An altar of earth you shall make for Me!

(Exodus 19:21)

Shevat 21, 5777/February 17, 2017

Lightning! Thunder! Fire and smoke: Mount Sinai! And Israel stands as one man before G-d...

G-d in His own voice speaks to Israel, who hear and see His words as He begins to teach them one commandment after another, each commandment a blessing, each commandment another opportunity to perform G-d's will! And then after ten commandments G-d pauses. Soon the Torah will be presenting us mishpatim, laws teaching Israel how to live together with one another, but just before this... G-d stops.

There is one thing you can do for Me, G-d says, and the rams' horns are hushed and the thunder is silenced. G-d says, "You have seen that from the heavens I have spoken with you... An altar of earth you shall make for Me!" (Exodus 20:19,21)

All this time G-d has been doing for His children Israel, liberating them, delivering them, teaching them, caring for them. And now G-d who has reached out to Israel from heaven is asking, as it were, for one small thing: "An altar of earth you shall make for Me!" (ibid)

Why would G-d require such a thing? How can an earthen altar possibly please Him?

" ...and you shall slaughter beside it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your cattle. Wherever I allow My name to be mentioned, I will come to you and bless you." (ibid 20:21)

The altar, G-d instructs us, is made from earth, adamah, the same sacred earth from which Man was created and shaped by G-d. And the altar must stand on the earth touching the earth like man's soles touch the earth. As as the fire and smoke of the altar rise up to heaven so must man's aspirations always be directed toward heaven.

Adam who knew G-d, made for Him an altar, and called upon Him. Cain and Abel made an altar, Noach made an altar, Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov all made altars. G-d can't teach Israel a thing about building an altar, because Israel has been building altars since the beginning of time. The altar and the offerings are man's most ancient, most fundamental and most intuitive way to reach out to G-d, to call out His name.

This is the secret to the "pleasure" G-d derives from the Temple offerings, the pleasure of seeing man reach deep within himself in order to reach upward, to strive toward G-d. And this is why G-d has stopped for a moment. The Torah that Israel is receiving at Sinai changes everything for them. Israel is becoming a nation. Their lives will never be the same again. But one thing remains the same and that is man's yearning to call out to G-d, to endeavor to be in His presence. G-d is telling Israel, build for Me an altar, as you have done in every generation, for that expression of your love please Me.

Today, two thousand years after the dimming of the Tamid daily offering, we have grown cold to the thought of the altar and the offerings. The idea seems intrusive and bothersome. Yet the altar and the offerings are man's own expression of reaching out and calling G-d's name. If we are uncomfortable with the idea of the altar and the offerings, it is not because we have grown distant from G-d. It's because we have grown distant from ourselves.

Why an altar of earth? Why sheep and cattle? The answer lies deep within us. The answer is the key to who we are.

The mystery of the altar is the mystery of who we are, of who G-d created us to be. After the lightning and the thunder, after the thick cloud and Ten Commandments, G-d says to Israel, truly G-d says to Man: Be yourself, build for Me an altar. Be yourself and call upon My name.

-The Temple Institute