Weekly D'var

PARSHAT NASSO
Ed Millunchick

If you were going to choose a metaphor to describe the Holy of Holies, what would you choose?

Something like a throne room, perhaps? Maybe the eye of a hurricane?

One certainly wouldn’t choose in the first instance to compare the holiest place on earth to a … bedroom. And yet, our Sages do just that!

We read this week that when God speaks to Moses, he does so from between the Keruvim, the angelic figures adorning the top of the Ark.

But what were these Keruvim? The Talmud records a stunning teaching: When Israel fulfilled God's will, the Keruvim faced each other in embrace. When Israel strayed, they turned away. Even more audaciously, Rashi quotes the midrash that they were "in the form of a male and female in embrace."

Consider the breathtaking paradox: Atop the Ark containing the tablets of law—those stern commandments carved in stone—God places an image of intimacy. In the innermost sanctum where only the High Priest enters once a year, where one wrong move means death, God chooses to manifest through the metaphor of love.

Of all the images and all the places from which to communicate with humanity, God chooses to use relationship.

Why? Perhaps because nothing else captures the full truth of covenant. Law alone is cold. Love alone is chaotic. But love structured by commitment, passion channelled through covenant—this mirrors the Divine-human encounter itself.

The Keruvim teach us that every committed relationship is a Mishkan, a dwelling place for the Divine. When couples turn toward each other despite hurt, when they choose connection over correctness, they create a Holy of Holies in their own home. The Voice that spoke to Moses speaks still—between and through our moments of turning toward.

The Hebrew word for hope, "Tikvah," literally means "line" or "cord." A thread that holds even when stretched thin. What is a life-long commitment but hope made manifest—the belief that tomorrow's embrace will justify today's patience?

This week, Carol and I are celebrating our thirtieth wedding anniversary.

Thirty years of turning toward and sometimes away, of learning that holiness dwells not in perfection but in the choice to face each other again. In our years together, I've begun to understand why God speaks "from between the Keruvim"—because it is in the space between two people choosing each other that Divinity finds its most eloquent voice.

Perhaps, though thousands of years separates us and Moses, we all can hear the voice of God speaking through our loved ones.

I, for one, know that in the voice of my wife, in her love and care, in her affection and unwavering support, I have heard the Divine, and I am thankful each and every day for her.

Thank you all for joining our celebration today. May each of you merit to hear God's voice speaking from between the Keruvim of your own lives. Shabbat shalom.