Thought for the Day: The Structure of the Mishkan Is Logically Consistent, But It Doesn't Match Your Intuition

I was recently informed that the rosh kollel of the Peterson Park Kollel gives a 30 minute shiur on the parasha on Friday morning at 8:15 AM. I am so happy to have started attending this shiur; it is half-ish halacha and half-ish mussar/deep thought/lofty ideas. The shiur is only 30 minutes, but it clearly has more than 30 minutes of ideas packed into it. Last week, for example, the Rosh Kollel stated matter-of-factly that any קשה שכלית/question based on logically reconciling two different statements will have an answer that is also שכלית/logical/straightforward. It may -- and usually does -- also have deep mystical implications, but it also has a שכלית/logical/straightforward explanation. Just that one idea alone has added a new dimension to all of my learning.

I am very, very respectful of the Rosh Kollel's time, so I save my question for those rare times that I see a gap (changing from one topic to another, his chavrusa get up, etc). into which I can jump to ask a quick question. There is no shiur tomorrow morning -- the Rosh Kollel will be out of town -- so I was a bit more bold today. The Rosh Kollel had just opened his gemara and was finding his place when I pounced. I apologized, but since the Rosh Kollel will be out of town tomorrow and there is no shiur, so if I could just ask a question. The Rosh Kollel was completely gracious, as always.

I had two question about the mishkan (I am just learning that topic in masechta Shabbos); one based on that new idea about קשות שכליות and the other long standing. First things first. I asked if that statement applies to the mishkan as well. For example, the Torah gives the dimensions of the Holy of Holies as 10x10 amos. The staves of the Aron HaKodesh were 10 amos long and were never detached. Chazal tell us that you could see the bumps of the staves in the פרוכת/curtain that divided between the Holy of Holies and the rest of the mishkan. Yet the Kohein Gadol could walk completely around the inner perimeter of the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur. I asked how that could be?

The Rosh Kollel said, "You measure the staves, they are 10 amos. You measure the extent of the Holy of Holies, you get 10 amos. What's the problem?" But, but... I stammered, how did the Kohein Gadol walk around the perimeter? "Oh! You are asking how HaShem worked that out. That's not a קשה שכלית." Big smile as he saw the realization spreading across my face.

Let me give you an example from math. Take set A of the counting number: {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,...}. Let's make a new set B by only taking some of those numbers. We are only going to take the numbers that are perfect squares. So we take 1, but not 2 nor 3, we take 4, but not 5 nor 6 nor 7 nor 8, but we take 9, but not 10 nor.... So B will look like this: {1, 4, 9, 16,...}. Again. clearly B is smaller than A because we only took some of the elements of A. Now let's make C, for which we will take every single element of A, but we'll square it before putting it in C. We take 1 from A and put 1^2=1 into C. We take 2 from A and put 2^2=4 into C. We take 3 from A and put 3^2=9 into C. Clearly C has the same number of elements as A, as we took all of them. Look carefully... B and C both contain {1,4,9,16,...} How is that possible? It is a weird thing about infinity. Not a logical problem at all. You don't like it because it doesn't match how you expect things to work. Your problem, not math's, not infinity. 

The parts of the mishkan could all be measured, the Torah gives their dimensions and you can verify. No logical problems there. The fact that the Kohein Gadol could walk all around the inner perimeter even though the staves were 10 amos long and they caused a protrusion in the פרוכת/curtain? It doesn't match your expectations about how things work. Your problem, not the Torah's, not HaShem's.

I said I had another question about Chazal's description of the mishkan. It was a good question and I got a great answer. We'll have to talk about that later (maybe tomorrow, b'ezras HaShem), but I see your attention span waning already... some of you, anyway.