Holy Temple Readings & Insights

“My design for A New Home for the New Millennium may seem revolutionary,” explained the architect, “but only because we have drifted away from the home’s initial, primal function . . .”

Let’s take a look at the Holy Temple. I see a magnificent structure bedecked with silver and gold. “What is this all about?” I wonder. Is G‑d so high-maintenance?

We philosophized our way to science, and then science led us through the doorway into mysticism. But we still don’t know how to live our lives.

Imagine a house with three rooms: a large room where the bulk of your time is spent; a smaller chamber where precious occasions of the spirit are enjoyed; and a rarely visited sanctum that is the absolute center of your life

A corner of the universe that is utterly, exclusively, one’s own.

To an ecologist, nothing is as interesting as the foothills, where two ecosystems meet

The problem with the word “temple” is that Indiana Jones got to it.

Don’t we all remember the precise location where we proposed, or the hospital ward where our first child was born? How could we forget? And yet, somehow, we’ve lost touch with the place more important to our people than any other . . .

Is it a self-improvement thing, like a woodworking class or a therapy session? Is it a duty, like obeying the law of the land and going to work in the morning?

For the entire fourteen years that Jacob was secluded in the study house of Eber, he did not lie down. Nor did he lay himself to sleep for the 20 years he labored over Laban's sheep. In between, he spent one night at the holiest place on earth -- "and he lay down in that place" (Genesis 28:11). What is the deeper significance of that single horizontal night in 34 vertical years?

I can see the experiential quality of it all: an ancient temple with heavenly music and mystical song; priests in flowing robes deep in meditation; mesmerizing, choreographed ritual. But why the barbecue?

The deeper meaning behind the different opinions in the Talmud and commentaries regarding the menorah’s spatial alignment inside the Temple, and regarding the identity of its miraculous “western lamp.”