HaRav Dov Begon is Head of Yeshivat Machon Meir in Jerusalem.
“And let them make Me a Sanctuary, and I shall dwell among them. According to everything that I show you, the form of the Tabernacle and the form of all its vessels, and so shall you do" (Exodus 25:8-9).
Our Sages teach that a human being himself is fashioned after the pattern of the Tabernacle and its vessels; all of the components of the Mishkan (Tabernacle) are alluded to within the anatomy of man. For the essence of holiness, the Sanctuary, the resting of the Divine Presence, may Hashem be blessed, is the human being himself. If a person sanctifies himself properly through the fulfillment of the commandments, then he himself becomes the Sanctuary in actuality. Within him dwells Hashem, may He be blessed, as it is written: “The Sanctuary of Hashem, the Sanctuary of Hashem are they" (Jeremiah 7).
This is what our Sages meant when they said: “Greater are the deeds of the righteous than the creation of heaven and earth." For regarding heaven and earth it is written, “Even My hand founded the earth, and My right hand measured out the heavens" (Isaiah 48), whereas regarding the deeds of the righteous it is written, “The Sanctuary of Hashem which Your hands established" (Exodus 15). Through their deeds, which are pleasing before Him, the righteous themselves become the concrete sanctuary of Hashem.
Thus, the entire purpose of His will in showing the pattern of the Tabernacle and its vessels was only to hint to you that from it you should learn, and so shall you do yourselves, that through your deeds, which are pleasing before Him, you should become like the pattern of the Tabernacle and all its vessels, all of them holy and fit for the resting of His Divine Presence within you in actuality. This is the meaning of the verse: “And let them make Me a Sanctuary, and I shall dwell among them" - that you should make yourselves into the Sanctuary (see Nefesh HaChaim, Gate I, Chapter 4).
At present, just as the Holy One, blessed be He, chose the People of Israel to cause His Divine Presence to dwell within them, and through them to illuminate and bestow goodness upon the entire world, so too He chose the Land of Israel, Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and the Holy Temple as the place for His Divine Presence to dwell and through which His light shines to the entire world, as it is written: “For Hashem has chosen Zion; He desired it for His dwelling place," and as the prophet declared, “For from Zion shall go forth Torah, and the word of Hashem from Jerusalem."
In exile, when we were scattered and dispersed among the heathen, and the Jewish People dwelt in the darkness of impure lands and their impure cultures, unique righteous individuals and pious men built themselves into a Tabernacle and a Sanctuary, as Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin explains in Nefesh HaChaim (Gate I, Chapter 4).
But today, in the generation of national revival, the generation of the ingathering of the exiles, our aspiration and path must be not merely the private and personal spiritual construction of select individuals, but the building of the Third Temple - through the entire Nation of Israel in its literal sense.
This will be accomplished when we unite together in our unique Holy Land as one person with one heart, and increase in gratuitous love which is the opposite of the baseless hatred that brought about the destruction of the Second Temple. The path to unite and strengthen the nation is through returning to the roots that unify us. Just as in a tree, the roots unite all the branches, so too the return to our Land and to Torah and tradition, with love and faith, will bring about the building of the Third Temple, speedily in our days.
Then the prayer will be fulfilled: “A new light shall shine upon Zion, and may we all soon merit its illumination." Amen.