Beyond the Cloud of Concealment: Bridging the Mortal and the Divine

At the end of the book of Exodus, which we read last week, the tabernacle was completed, but Moses was not able to enter it because “the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of God filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34). At the open of the book of Leviticus, which we read this week, God calls to Moses from the tabernacle, as the parsha begins, “And He called out to Moses, and God spoke to him from the tent of meeting” (Leviticus 1:1). The Alter Rebbe explores the deep mystic significance of these verses and explains the connection between Moses’ inability to enter the tabernacle at the end of Exodus and God’s call to Moses from the clouded tabernacle at the beginning of Leviticus.

The Tabernacle (and the Temple in Jerusalem which succeeded it once the nation entered the land) represents the meeting place of heaven and earth, the locale where that which is beyond the creation can communicate and interface with this world. God is infinite, and therefore in order to formulate a finite world, He needed to withdraw Himself, so to speak, and then radiate a contracted aspect of Himself into this limited realm. Yet even the compressed Godliness that vivifies this world is extremely rarefied, and it needs to be constricted even further in order to be accessible to limited worldly beings.

The cloud that covered the tabernacle represents a level of godliness that is so lofty that it is hidden from this world, just as a physical cloud covers and conceals that which is behind it. The reason that Moses was unable to enter the tabernacle was because it was invested with a level of divine energy that cannot be incorporated by a finite human. Yet this energy was housed by the tabernacle, a finite structure made of physical components. This is the miracle of the tabernacle and the subsequent temple – it is a material structure that can contain and channel levels of Godliness that cannot be integrated or revealed anywhere else within the finite creation.

Similarly, there needed to be one person who could serve as the channel to connect the infinite divine and the finite human. While each of is in fact a miraculous coalescence of the boundless soul and the bounded physical body, our capacity for Godly revelation is limited, and this is why the souls of all the people left their bodies at the revelation of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Yet Moses was able to withstand this revelation without his soul and body being sundered.

With this, we can understand the opening verse of parshas Vayikra, “And He called out to Moses, and God spoke to him from the tent of meeting” (Leviticus 1:1). God’s calling to Moses from the clouded tabernacle was an invitation to come beyond worldly concealment and experience the level of Godly revelation that transcends ordinary mortal understanding. With God’s summons, Moses was able to bridge the worldly and heavenly realms, and thereby to open a channel for each of us to do the same.

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