The Weekly Sicha of the Rebbe – Parshas Bamidbar

The Rebbe says:

1. This week’s Torah portion (as well as next week’s Torah portion) discusses the Mishkan (the Tabernacle) which was in the desert with the Jewish people and the jobs associated with bringing it from place to place with them.

2. The Rebbe tells us the lesson we can learn from this:

This passage emphasizes that even when the Jewish people are in a desert they have the strength to set up a place of holiness for Hashem’s presence (the Shechinah) to rest among the Jewish people in general and within every single Jew individually.

Furthermore, just as there is a desert in the physical sense, which is a barren wasteland where extremely calamitous elements dominate, so too there is a desert in the spiritual sense where terrible ideas and ideals dominate the atmosphere. Indeed, there can be a spiritual desert in a land which is physically a blooming garden.

Says the Torah, even when you find yourself in a spiritual desert you have the strength to, and therefore must, build a Mishkan for Hashem and carry it with you openly wherever you go until we reach the G-d blessed and holy Land of Israel.

Moreover, even though this lesson is for every single Jew, it is especially pertinent to the Jewish women because, as we know, they were called upon to help build the Mishkan even before the men were. In other words, in the spiritual desert of certain circles and communities where emptiness dominates, the Jewish women have the great and everlasting merit to be the first to help set up a holy place for Hashem.

Included in this job is the special necessity to guide and nurture young children in the correct path because, as we see clearly, when children are educated from their youngest years and on we have the greatest chance of success in helping them reach their true potential.

Translated and adapted by Shalom Goldberg. Taken from Likutei Sichos volume two, second Sicha.