jewish people. But what was the mistake of the Jewish people? The mistake was that they were too extreme. What did they say? They were show they miscalculated the date when Moses was supposed to come down the mountain. And they saw a vision that the Satan showed them in the sky. It was a vision of Mo Moshe being dead. And they said, "Vadi mace Moshe, surely Moses is dead." Instead of believing that maybe there's something else. They were so convinced. They were so sure viurely Moses is dead. That was a sin of extremism. Not only that, but Moshe when he heard that the Jewish people degenerated, right, God already told them when he was on top of the mountain, hey, go down the mountain. The Jewish nation has has just um degenerated. They just committed a sin. Moshe didn't throw down the luos. Right? Then it was only when he saw them dancing around the golden calf. Only when he saw them dancing did he throw down the luos. And the great teacher of Yakov Kamki tells us is because Moshe Rabenu when he heard that the Jewish people degenerated he gave them benefit of the doubt. Okay, people they weren't sure where their leader was. But once he saw them dancing, dancing conotes joy. Dancing conotes I'm into this. Once he saw that the Jewish people weren't just serving an idol, but they were serving it with joy. They were dancing around it. That was almost unforgivable. and he had to break the luos and that marked the beginning of the threeweek period. It was a time when the Jewish people were so in the realm of extreme extreme heresy extreme idolatry and on the flip side on the other side of the three weeks the opposite book end that was tishabove. Tishb the ninth of historically was the day when the Moraglin the 10 spies returned from spying out the land of Israel and they delivered their negative report to the Jewish people and the Jewish people cried what's called a cry of not cry for nothing it was a cry of despair and this ultimately was also a mistake of extre extremism how so the Jewish people gave up hope they said we are unable to ascend. Well, what about the fact that God took you out of Egypt? What about the fact that God performed so many great open miracles for you and now you're saying, "Oh, we're done. We cannot ascend. We won't be able to get into the Holy Land." It was they were caught in the extreme. And in another [clears throat] realm, the Morang, the 10 spies, they suffered from extreme spirituality. Why is that? When the Jewish people were in the Midbar, right, Hashem took us out of Egypt and we were in the Midbar, the desert, what did we experience there? We experience it the ultimate spiritual realm, right? God protected us with the with the anha, the clouds of glory, a tremendous protection that protected us and that guided us through the midbar. How did we eat? How were we nourished? Through the bear, through the great miraculous well, and through the mana, the mud, right? And this was a great spiritual existence that we had in the desert. And when God said, "Well, now you're going to go and travel to Erit Isel, the land of Israel. You know, there you're going to have to wage wars. You're going to have to toil the land. You're going to have to work hard." The Moragum, the 10 spies, they said, "We want to remain in that spiritual. we don't want to go into the physical. We don't want to fight battles. We don't want to toil the land. We don't want to work. We don't want to be involved in this world. And that was their mistake. They were in the realm of the extreme spiritual points out the MS. And the mistake is true on both bookends. We could be involved in the extreme physical or the extreme spiritual, but both extremes like the North and the South Pole don't sustain life. That's not what God wants. We are meant to find the derk mammuda, the middle ground, the goldilock zone. To find that space of harmony, that space of beauty, that space of grander when we bring worlds together. That's what we're meant to do is join the spiritual and the physical, join heaven and earth. In a in the book of lamentations we're taughtim that it was thrown down from heaven to earth and the commentaries explained that there was a great nefila a great fall from heaven to earth. What was a what was the great fall from heaven to earth? It was exactly this point. The Jewish people suffered from a great fall. You only fall when you're disconnected. You only fall when there's when there's a lack of connection. There's never meant to be a fall from heaven to earth because heaven and earth are meant to be connected. Remember the very beginning of all of Tanakh, the very first verse of the entire Torah. God created heaven and earth. They're meant to be together. Heaven and earth, spirituality and physicality, body, soul. We're meant to fuse the two together. We're not not meant to live acet with aceticism. We're not meant to live just in the realm of the spiritual. Again, that's the that was the sin of the moraglin. That was the sin of the of of the haz, the golden calf. We're meant to join forces, bring shmayim and ars together where it was thrown down the heaven. The aritz was thrown down from heaven meant that there was a disconnect that we were creating between heaven and earth and that was the mistake. The book of a [snorts] the garra tells us is called the safer kinus the book of lamentations. The book of kinus the word kinus in Hebrew is spelled kufur nunv right kufur nunv. And when you rearrange those letters it spells another Hebrew word. That word is nituk. Nituk means disconnect. When we are disconnecting heaven and earth, then we can experience a fall from heaven to earth. And when there's that disconnection, that leads and heaven forbid to kinus that leads to lamentations that leads to destruction. when we're not living in the center and when we're off center mikdos needed to be destroyed and our goal, our mission and purpose is to get back to that goal, to get back to the harmony, to get back to infusing the two worlds together. My friends, when you rearrange those same letters of kinosv and the letters of nuk, it's all the same letters. When you re rearrange them again, it spells tikun, right? May have heard the term tikonol. Our job on this world is to fix the world. Fixing conotes mending parts, fusion, bringing worlds together. That is our job. Not for nituk, not to separate the worlds. Not for kinas but for t for for tikkon to bring the worlds together. That is our job. That is the calling of a Jew. In paras when the Torah tells us the Jewish family names something really interesting occurs. If you look in the text of a Torah scroll and that is before and after the name of the Jewish family, there are two letters. There's a he and a yud. So for example, the family name is called. So the letter H is placed before it and the letter Y is placed after it. The name Ru is called Rui. And the Torah does this dozens of times where it adds a H before the name and a Y after the name, thus becoming part of the name. Rashi, the great commentary tells us Shimo right God placed his name, right? Because God is called C. God is called Yud and He together. Those two letters create God's name. In fact, the four-letter name of God, Yud, then hey, then Vavv, then hey. The first two letters, Yud then Hey, it's representative of God. And he placed his name upon us, right? Representing that we have a certain level of holiness and purity. But there's something more. Rashi tells us hey meets the Y meets there was a hey on this side and the letter Y on that side and it's representative of our very purpose on this world the great RV of Nitra the Abzdon of this the city this old city in Europe he lived from 1886 to 1945 his name was Rav Schmool David Unar was one of the last surviving Yeshivas that existed before the war. And he taught us this that when Rashi tells us that the Jewish people they have a hey before their name and aud after their name. This tells us of our mission our purpose because we know that these two letters are not random. The he and the yud are not random letters. Our sages teach us that what the two worlds this world haz and that world the world of spirituality haba they were created with letters. What letters? This world says the garra was created with a he and the olhaba was created with a yud. So the yud represents the spiritual. It represents the shmayim. It represents the heavenly and the spiritual abote spirituality. And the h represents this world the world of gosh the world of physicality. the realm of and the Jewish people have both of these letters attached to our identity because this is our essence to be a to make that connection between the two worlds like Yaka Vinu who dreamt a dream about a ladder which connected the two worlds. That is our calling here on this planet and that was the function of the Besa Mikdesh. The Besa Mikdash was that place of ultimate connection. in the ultimate Goldilocks zone and our job is to come back together. During the three weeks, we're reminded of the extreme negativity, the extreme physicality that we involved ourselves in and the extreme spirituality that we were mistakenly involved in. And through the bane hammeds, the period of between the straits, our job is to find the medium, to find the balance, to find the harmony, to find the beauty of worlds coming together. Not to do nituk, not to separate the two worlds, which leads, god forbid, to kinos, but to do tik and to mend the two together and bring them back as one. There is a fascinating on and that is we don't dawn the fill and the facttories in the morning rather we wait till later in the day to put them on we put them on by min time and the question is why what is it coming to teach us and I want to share with you an idea I think it's mamish I think it's really really powerful you know the fill and the felacttories they represent this connection. We put the arm to fill in on our arm, the shell yad, and we put the head to fill in on our head, the shell ro. And it represents a tie, a kibbor, a kish, a connection between the arm representing the physical, and the head representing the spiritual. The head representing the shamay, the heavens, and the arm representing the arids, the gashmi. the the head representing the yud the mahaba the spiritual realm and the arm representing the hay representing this world and our job every day when we put on felactories and if you don't put on felactories I highly recommend it's such a beautiful and holy mitzvah to do what we're doing when we put on the arm to fill in and the head to fill in is we're binding worlds together in fact the tama teaches us that someone who is suck Somebody who speaks between his putting on the fill in shell y the arm to fill in and the shell ro the head to fill in he's not yay he has to go back and repeat the blessing and it's really dei it really demonstrates what the whole point of this mitzvah is and that is you're not supposed to make a separation. You can't talk between the two because the two are meant to be one. We're meant to join forces. We're meant to join the two together as one. We're meant to live in this world of physicality, in the world of seeming mundanity and uplift it. Find the sparks of holiness, the sparks of kaduca, to elevate the world. And that is we don't just pray and and and connect to God when we're in the house of study, when we're in the synagogue, the shaw, but we go well beyond, right? We bring that spiritual um experience to our lives, to our families, to our relationships, to our jobs, realizing that everything it is in life that we're doing, we can be connecting to God. In all of our ways, we are meant to come to know God even more. Which means everything that we do in this physical world can be connected and can be in the realm of the spiritual depends on our mindset. This is the to fill in the binding of the sha yad the arm to fill in with the shell ro with the head in the morning of tishabove we don't put this on because in the morning of tishabove it's the heart it's the heart of during the destruction of of the temple when that center was destroyed and we have to sulk a little bit and we have to be sad and we have to mourn and realize that we've been off center and if the bal the bay mikd's not built yet in our days then it's part um part it's our responsibility and so yes we have to believe that because we realize that and we know that the tofillin represents the crown the tofillin represents splendor tofillin is called pair per represents a crown pair represents teras represents harmony and beauty you know in Jewish mysticism teras is the mida that's in it's the character trait that's in the center. said represents unconditional love that's on an extreme side and gavura represents restrictions and borders and right strength that's on the opposite extreme is the hybrid ferris is the middle when we say in the morning blessings bifur that we're crowned with it's representing the tfillin tofillin represents that it represents that that crown of of harmony tilin represents this bond between the shmayim in the arts between the heaven and the earth. But in the morning of tishabove, we don't put that on because we've neglected to do that. We've lived extreme. We've made mistakes. Only later in the day, as the morning restrictions ease, we're reminded that tishov is also a day that's called a moed. It's called a festive day. It's the day that we know Messiah is supposed to be born. It's a day that we don't recite. It's a day that we have tremendously high hopes and aspirations. The fact that we're mourning over something that was lost so many thousands of years ago is foretelling the fact that we don't live in despair that we haven't given up hope. Despair is the ultimate extreme. The Reb teaches us don't live in the extreme. Don't have don't give up. Tishab of historically was a day like we mentioned when the Jewish people did give up right the beginning of the three period when the Jewish people said Moshe surely Moses is dead they gave up and on the nth of when they cried a cry for not after the 10 spies came and reported negativity of the land they said oh we can't go up they gave up it was despair extreme no the greatidic master teaches us don't despair don't Live in the realm of extreme. Be balanced. Live in harmony. Tap into the essence of what your tofillin is. It's true in the morning of tishov. Don't dawn your tofillin because you have to be in that state of mourning. You have to be in that state of sta sadness. But comes along ma time. You put that on. You put back on that crown. You put that on. You put back on the teris representing that I am an ambassador of God on this world. I am capable of infusing the two worlds together. I am capable of being like my great ancestor Jacob Yakenu and dreaming and living with that latter vision of channeling worlds together. I am capable of tapping into that first verse of all of connecting heaven and earth. I don't see this as two separate things. I'm not ne in the realm of nto which leads to kinos. I'm not disconnecting the two rather I'm creating tik and I'm connecting the two. I'm fusing the two. I'm soldering them back together where they truly belong. That's what we're trying to get at. And I want to share with you one more idea about the tfillin. Where's the placement of the tilan sha ro it's not ba meaning between your eyes? Some people place their think that when the Torah tells us to place the toillin between your eyes, it literally means right here between your eyes. But oral tradition teaches us otherwise. It doesn't mean literally between your eyes. It means on the top of your head. The Talmet teaches us it's a place even more specific on the top of your head. It's the place where the mo shaltino is rooface. The place where the brain where the skull where the head of a child a baby is soft. It's the place right on top of your head. Let's think about this. Where is that place where the head of the child is soft? It's called the anterior fontineel. That's the area which is actually fascinatingly a diamond shape um area on the top of the head. Diamond shape, right? Diamond crown air. It's this is crazy, right? It's that area that allows the baby to emerge through the birth canal. The skull is able to now bend and move and compress to get through the birth canal. Without that, if it would just be extreme, if it would just be rigid, if it would be too tough, the child would never be able to emerge. Every single time, my friends, when we put on the tofillin, we're putting it on the place where the tino, where the place where the child's head is soft, that's representative of the child emerging from the womb. The womb represents the fact that we are stuck, right? In Egypt, we were like a fetus in the womb. We were stuck. We we were there were surrounded borders, limitation, restriction. But what happened after the Exodus? We left. We left Egypt. We experienced an emergence of freedom, a gula, right? And finally, the Tino, the child was born. Incredibly, at the end of Parsha's bow, what happens? We're introduced to the mitzvah to the commandment of to fillin. To fill in represents this, it represents the fact that we are like a tino. We are like a child. Mind you, tino in Hebrew is the same exact letters of kinos. It's the same exact letters of nituk. It's the same letters of tikun. Because we can be involved in a life of nituk where we separate the two worlds or we're living in the realm of extreme or we could be involved in the realm of tikun putting the world together. And one of the ways to tap into that is by rearranging those letters again to tino is connecting to our inner child. The place where we put our tofillin is the mo the shatino the place where the baby's head is soft. That is the place that allows us to emerge from the womb. showing that we're not stuck in Egypt. We're not stuck in the borders. We're not stuck in the Bayamits. We're not stuck in the extreme. But we can emerge. We can be free. We can live in harmony, in peace. We can tap into that realm of Teresa. We should all be Zoha. We should be privileged to see the gula, to see the redemption speedily in our j days. It should be a tremendous time of joy for all of us. And we should hopefully one day soon dance together in the streets of Jerusalem offering up holy carbonos in the temple in the bay mikdash. And we should be able to connect to our true calling, to our true mission here on this world. And realizing that we can live in the realm of to to bring the two worlds together, the he and the yud, the shmayim and the arats, the heavens and the earth, the body and soul.