12 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 as 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.