ואתה תצוה את בני ישראל ויקחו אליך שמן זית זך כתית למאור להעלות נר תמיד
And you [Moshe] shall command the Israelites, and they shall take to you pure olive oil, pressed for illumination, to kindle the lights continually.
In conveying to Moshe the commandment for the Israelites to donate olive oil for the Menorah, the Torah employs terminology which appears both redundant and contradictory. Had we been asked to author the verse, it probably would have read as follows: Command the Israelites saying, “Take to me pure olive oil etc.”. Instead, the Torah first says, “You [Moshe] shall command the Israelites”, an entirely superfluous specification given the fact that God was talking only to Moshe, and then goes on to say “and they shall take to you pure olive oil”, as if their donation would somehow happen voluntarily irrespective of the fact that they had been commanded to donate.
What hidden message can we discern from between the lines of this mystifying verse?
Our Sages tell us that the Menorah’s lights represent the collective Jewish soul, and their ever-enduring flames bear witness to the ever-present Divine presence which resides within. Indeed, the entire Menorah, say Chazal, is representative of the Oral Law, which is the fusion of the Jewish soul with the Divine Will, as expressed in the Torah. With this in mind, we would be well-advised to revisit a certain detail of the Menorah’s construction, to derive a fascinating new insight into the nature of the Menorah and its message.
The Menorah, we learn in Parshas Terumah (Shemos 25:31), was to be hammered out of one single block of gold, with “its base, shaft, cups, knobs and blossoms [emerging] from it [the block of gold].” Far from being a minor detail, this stipulation proved so difficult to carry out, that Moshe was forced to ask for God’s help, and God eventually instructed him to simply throw the block of gold into a fire, from which the completed Menorah miraculously emerged.
What was so important about the Menorah being carved of one single piece of gold?
Apparently, the fusion of the Jew and Torah had to be entirely seamless. Were the Menorah to be crafted of separate pieces forcibly joined together, it would seem as if the Jew and the Torah were likewise an unnatural conjunction forced together merely by the strong-handed command of God. Yet although we are indeed obliged to obey God’s Torah, our true relationship cannot possibly reflect itself in anything even remotely reminiscent of forced patchwork. Torah does not create the Torah-Jew by forcibly welding his disparate materials together; instead, it finds the dormant seed of spirituality and germinates it to the point where the Torah-Jew naturally emerges from the soul within. Thus, the Menorah’s “base, shaft, cups, knobs and blossoms” must indeed “grow” from the one block of gold, representative of the Torah-Jew who “grows” from the Torah which germinates his soul.
By now, the intent of our Parsha’s opening verse should be obvious. “You, Moshe,” said God, “should command them to bring oil for the Menorah with the full gravity of a Divine decree. They, however, should not obey that command as a dutiful submission to forced subservience, but as a voluntary act of self-fulfillment”. Yes, they may need the command prompt to recognize what it is their soul craves, yet once they do identify that voice within, their subsequent action should come naturally, for the Torah-Jew finds nothing more natural than his oneness with Torah, and nothing less forced than his adherence to its laws.
If we allow the Torah to nurture our inborn spirituality, we shall emerge vibrant, fruit-bearing trees in the orchard of Creation. If we opt instead, however, to join the Torah by forcibly sewing ourselves together, we may very well find ourselves falling apart at the seams.
