25 Mar PARSHAS PEKUDEI: YOU DON’T NECESSARILY GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR

You Don’t
Necessarily Get
What You Pay For
In Terms of Divine
Presence Being
Present
The pasuk in Parshas
Pekudei says, “All the gold that was used for

the work – for all the holy work – the offered-
up gold was twenty-nine talents and seven

hundred thirty shekels, in the sacred shekel.”
(Shemos 38:24). Parshas Pekudei provides
an accounting of all that was donated and all
that was used in the construction of the
Mishkan. The Torah documents exactly how
much gold was used in this holy work.
The Seforno on this pasuk notes that the
Torah specifies the exact value of the gold
and other precious materials that were used
to construct the Mishkan because the amounts
were relatively small compared to the gold
and other precious materials that were used
to construct the first Beis HaMikdash.
The Mishkan, in comparison with the Beis
HaMikdash, was the equivalent of a motor

home compared to a mansion. The Seforno
adds that certainly, compared to the rebuilt
Second Beis HaMikdash has redone by
Herod, the Mishkan was miniscule.
Nevertheless, as basic and as Spartan as the
Mishkan was, the Shechina (Divine Presence)
was evermore present in Moshe Rabbeinu’s
Mishkan than in Shlomo Hamelech’s Beis
HaMikdash, and certainly more so than in the
“Temple of Herod,” which lacked the
Shechina‘s presence to a very large extent.
So here we have this very basic temporary
dwelling called the Mishkan that was built on
a shoestring budget relative to the Batei
Mikdash, and yet there was a constant
hashra’as haShechina (Divine Presence
dwelling among us). Even the Beis
HaMikdash built by Shlomo HaMelech, with
all of its cedars and gold and silver – literally
one of the man-made wonders of the ancient
world – lacked the level of spiritual dimension
that the Mishkan possessed.
The Seforno draws a fundamental moral
lesson from this: It is not wealth and luxury
that cause hashra’as haShechina. The

Shechina cannot be bought by money. The
most fancy and elaborate building does not
cause hashra’as haShechina, but rather
“Hashem desires those who fear Him.”
Hashem will place His Shechina among
those who dedicate themselves selflessly to
His Service.
This idea is brought home by two pesukim in
Yeshaya (66:1-2) “Thus said Hashem: The
Heaven is My throne and the earth is My
footstool; what house could you build for
Me, and what place could be My resting
place? My hand created all these things, and
thus all these things came into being – the
word of Hashem – but it is to this that I look:
to the poor and broken-spirited person who is
zealous regarding My word.” HaKadosh
Baruch Hu does not care about the thickness
of the padding of the theater seats in a shul.
Hard wooden benches are fine for Him. He
does not care about the benches. He cares
about the people sitting on those benches. If
the people sitting there are humble of spirit
and tremble over His Word, then His
Shechina will reside in such a shul.
A famous Gemara teaches (Nedarim 81a)
“Take heed regarding the children of the
poor for from them Torah will emerge for
Israel.” Poor children will be the future
Torah leaders of Israel. The Maharal
explains that just as when the Almighty is
going to put His Shechina in a building, He
does not look at the trappings, but rather,
he looks at the inner quality, so too the
children of poor people are generally
humble. They come from poor backgrounds
and they are not haughty and overly proud
about things. That is where the Torah
resides.
Rav Aharon Soloveitchik zt”l used to say
over the following story: The progenitor of
the famous “Brisker Dynasty” was named
Rav Moshe Soloveitchik. His son, Rav
Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, was the Beis
HaLevi, the Rav in Brisk who had a son
named Rav Chaim Soloveitchik, who
needs no introduction and whose
pedagogic and biologic descendants are a
major force throughout the Yeshiva world
across multiple continents to this very day.
This major Torah dynasty all descended
from Rav Moshe Soloveitchik, father of
the Beis HaLevi.
Rav Moshe Soloveitchik was a
businessman. He was in the lumber
business and he was very successful. His
fortune turned and he lost all of his money.

It was such a shocking thing that this wealthy
patron of so many charitable causes lost all
his money. It had such an impact on the
community, that the Beis Din of his town
convened to try to figure out what he was
doing wrong to cause him to lose his money.
The Beis Din did a thorough investigation
and they could not find anything wrong in
Moshe Soloveitchik’s religious behavior. The
only thing they could find was that he gave
more charity than a person is supposed to
give. The Talmud legislates (Kesuvos 50a)
that a person should not give out more than
20% of his income to charity. They found that
Moshe Soloveitchik exceeded this limit. That
is the only thing he did wrong.
When this finding was presented to Rav
Chaim Volozhiner, he rejected that reason.
He insisted that it cannot be that he lost his
money because he gave too much tzedaka.
Such a thing does not happen, he claimed.
What did Moshe Soloveitchik do when he
lost all his money? He learned in the Beis
HaMedrash and became an adam gadol.
Obviously, he was a bright man. And from
him came the Beis HaLevi and Rav Chaim
Brisker and the Brisker Rav and the entire
Soloveitchik dynasty.
In hindsight, Rav Chaim Volozhiner said that
he understood why Moshe Soloveitchik lost
his money. He lost his money so that his
children would fall into the category of “the
children of the poor” and therefore the Torah
would emerge from the great Soloveitchik
dynasty.
I saw in a sefer that Rav Meir Shapiro, the
innovator of the Daf haYomi, once gave
another explanation to the Talmudic advice
“Take heed of the children of the poor, for
from them the Torah will emerge in Israel.”
He explained that the children of the poor see
how their parents struggle to pay tuition. The
sacrifice the parents make to afford “schar
limud” inspires the children and gives them
an appreciation for the sacrifice their parents
make to allow them to learn. That motivates
them to become talmidei chachomim.