Q&A: Why I Pray for the Temple to Be Rebuilt
Why I Pray for the Temple to Be Rebuilt
Question
Sorry for the expression, but when I imagine the Temple it’s a bit unsettling to me—I imagine it as a kind of slaughterhouse… What do we need the Temple for? Presumably the answer will be, “because the Divine Presence dwells there.” What does it mean that the Divine Presence dwells there? After all, even among ten people studying Torah the Divine Presence rests (as the Sages said), and I don’t feel or see anything special… So basically I’m asking: what is there in the Temple that we pray for so much?
Answer
It unsettles me to the same extent. Maybe when we actually live it, we’ll understand what added value the Temple has as a place where the Divine Presence rests. There are situations you simply can’t understand until you live them.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t know to what extent the service in the Temple is national. Public offerings are of course offerings of the public, but the public still isn’t really involved in bringing them (aside from contributing the half-shekel).
Beyond that, it’s hard for me to embrace a system of commandments that in itself I do not want and do not long for, merely as a means of creating an atmosphere of public service of God.
Similarly, that’s also how I feel about praying for the return of commandments. As far as I’m concerned, why should you concern yourself with the secret things of the Merciful One? If at present it’s impossible to fulfill those commandments, then I don’t have a problem with that—except for commandments whose benefit I understand.
How I’ve waited for a question like this,
The Divine Presence brings unity; there will be one Jewish law—who disagrees with me?
We’ll be holier and no longer considered impure through contact with the dead (real purification, the ashes of the red heifer).
There will be prophecy.
And in general, the Third Temple will be in its glory and splendor and full majesty, and its gates like rubies. https://maagbible.wordpress.com/tag/%d7%99%d7%a9%d7%a2%d7%99%d7%94%d7%95/
There will be peace in the world, there won’t be preyed-upon creatures, all will eat grass. Fruits. There will be blessing. There will be no disputes at all. We’ll understand the Torah completely. We’ll live the truth truly. There will be one standard of kashrut.
In my view, talking about the Temple nowadays is like explaining color to someone blind from birth. For someone who can see, there’s no question; and someone who can’t see doesn’t understand what the issue is.
The analogy, of course, fits if all of us are blind from birth, except that old recordings have come into our hands describing colors and telling us that once human beings could see. And presumably there were people back then who asked, why pray to see again? What’s missing? But someone who can see clearly knows what is missing, and that’s enough said.
Maybe it’s more correct to speak about redemption, about wholeness—and there is no person who can’t understand that and see what a world full of evil, injustice, and pain there is here. And when the redemption comes, all the evil will end.
And we’ll understand where we are running, where this world is running, and what the point is of everything being done here.
If I may add—this doesn’t exactly answer the question, but still: part of the issue is the centrality of the Temple in the Torah and the commandments. Close to a third of the commandments in the Torah depend on it. Without it, we have a very great lack in the service of God, even just from the narrow technical standpoint. Presumably, if we were unable to fulfill many of the commandments familiar to us today, such as tefillin, tzitzit, taking the lulav, sukkah, and the like, then we would also pray for their return. One more thing: our service of God today is each individual’s private service. What we are missing in the Temple, and what is connected to it, is service on the national level.