Parshas Pekudei - Architects vs Contractors

2:47 The Rambam doesn't get to the Aaron until the fourth chapter. Everything we just learned was in the first chapter. In the fourth chapter, this is how the Rambam introduces the Aaron. Evan ha'isa b'mikta b'kodesh hakadoshem. There was a stone in the kodesh hakadoshem. What stone was that, girls? The Evan ha'Shasia. That was the place from where the entire world was created. B'ma'arava, it was in the western side. Shaleh ha'aron munach. The Aaron rests on it. And the Rambam continues And he says a wild thing. He says, "Be'esh shabana shloimeh sabayis." When Shloimeh Hamelach built the base of mikdash. The Yadoch Shasofa leCharav, and he knew that one day the Beis Hamikdash would be destroyed. Shlom Hamelik understood the Beis Hamikdash was not going to last, so Bana Bamakom Lignos Baha Aron Namata. So he created a place in the Beis Hamikdash, a hidden place, so that when the Beis Hamikdash would be destroyed, they'd be able to get to all the other kelim, but they would not be able to get to the Aron. And in fact, the Rambam tells us that's what happened; they were never able to get to the Aron.

3:51 So what a strange Rambam! First of all, the Rambam's a halacha sefer. If the Rambam's a halacha sefer, why is he telling us the history? Why does this matter from a halachic perspective? Why does it matter? If the Rambam was writing a history sefer, this makes sense. But if the Rambam is writing a halacha sefer, why in the world would the Rambam tell us then when Shlomo Hamelach built the Beit Hamikdash, he knew that it was going to be destroyed, so he built a hidden place? Who cares? Has no shaychas to the halach. Not only that. From a halachic perspective, what's missing from this? The Rambam doesn't give us any instructions on how to build the Aaron. This doesn't have any halachic implications. What in the world is the Rambam doing? He doesn't introduce the Aaron until the fourth chapter. And even when he introduces it to us, he doesn't tell us anything about it. He just tells us the place where it goes, and that one day the base of Mikdash will be destroyed. So Shlomoh HaMelech made a place for it to be hidden, and that's what happened. It was hidden. What's the Rambam doing? You have questions. So far, two questions. Here's another question: How many different types of donations does Kallah Yisrael make to the Mishkan?

5:04 Two types. The first type is called a Machzis Hashekel. We just had that, right? And that is a flat tax. Everybody gives the same Machzis Hashekel, and that goes towards the upkeep of the Mishkan. But what type of donation did they make when it came to the actual construction of the base of the Mishkan? They gave a truma. They gave whatever they wanted. So the question is, what's the difference? When it comes to the upkeep of the Mishkan, everybody gives the same amount. We give a flat tax. But when it comes to the actual creation of the Mishkan, everybody gives whatever they want. A truma. Everyone gives whatever they want. What's the difference? Just have one type. Let's say everyone's going to give a flat tax. In the creation of the Mishkan, let it be from this flat tax from the Machzitzah Shekel. Why do we just need that for the upkeep? Or the opposite? Maybe the entire time it should be a Truma. But why do we have one is for the upkeep and one is for the creation? That's the third question.

6:11 Last question. Then we'll get to the meat and potatoes. The pasuk says, "Ubitzalal ben Uri ben Chor l'mata Yehuda bitzalal the son of Uri, the son of Chorah from the Shevet of Yehuda, Asa es kol asher tziva Hashem es voshah." He did everything that Hashem commanded. Rashi right away picks up on the subtlety of the language. He says, "Asher tziva Moshe emksevkan." The pasuk doesn't say that he commanded Moshe. That Moshe commanded him. It says, 'Asher tziva Hashem as Moshe.' But Salo did everything that God commanded Moshe. That's a strange way of saying. Ela kol Asher tziva Hashem as Moshe, Afilu dvaram shalow amrlo rabo. Even those things that his Rebbe Moshe Rabenu didn't tell him, but Salo knew how to do. He was aware he had some sort of ruach hakodesh of what Hakadosh Baruch Hu told Moshe what told Moshe Rabbeinu at Har Sinai.

7:18 Because Moshe Rabbeinu told Betzalel first, 'You go make the kalim, and then you go make the Mishkan.' Betzalel says to his Rebbe, 'Min ha'olam lassos tchilah bayis.' The way of the world is to first make the home, and then you put in the furnishings. 'Amar lo kach shamati mi piyakadosh baruchu.' Meish Abenu says, 'Wow, that's amazing! That's exactly what Hakadosh Baruch Hu told me to do. Amar lo Moshe Betzalel Kel Hayisa. Must be that you live in the shadow of God, because Betzalel's name was Betzalel, the living in the shadow of God. Certainly, that's what God commanded me. And that's what happened. First, they made the Mishkan, and then afterwards, they made the Kehilim. Where does Rashi get this from? Rashi gets it from the Gemara and Brachos. But Betzalel was named for a particular wisdom that he had.' Hakadosh Baruch Hu told Moshe, "Go tell Btzal, make for me a Mishkan and an Aaron and Kalem." Halach Moshe v'Hafach, and Moshe went ahead and he flipped them. V'Armelo, I say Aaron v'Kalem u'Mishkan. When Moshe Rabbeinu gave it over to Btzal, what did he say? First, make the Aaron, then make the Kalem, and then make the Mishkan.

8:55 So Betzalel said to Moshe Rabbeinu, 'It's the opposite. Just like Rashi says, first should come the bias, then should come the kalim. Kalim shani ose leheichenach nisam. If I make the kalim first, where will I put them? If you're doing construction on a home, let's say you're building a brand new home.' So if you go out first and you buy the beds and you buy the couches and you buy the aronot, you buy the kitchen. Where are you going to put them if you don't have a house? So min hador shalom, first you build the house and then you put the stuff in. So shema kachamer l'cha, Kadosh baruch hu asa mishkan aram v'kayim. Maybe Betzalel says such a deferential way that Betzalel speaks to Moshe Rabbeinu. Maybe God told you the opposite. Maybe He told you to put the mishkan first. Amrlo Hashem b'tzel kel aysa. He says, "Maybe you are living in the shadow of God." But there's so many questions on this Gemara.

9:58 It's a very famous Gemara, but there's so many questions. First of all, let's start with the most obvious and the most basic question: What is one of the animamins? One of the animamins is that our Kadosh Baruch Hu gave the Torah to Moshe Rabbeinu at Har Sinai. Which means that if Moshe Rabbeinu deviates at all at the very inception from what our Kadosh Baruch Hu told us, then that means the entire Torah is out the window. And we have an open Gemara saying that Moshe Rabbeinu switched what Hakadosh Baruch Hu said to him. How could that be? That this right here, this Gemara undoes the entire faith of Judaism. We believe Be'Amunah Shleima that everything we do comes from Moshe Rabbeinu, who got it from Hakadosh Baruch Hu at Har Sinai. Comes along Moshe Rabbeinu, and he's open about it. He says, 'I switched it.' I switched that. Hakadosh Baruch Hu told me Mishkan Aaron Kaelim, and I said Aaron Kaelim Mishkan. How could Moshe Rabbeinu do such a thing? And if Moshe Rabbeinu did such a thing, why doesn't that call into question every single other thing in the Torah? It's a phenomenal It's a phenomenal question on this Gemara. How could the Gemara so brazenly say that Moshe Rabbeinu went against the wishes of Hakadosh Baruch Hu?

11:08 That's one question. But let's say Moshe Rabbeinu had a reason and he switched it for whatever reason. Who in the world is Betzalel to come question his rebbe? He calls him his rebbe. Girls, what's the halachah? If your rebbe tells you to do something, you're allowed to question your rebbe. Chas v'shalom. You're allowed to be curious. You're allowed to wonder. But Betzalel had a machlokas with Moshe Rabbeinu. Betzalel could come and he could say, Moshe Rabbeinu, you're saying it wrong. I think that's not the way Hakadosh Baruch Hu said it. Even if he said it in a respectful way, even if he put his hands together and he lowered his shoulders. Tilted his head and he said, "Rabbi, maybe you made a mistake. What? Who? Who's Betzalel? This is my shabenu. Karen or Panov is coming from his face. Nobody in Klal Yisrael could look at his face because he has massive amounts of light shining from his face. Betzalel has the right to say to my shabenu how it should be built, and not only that. What in the world is the premise of Betzalel's question? Let's take it a step further. When it comes to a house, generally, what do we do? We build the house first, and then we build the and then we put in the kelim."

12:13 Who cares? This is not a house. This is the mishkan. So you'll say, what does it make a difference? The mishkan is a bias la Hashem. Girls, when they took down the mishkan, where did all the kelim go? They took down the mishkan. It was a temporary house. It was a tent. So where did all the kelim go? What's the answer? They packed up all the kelim. So if they packed up all the kelim, it's not like a regular house. So Betzalel's question doesn't even make any sense. Betzalel's saying, "Moshe Rabbeinu, where am I going to put all this stuff? What do you mean where you're going to put all this stuff? You're going to put all this stuff where you always put all this stuff." You hear the question? But what's Betzalel's making an argument? It doesn't even seem like a very good argument. Saying in a regular house, yes, in a regular house, I agree. Estra, you're doing construction on your house. Everything has to go in the pod. You found the place for it. You stored it. What's Betsalel's question on Moshe Rabbeinu? We have the stuff; we have to put the stuff somewhere.

13:14 And not only that, Moshe Rabbeinu is blown away by Betsalel's answer. He says, 'Betsalel, Kel Aysa, you truly live in the shadow of God. You truly live in the shadow of God. It was a foolish question. Asked in a way that it should never have been asked. It was disrespectful to ask a Kasha and Meishar Abenu who shouldn't have switched what Hakadosh Baruch Hu told them to begin with. The entire Gemara doesn't make any sense. It's a pel of this Gemara.' Okay. In order to answer this Gemara, I want to tell you a Shnichel Torah from R' Salavechik. Rav Saloveitchik wrote to his father when he was a young man, even a teenager. He wrote to his father about the kashas that he had on these Rambams that we read before. How could the Rambam have left out Aaron from the Kli of the Mikdash?

14:17 And Rav Saloveitchik suggested to his father that the reason why Aaron was not included in the kelim of the mikdash is because he comes up with a big, big einfal here. He says because the Aaron was not one of the kelim of the mikdash. That's why the Rambam doesn't list it. If the Aaron is not one of the kelim of the mikdash, then one is. What is it? R' Salavechik suggested that the Aaron is not one of the kelim of the mikdash because it is what provides the kedushas hamikdash. It's not a kli for the mikdash. It is the mikdash. It's what endows the entire beis hamikdash with kedusha. When you have a house and you put a couch in the house, the couch is not the house. The beis hamikdash is not a beis hamikdash if the aron isn't there. So it's not one of the kliim that's used in the service of the beis hamikdash. It is the beis hamikdash.

15:22 So Moshe Salavitch wrote back to his son, and he said, "If that's the case, though, why doesn't the Rambam tell us how to build the arum? Where do we see that? And what's the answer? The answer is because the arum that endows the Beis Hamikdash with kedusha cannot come from a man; it has to come from Moshe Rabbeinu. It has to come from Hakadosh Baruch Hu, telling Moshe Rabbeinu how to build the arum. In other words, if you and I today were to go to Machon Hamikdash." I think it's called that place in Yerushalayim. We could see they built a Menorah. They built a Mizbeach. But one thing they cannot build—they cannot build the Aron. Why not? Because what endows the Beis Hamikdash with kedusha is not our service in the Beis Hamikdash. But it's the Aron. And here's the catch—that never left the Beis Hamikdash. Why does the Rambam give us a history lesson?

16:22 The answer is the Rambam is not giving us a history lesson. The Rambam is telling us a fundamental halacha because the Rambam is a halacha sefer. The Rambam is telling us a fundamental halacha in kedushas Hamikdash. Kedushas Hamikdash is not something that we can endow. It's not something we can do. We can create the mizbeach, we can create the kiyor, we can do the menorah, we can do all of that, but we can't make an aron. The aron, once it went, it never left. Shloimah haMelech. He knew that one day the base Hamikdash was going to be destroyed. Knowing that the Beis Hamikdash was going to be destroyed. What did he do? He said right away, because this is what gives this place kedusha; it can never leave. So right away, when he built the Beis Hamikdash, he planned for the Beis Hamikdash's destruction. Now that sounds, at first glance, like a chalishos adas. You're already building the Beis Hamikdash and you know it's going to be destroyed. Think about what that must have been like for Shlomoh Melech. Shlomo HaMelech understood this base hamikdash was not going to last, but the kedushas hamikdash would never leave.

17:23 Indeed, this is why it's a big question today to go up to Harabayas. The kedushas hamikdash never left because the Aaron never left; it was hidden away. The kedushas hamikdash comes from above; it comes from Hakadosh Baruch Hu. The mikdash contains the kedusha. The Gemara says the Aaron was eno min amida. The aron had no measurements. The aron could not be grasped in the physical world. We know that the kodesh gadol was smaller than the aron. Know that the kodesh gadol was smaller than the aron. How did the aron fit? What's the answer? It's a nace. But what does it mean? It means that the kodesh hamikdash cannot be contained by a finite space. It can't be contained by a finite space. And yet, that's exactly what the beis hamikdash does. Freeze that idea. We're going to come back to it soon. I want to bring you in just for a moment into the boardroom of every single company across America. There's a fundamental machlokas between the CEO and the CFO.

18:37 Between the chief executive officer and the chief financial officer. What's the difference? Vision versus implementation. That's the fundamental machlokas between every CEO and every CFO. Every CEO is a visionary; their job is to dream big about the company. That's what they do. And every CFO is just trying to implement and to create structures to contain the vision of the CEO. What's the problem? The CEO and the CFO often get very frustrated with each other because the CEO will walk into a boardroom and say, "I just had the craziest idea. We're going to revolutionize all of sales in the entire world." And what's the CFO doing? He's rolling his eyes the entire time, going, "Okay, calm down. Before we revolutionize everything in the entire world, tell me the actionable steps that you're going to take in order to make it happen." This is also a machlokas between every single husband and every single wife.

19:40 The husband comes in and he's got a big idea. I have the greatest idea. We're going to turn our living room into a kitchen. We're going to turn our dining room into the living room. Everything is going topsy turvy. And what's the wife doing the entire time? Please, just let's think about this for a second. Let's see how this is going to play out. My wife and I were doing construction on our home. Maybe we did a little bit so far. We have a fundamental machlokas. My wife wants to hire an architect. I don't need an architect. I know exactly what I want to do. And my wife and she's not patronizing. It just comes off that way, right? She says to me, 'Maybe it'd be a good idea if we brought in a professional just to see if this makes sense.' I know what she's really saying. This idea makes no sense. But she's saying it in a kind way. What do I need to pay an architect another five thousand shekels to tell me the thing that I already know?

20:33 Because that's what men do. We have big dreams. That's chokhmah. Chokhmah is the initial flash of inspiration. And what's bina? Bina is hamevin daver mitoch daver. It's connecting the dots. Does this make sense? Which is why all great men have great women behind them, saying, "Slow down, think about it, make sure this makes sense. Is there a structure that can contain this idea?" Sometimes you have people in life that they have just idea after idea, but they never get anything done because they don't have the structure. I'll put it nicely. They don't have the structure to get anything done in their life. So I have an acquaintance, a person I know, a chaver. Maybe you'd call him, and he always comes to me with these ideas that he has. I'll be very honest with you. I have no patience to listen to his ideas anymore because I've known this person for over twenty years now, and not once in the history of all the ideas that he's ever told me have any of those ideas come to fruition. So I started playing a game in my head. It's not nice. This is mamashelak of midos on my part. I should listen to him.

21:49 I should listen. I should be patient. He has something to tell me. What's the difference if he wants to tell me that he's going to the moon? I should nod my head and say that's awesome. You're going to be the next space explorer for sure. That's going to be you. But instead, I'm not a bal midos. So what am I doing? I remember his ideas, and when he comes to me with a new one, I say, How's that? How's that idea you told me about last year coming? Or that idea you told me two years about? Or the idea you told me three years about? It's mamish, not nice, what I'm doing, but I do it because he always gives me the same answer, and it's become a joke. I put it on the back burner for now. This guy has the craziest back burner I've ever seen in my entire life. I don't know where the oven is in his house, but I imagine that it's just one front burner and like dozens and dozens of back burners all over the kitchen. How many back burners could one person possibly have? This guy is so full of vision. If even once one of those ideas gets done, I will fund the entire thing myself. That's how confident I am that none of them will ever happen. It's not nice. I should just smile and nod. Evadik, amazing. You're going to really revolutionize everything.

22:53 And I've literally had conversations where he says to me, "I have this idea, but I'm reticent to take on any partners because I'm confident this idea is going to make you ready for it a hundred million dollars." A hundred million dollars, and I sit there like this. I hear you. I wouldn't want to take on any partners either. If I had a hundred million dollar idea, why would I want to split that? In my head, I'm thinking, 'You lunatic! You psychopath! You've never done any one of these ideas.' But can you fault a person for being a big dreamer? On the other hand, these big dreamers get so frustrated when it comes to the people that are trying to slow them down and give them structure. And rightfully so. A chaver of mine was the chief managing officer of a startup in Israel that has since failed. They had taken on over thirty million dollars in investment capital. It was a real business with well over a hundred employees and a real office space. They were very well known. I'm not going to tell you what it was because obviously it didn't work out. It might be Lashanara. He was the CMO. He was the chief managing officer. Before he was the chief managing officer of this company, he was a guy who

24:07 On his own, he made apps and he made a lot of money just making apps. This guy is a very good friend of mine and he's very successful. I said to him, "How do you know how to make apps?" He's like, "I have no idea how to make apps, but I do know how to reach out to people in India that are computer programmers, and I know how to get them to do it." And he was very, very successful in doing this. Very successful. Mamish made a lot of money doing this. When he joined this company as their CMO, he was so frustrated. He said, "You understand? When I was making my app, he said, 'So again, these are small-time apps. But if I wanted something done, it was done that day. The change was immediate.' He said, 'Now, because you're working with a team of well over a hundred people, you have investors, and you have a CEO, and you have a CFO, and you have a CTO, and you have all these little minions running around.' It takes us weeks to get anything done, and the words he used were, 'I like it to be quick and dirty. I want to make my changes. We'll figure it out afterwards. I just want to get it done. I just want to get it done. I just want to get it done.'

25:09 But in the meantime, he's got all these programmers saying, 'You can't do it like that. You have to slow down. You have to make sure that the structure is there.' And it was driving him nuts because he had the vision and he just wanted to go. Why are you slowing me down? We have this awesome opportunity. So who's right? The CEO or the CFO? The one with the vision or the one that says provide the structure. The truth of the matter is, it's two types of people in life. There are people that are amazing visionaries. And there are people that are very structured. Put a little bit differently, there are two time periods in our life. There's a time period where we're all about vision, where we're all about inspiration, and then there's a time period where we become very practical. I'll give you a classic example of this. A girl is 18 years old. She comes to seminary for her year. What's the last thing in the world she's thinking about?

26:07 Structure. She's not thinking about structure. What's she thinking about? Rabbi, inspire me. I want to take this with me for the rest of my life. I want to live on this plane of inspiration. And they walk away from their year in Israel. Even though, even then, there are some girls there. Baruch Hashem, smart enough to ask for structure. Like, okay, you're teaching me this thing, but practically, how does it get implemented in my life? Nevertheless, what we're looking for is inspiration. And then what happens? We come back from Israel, and all of a sudden, we enter into a world of total structure. Now, all of a sudden, all of the things that I had thought to myself, all of my inspiration, all of my vision, all of the clarity that I had, now all of a sudden, I feel like, okay, but practically, how do I do it? Tachlis, I want to do these things with my life. I want to be. I want to have a job. I want to raise a family. I want to spend time with my husband, and I also want to go to shiurim. And I also tachlis.

27:04 How's it going to happen? It used to be that I could spend forty-five minutes davening my shemoneh esrei, but now I've got little kids running around and I'm constantly changing diapers. What happened to the inspiration? We lead lives of structure. And by the way, many, many, many women have told me that there's a massive frustration in their life because what are they looking for? They're looking for that inspiration, but they're leading lives of structure, and then they become cynical about the inspiration that they once had as a defense mechanism. The seminary girl that I once was—just pie in the sky nonsense. You have to be a structured person. You have to lead a life. There are important things to take care of. It was very nice to have that year in the bubble. It has to work practically. On the other hand

27:51 We're looking for that inspiration. So who's right, the girls that are more inspiration oriented, the girls that are more structure oriented? Who was right, that eighteen year old that was on fire, that thought the world could be anything I wanted to be, or the twenty four year old that's now dealing with the realities of dating, and all of a sudden it's not so glott, and all of a sudden how do I bear one rejection after another, and the drama of everything that's going on in my life, doing college and holding down a job and dating and dealing with my parents, and who's right? So I want to suggest to you that both are right. Both are important, and perhaps for different kufas in our life. Both are going to be important. Remember that Betzalel was the contractor, but Moshe Rabbeinu was the architect. Moshe Rabbeinu as the architect. What's his job? What's the job of an architect? The job of the architect is not just to put plans on paper, but the job of the architect is to understand the soul of the home.

29:00 Personally, I have no idea what that means. I know that when you speak to architects, they use words that I personally don't understand. They talk about the flow of the home. They talk about the soul of the home. What do we want this home to feel like when somebody walks in? What do you want it to feel like? I hired a very bad architect when we first built our house in Eretz Yisrael. We hired an architect and she did a terrible job. She did a terrible job. I'm going to spend now coming up, God willing, after the summer. Thousands upon thousands of dollars undoing all the work that she did. Why? When you walk into my house, and Baruch Hashem, I'm privileged, I'm blessed to live in Eretz Yisrael. But when you walk into my house and you open up the door, literally, two feet in front of you is a bathroom. It's a bathroom jutting out. The first thing you see when you come in is a bathroom. That's ridiculous. First of all, for two reasons. Number one, there should be more than two feet when you first come into a room.

30:02 Second of all, the first thing you want to see when you come into a home is not the bathroom. When she designed the house, she said the bathroom entrance is on the side, but you're going to have this little wash basin, like really nice, like washing area. So when you first come in, it'll be like a really nice thing that you're looking at. But the problem was this foolish architect. I already only have two feet from the entrance of the door to the bathroom. If I put in a wash basin there, now I've only got a foot and a half. So the whole thing is ridiculous. My wife and I realized after living in this home now for Knesset Haredi I think eight years, we realized what do we want our home to feel like? We want our home to feel open. My son doesn't have this in America, but Baruch Hashem in Israel, we have these things called bimbas. Remember the little bimbas that little boys ride on? I have a two and a half year old son. This kid is making hairpin turns in my house. He doesn't crash into the walls. Going like 50 miles an hour, it's amazing that he doesn't kill himself. But because it's so narrow.

31:05 He's learned even at two and a half years old. He doesn't crash into anything. It's an amazing thing. What do we want our home to feel like? I want my home to feel open, so that when my son is flying back and forth on his bimba, he'll have space to fly back and forth. We want to feel like it's light and airy. And the architect, she should have known this. This was her job to know, but she didn't design the home that way. The job of the architect is to design the soul of the home. What's the job of the contractor? For any of you who have ever seen a house being built or doing any construction The contractor always says what the architect told you is impractical, and this is why. If you ever do have the privilege of building a home from scratch in Eretz Yisrael, it's very important to get a kabalon, a contractor, and an architect that work together. Because what we had is we had an architect, and then we handed in the plans to our kabalon, to our contractor, and the contractor looks at him and he goes, "It's just not practical. It's ridiculous." The job of the contractor is to be the structure. The job of the architect is to be the vision, to be the soul. Moshe Rabbeinu comes along and he says

32:12 Betzalel, we're going to build an aron, we're going to build kelim, we're going to build a mishkan. Why did he go in that order? Even though Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave it to him in the other order, why did he go in that order? It's not because Moshe Rabbeinu was, Chas v'shalom, changing anything from what God told him. He wasn't changing anything. It would have looked exactly the same. But Moshe Rabbeinu was coming and he was speaking like an architect. He was coming and he was saying, 'The soul of the home is the Aron. The soul of the home is the Kehilim. Who cares about the external structure?' The external structure is just there to hold the godless of the home. But the home is built from the Aron. It's built from the Kehilim. Btzalil was the contractor. So what does Btzalil say? The Tzaddik says, "What's the structure? You're giving me no place to put it. First, there needs to be a structure, and only afterwards can we put the vision into that structure." When I was in elementary school, my parents told me that there was a new school starting in the Five Towns.

33:15 New school starting in the Five Towns, Rambam Mesivta, and that's where I went to high school, Rambam Mesivta. I'll never forget. My mother told me that when they were starting the school, they took off a year just so that they could know exactly what they spent an entire year studying. What do we want the vision of our school to be? It's so funny because we all have these conversations about the vision in our life, and then it changes so many times because the structure doesn't necessarily work. This was the machlokes between Moshe Abinu and Betzalel. Betzalel was not chas v'shalom questioning his rebbe. Betzalel respected Moshe Rabbeinu. We had Karen or Panav coming off of his face. But it was precisely because Moshe Rabbeinu had Karen or Panav coming off of his face that Betzalel said, "Moshe Rabbeinu, you're not holding in this world, because there are periods of illumination in our life, and that's what Moshe Rabbeinu represents. Those periods of inspiration, of illumination, when everything is awesome, and all you're talking about is inspiration. He was from that place of inspiration."

34:18 So he wasn't dealing with the practical, but Zalal was dealing with the practical. Where do we see that Zalal deals with the practical? Because what is his name? His name is Btzalkel. Where do you ever have a shadow of something? When you have light, and then you have a blockage. A shadow is the result. Not for those periods of illumination, but from the periods where you feel blocked, from the periods where you feel like there's nothing in my life that's going right. I've gone out with six guys in a row, and all of them were one and done, and I'm getting set up with the worst possible guy. And there's no logical way that this is ever going to end. And you feel like it's just such a blockage in your life. There's no room for inspiration. That's Betzelkel. When we need to be exceptionally practical because we feel our inspiration fading. Rabbi Doctor Chaim Saloveitchik, Rabbi Saloveitchik's son, had a great line.

35:13 And it's a sad line. It's a tragic line. Once I read it, I'll never forget it. It struck such a chord in me. He said, "Having lost the feel of God's embrace, we seek solace in His yoke." Which means there was a period in our life where we felt Hakadosh Baruch Hu m'mish giving us a hug. We felt it so clearly, but we lost that. So what do we do? We follow halacha very well, but in following that halacha very well and following the structure, what did we lose? We know we're doing it because we have nowhere else to go. I can't feel our Kadosh Baruch Hu in my life anymore. So the best thing I could do is at least listen to that. Having lost the feel of God's embrace, I seek solace in His yoke. There are periods in our life where we're like Moshe Rabbeinu, Karen Orpanov, All about inspiration, and there are periods in our life where we're like Btzalav, Practical, in the world. Structure. I can't live with that inspiration anymore because I've just been beaten down so many times. So both are true, both are right. There is a time where we're Moshe Rabbeinu, Karen Arpana, his face is literally shining. But there's a time where we're Betsalal, not just Betsalal, but Betsalal Ben Uri. What is Uri?

36:30 Uri is from Elashon of Light, from Meir, from Elashon of Light. The light that has now become the shade, the period of inspiration that is now blocked. Practically, how is it going to work? We want it to be in our lives, so practically we have to create structures for these things to exist. It may not be the inspired Judaism that it was when I was eighteen, but it's still inspired in the sense I'm doing what I know to be true and what I know to be right, even though I don't necessarily feel it in the same way. Let's go back to those Rambams. What is the soul of the Beis Hamikdash? The soul of the Beis Hamikdash is the Aron. The soul is the essence of the mikdash. It's not a cleave of the mikdash. It's not a cleave of the hstamshus. It is not like a couch. Ma'isyah Rabeinu comes first. What does he say? We'll make an aron, we'll make kelim, we'll make a mishkan. What is he talking about? He's talking about the aron, the kedusha of the beis hamikdash, the hstamshus of the beis hamikdash. That's what he's talking about.

37:29 Betzalel says it's amazing that you have that inspiration. We need to create boundaries and borders within which that inspiration can exist. It needs to be real. It needs to be practical. One of the problems with the system of education that we have is that we're talking a big game, but we're not necessarily giving students the capacity to actualize them. For example, it has to be this way. A girl comes to Israel. And we need to inspire her. We need to inspire her that Shabbat should be more meaningful. We need to inspire her that her davening should be more meaningful. And sometimes, you all know these types of teachers. There are some teachers that come with these very pie in the sky type of ideas. And they say because it worked out for me, it'll work out for everyone. You ever have these teachers? I know you have. There's like for example one teacher who I imagine is the most wonderful Inspired person ever, but she does something that in my opinion is irresponsible.

38:48 There's a tremendous amount of value in spending the beginning of your marriage learning in Kol. It's a wonderful thing. It's a beautiful thing. I myself did it one year at a time for six years. I was very blessed. When I was dating, my wife said to me, 'Do you want to learn in Kol?' I said, 'Yes.' She said, 'How do you want to work it out?' I said, 'One year at a time. We'll figure it out.' One year led to another. The truth is, I didn't stop because I ran out of money. I could have kept going financially. Baruch Hashem, the Rebbeinu Sholom took care of us. But I stopped because I thought it was the right time. I thought it was time to leave. I thought it was time to go out into the world. But this teacher, she tells everyone, 'Chayav, you must learn Kol in the beginning of your marriage.' That's a wonderful message to share. But I have a practical question: How did you do it? I happen to know this teacher, and she's a wonderful person who's been blessed with in-laws that are Baruch Hashem exceptionally wealthy. I could fit my beis medrash in their house. They're amazing, wonderful, big balitzdaka. It's not so fair for you to come and give these very big ideas to girls that don't necessarily have the same system of support that you had.

39:59 It's not fair. Because what you're doing is you're setting people up for a life that they can't necessarily implement. It's very important when we teach people not just to inspire them, but we have to give them the structure to make it actionable. Somebody was saying to me, and I think they're right. A lot of girls are coming back from seminary and they're very inspired, but they know very little halacha, very little hilkas Shabbos, very little hilkas Kashrus. And now, what's going to happen? These girls are going to become wives and mothers very soon. How are they going to raise kosher homes? How are they going to raise Shabbatik homes? They just simply don't know what to do. It's not enough to give the inspiration. The inspiration definitely needs to be there, but we also have to give the structure. How many girls have come to me in seminary and said, 'All they did in my high school was teach me the halacha, and they never taught me why I'm doing any of it.' I wasn't inspired to do it because nobody thinks the menu is delicious. The food is delicious. The menu is just there to teach me what opportunities I have.

41:04 Halacha is the menu; it's not the meal. When we teach girls, this is the halacha, this is the halacha, but they don't know why they're doing it, and they're not leading inspired lives. So of course they're going to reject it. Because if you keep saying to somebody, "Doesn't this menu smell delicious?" The answer is no. The burger smells delicious. The menu just tells me what the burger could smell like. If you're teaching Hilchah Shabbos, but you're not teaching the majesty of Shabbos, something is fundamentally missing. So who's right? Both are right, but it depends on the time. There's a time in our life for inspiration. There's a time in our life where we throw off the shackles of any structure and we just ask ourselves, "Okay, what do I want my life to look like?" It's a beautiful thing. It's really a wonderful, beautiful thing. But your seminaries have a responsibility to say, "Okay, but what's the structure it's going to look like?" Right and vice versa.

42:03 The high schools have a responsibility to provide that inspiration. Baruch Hashem, I think it is changing. I think it is changing, but we're not there yet. It needs to be both. So the Aaron is Moshe Abenu's piece. There is a stance. This is what the Beit Hamikdash is going to be built on. It's never going to leave. What's Betzalel's? What's Betzalel saying? Good. What does the house look like practically? How does it come into our lives? Maybe we can understand. Why there's two different types of donations that we make to the Mishkan? There are those that are a flat tax, and that's for the upkeep of the Mishkan. That's the machzasshachah. And then there's the niddivleiv. There's the truma of giving whatever I want. When it comes to the creation of the Mishkan, it has to happen from a place of inspiration. People had to come, giving all of their jewelry, giving all of their mirrors, giving whatever they had, and they said, "We want to build a home for Hashem." Where did it come from? It came from their heart. It came from that place of inspiration, that passion that they had. If everyone would have come and they said, "Here's our flak tax, here's our machzis hashkaf," that is not a mishkan. That's a structure.

43:14 That's not a home. That's a house. So when it came to the building of the Mishkan, it needs to be from my heart. It needs to be here is my everything. That's why in dating, there's always two periods. There's the beginning when you're dating someone and it's like that exciting period in the beginning where you're just talking about all this pie in the sky stuff, what do you want your life to look like, and you're just having a great time with this person. And then it gets down to the practical, and sometimes the practical doesn't match. Very recently, somebody came to me and they said I'm dating a girl and I'm really stuck. I said, why? We've gone out on six dates and I'm telling you that up until the sixth date I thought that this was the one. I thought she was the one. There was not—it wasn't even a question. I said, 'Really, what made you think that?' He said, 'Rabbi, we get along so well.' He was telling me that they went to what's that arcade place in the city? Dave and Buster's. Dave and Buster's. It's a pretty classic date. Yeah. Went to Dave and Buster's, and she was really good at the video games. Apparently, he likes that. I'm not sure why he thinks that's going to be like a thing in his life, but okay.

44:26 And they were joking around, and he had such a good time with her. Then they went out to eat, and they were talking about what they wanted in their life. They wanted the same things. She was inspired, and he was this inspired guy. They were like, "Mama's like." Everything was great, and then on the sixth day, they had a very practical conversation. Their lives, mamish, are not headed in the same direction. All of a sudden, he found out she wants to send her kids to one type of school, and he wants to send his kids to a very different type of school. And he was like, "Gung ho, I'm living in Eretz Israel." And she had said something earlier "Yeah, Eretz Israel would be great," But what she really meant was it's never going to happen. And so now, on the sixth day, when it came time for the actual implementation, it wasn't there. And so he's calling me up, and he goes, "Can you marry somebody who's?" And I'm using my words now. Can you marry somebody who's structure just looks different than your structure? And the answer is no. Because you could both be very inspired people, and that could build a home. A home is built off inspiration, but there also needs to be the house. You need to be headed in the same direction in your life.

45:30 Otherwise the friction is going to be too great. And even though they have Baruch Hashem the same overall overarching goals, that's not somebody that you can spend your life becoming one with because you're headed in two different places. The machzitz hashachar. It would have been such a cold marriage. I'll be honest with you, I don't know how it works. When the Hasidim do that thing where they meet each other for like 15 minutes and then they say mazel tov, I don't get it. My rebbe was very anti that way of dating. In fact, the word that he used was "it's a distortion." I once pressed him on it. He said, "Mordechai, it's a distortion." That was it. He shut down the conversation. He was not willing to engage. I said, "But Rebbe, I see that it works." He said, "You don't see that it works." He was very stark, very against it.

46:21 But I always thought there was something like, I don't know, maybe this is my Hollywood side. Maybe I'm impacted by American culture. It must be weird. After you get married and you're first meeting each other, where's the inspiration? Where's the excitement? That's dating. What they're doing, they're dating while they're married already. To me, it's very strange. And yet, sometimes it works. My brother-in-law dated his wife. The official story is they dated for three weeks. The real story is they dated for a week and a half. Somehow they thought at that time in their life that if we say three weeks, it's better than a week and a half. I was driving with my wife; we were engaged at the time, and her brother, who was engaged at the time, and we were driving to Philadelphia to go to her mother's house. And I had known her brother beforehand.

47:18 And I started asking him questions like, 'Oh, when you went to Morasha that summer?' And all of a sudden, this girl he's engaged to says, 'You went to Morasha,' and I was like. That's kind of something that would have come up on like a fourth date. They were literally meeting each other in my car, driving down to Philadelphia. It was a little strange. When you go into the marriage, you should be inspired to be in the marriage. It should be exciting. It should be like, wow, that's it. We've built this thing together. And it's like, what built it? It was me. It was me. There are some And you know this by the way. I'm sure you've dated. I hope you haven't, but I'm sure you've dated some of these guys. The guy comes into the date and he's like, He had some rebbe coach him on how to date. So he comes in and he's like, Gonna follow the playbook. He's so nervous and so anxious. He's just like, Okay, I've prepared things to talk about. It's such a bad date when that happens. Because he's not on the date. Who's on the date? The rebbe that coached him. I've seen these conversations before with Rebbe.

48:20 And the guy says, "Dad, he goes, Rebbe, I like, I and you know, he's already that nervous guy. I don't think I'm a good dater. The Rebbe gives practical advice. Make a list of things you want to talk about. The guy comes with a crib sheet. What do you do for hobbies? It's because that would be machzus hashakel." And what's the problem that many married couples suffer from? It's all machzitzas shakal. It's every time we go out on a date and we leave our kids behind. What are we talking about the entire time? The kids. And it's true. I went out with my wife a couple weeks ago, and the whole time we were talking about the kids. And I was like, "What did we talk about when we were dating?" And my wife's like, "Nonsense." But there is something special about sometimes just leaving all that structure behind and going back to that youthful place of inspiration, of just recalibrating our goals. Both are true. But Moshe Rabbeinu said, 'I see that you're Btzalkel. I see that you're living in the shadow of God, which was like an illusion. You must have been there when we were having that conversation because you knew that Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave it the opposite way. But it's even deeper than that. It's you're living in the world. You're living in the practical'

49:41 And that's what building a mishkan is about. It's about dira b'tachtonim. It's about getting down into the nitty-gritty of this world. The mishkan could not be a pie-in-the-sky place. The mishkan needed to be for real. And that's what Betzalel was saying. Moshe Rabbeinu, of course you're right. You're my rabbi. I know why you switched it because you're excited by the essence. But we have to live in the practical world. This is very often like you'll hear. People say things like, 'Maybe I'm not the best Jew, but I have a great relationship with God. Maybe I don't keep Shabbos, but you hear people off the street when they come into Ash say things like this: 'I don't keep Shabbos, but trust me, me and God are tight.' I hope that's true. If you and God are so tight, you should do what He wants you to do. Because being in a relationship is not just 'I love you.' Just because you say 'I love you' doesn't mean you're in a relationship. First of all, she may not love you back. And second of all, even if she does, every relationship has boundaries and borders within which the structure of the relationship exists. If you're in a place right now in your life where you feel distant from that inspiration, that's natural. That's normal. It's not just okay. It's what's expected of us.

50:56 It was an unreasonable expectation that we had to begin with, that we were always going to be able to live on that high. But who says that's what's supposed to be? It's that unreasonable expectation. It wasn't real. Real love is sometimes about changing diapers. Real love is sometimes about putting up dinner. Real love is about spending time with your children doing homework. It may not be exciting, but it's always inspired. And because it has real structure and real boundaries, the relationship is real. Remember that the plane is exciting when it's going up those first thirty thousand feet. But it covers distance when it's flat. It covers distance when it's going on that same trajectory, over and over again. We're not looking for excitement. Excitement is childish. Every once in a while, we got to throw off all the shackles and go back to that place of inspiration. But what we're looking for, for real, is to take that aron, that basis of mikdash, the kedusha of that aron. It never leaves. But we're trying to give it the structure within which it can be real in our lives.