Haftorah Parashat Teruma
Melakhim I 5;12-6; 13
Having recently made a fuss about when the English and Jewish calendars stopped matching, I want to note that this month again offers us the opportunity to always know what the Jewish date is, since March and Adar began on the same day.
When Does Building a Mikdash Begin?
In a fairly obvious relationship between the haftarah and the parsha, we read about Shlomo haMelech building the Beit haMikdash. In that presentation, there are four issues we will address briefly: 1) Why does the haftarah focus on this part of the building process? 2) The ethics of making pacts with non-Jews, 3) The superhuman effort needed for building a Mikdash, and 4) The role of converts in the process.
Our text opens with a comment on Shlomo’s wisdom, on there being peace between him and Hiram the king of Tsor, and their having made a berit, a covenant with each other. But this was not their first interaction, even about the building of a Beit haMikdash. Figuring out why we start here, then, should tell us about the message the haftarah seeks to send.
Focus on God
Two other possibilities come to mind. First, in line with the Torah’s stress that donations to the Mishkan should extend from personal generosity, the haftarah might be trying to de-emphasize Shlomo’s contribution. Just as the Torah wants the money and materials to be given with no thought of personal recognition, the haftarah does not want us to put Shlomo in the center of the proceedings. Starting where we do stresses Hashem’s role in giving Shlomo the wisdom to do all that he did, de-emphasizing Shlomo himself.
Alternatively, the haftarah might be pointing out that approaching a supplier, even when the meeting goes well, is not the same as actually embarking on the actual building. Perhaps the hafatarah starts here because God’s giving Shlomo wisdom and his signing an actual agreement with Hiram were the start of the actual building process, our focus here.
Making a Pact with a Non-Jew: An Interesting Problem
The pact with Hiram is no simple matter, since Tosafot in Yevamot 23a is of two minds as to whether the Torah’s prohibition of “lo tichrot lahem berit, you shall not make a covenant with them nor show them favor,” includes all non-Jews. In their first answer, they suggest that Hiram was a “ger toshav,” having formally accepted upon himself the “sheva mitsvot benei Noah,” the Noahide laws. Accepting this view creates problems for us, since we generally assume that only a Sanhedrin can designate non-Jews as “gerei toshav.” For this answer in Tosafot, making pacts with all non-Jews today would be a problem.
In our search for another answer, we can point to the gemara in Avodah Zarah 20a, which seems to see the prohibition of pacts as limited to the 7 Canaanite nations. For other nations, the pact-rule would apply only if the point of the treaty was to agree to worship idols; Shlomo could not have made an agreement with Hiram to help him worship idols in any way, nor could he have made reached a covenant with any of the Seven Nations. Other than that, though, foreign policy was unfettered.
The Sum of All Energies: The Call of the Project
The opening reference to Shlomo’s wisdom is actually quite odd, since the navi had already (in parts of the book we don’t read) mentioned Hashem’s giving wisdom to Shlomo. Ramban repeatedly hints that this verse implies that Hashem did more than make Shlomo really smart, that He in some way rested His Divine Presence, including His Wisdom, within Shlomo. Not only did Hashem give him sufficient wisdom to rule the people, a huge challenge, He additionally and separately made him able to build a Beit haMikdash, an endeavor that apparently calls for skills beyond pure intelligence. To build the House of God (for all that we know that the term is a metaphor) requires a superhuman understanding of the Divine, something that can only come with an extraordinary influx of wisdom from God.
Another example of the need to stretch to the boundaries of ordinary human capability in building the Mikdash comes in the staffing of this project. The verse tells us that Shlomo took a human tax from the populace of thirty thousand people, who would rotate on a three month cycle, a month away from home and two months there. When R. Yohanan, in Ketubbot 61b, reads this as the standard of acceptable absence from home (one month of every three), he shows us that Shlomo was demanding as much as he could of the people in order to build it. The building of the Mikdash, in other words, called for people to reach the limits of human capabilities, not only in wisdom but in physical and emotional commitment.
Call in the Converts
Yevamot 79a assumes that all the tens of thousands of workers who helped Shlomo build the Mikdash were converts, not natural born Jews. Further, the gemara assumes these converts were those inspired to do so by the incident of the famine and the Givonim, where God visited famine on Israel until David atoned for Shaul’s having mistreated the Givonim by giving them what they wanted.
It seems somewhat odd that those who joined the people because of our dedication to justice should then be pressed into hard labor. The gemara seems not to notice the irony, perhaps because we err in envisioning these tasks as undignified. To make the contrast, I recall a story I once heard of a family in which the grandfather was blind and largely deaf. Friday night, the mother in this family would place her father in law at the sink, show him (by hand) the faucet, the dishes, the washcloth, and the drying rack and leave him to his task. Rather than fobbing off an unwanted chore on a defenseless old man, the incident was this family’s way of showing that he was still a valued contributor to the workings of the household.
So, too, I suspect the gemara would say that Shlomo was giving these converts the privilege of being directly involved in building a structure that would be at the center of the nation’s existence, which also shows them how readily and fully they had been accepted into the Jewish people.
There is more to this haftarah, but those are a few points worth considering as we read it. Shabbat Shalom.
I Kings, 5
[12] And the LORD gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him: and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they two made a league together.
[13] And king Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men.
[14] And he sent them to Lebanon ten thousand a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home: and Adoniram was over the levy.
[15] And Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains;
[16] Beside the chief of Solomon’s officers which were over the work, three thousand and three hundred, which ruled over the people that wrought in the work.
[17] And the king commanded, and they brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house.
[18] And Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders did hew them, and the stonesquarers: so they prepared timber and stones to build the house.
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1Kgs.6
[1] And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD.
[2] And the house which king Solomon built for the LORD, the length thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits.
[3] And the porch before the temple of the house, twenty cubits was the length thereof, according to the breadth of the house; and ten cubits was the breadth thereof before the house.
[4] And for the house he made windows of narrow lights.
[5] And against the wall of the house he built chambers round about, against the walls of the house round about, both of the temple and of the oracle: and he made chambers round about:
[6] The nethermost chamber was five cubits broad, and the middle was six cubits broad, and the third was seven cubits broad: for without in the wall of the house he made narrowed rests round about, that the beams should not be fastened in the walls of the house.
[7] And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.
[8] The door for the middle chamber was in the right side of the house: and they went up with winding stairs into the middle chamber, and out of the middle into the third.
[9] So he built the house, and finished it; and covered the house with beams and boards of cedar.
[10] And then he built chambers against all the house, five cubits high: and they rested on the house with timber of cedar.
[11] And the word of the LORD came to Solomon, saying,
[12] Concerning this house which thou art in building, if thou wilt walk in my statutes, and execute my judgments, and keep all my commandments to walk in them; then will I perform my word with thee, which I spake unto David thy father:
[13] And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel.