Parsha Mitzvot: Re’ei: Mitzvah 438 – Concept 369

“It shall be that the place where God, your Lord, will choose to rest His Name – there shall you bring everything that I command you: your elevation-offerings and your feast offerings, your tithes and what you raise up with your hands, and the choicest of your vow-offerings that you will vow to God. You shall rejoice before God, your Lord, – you, your sons and your daughters, your slaves and your maidservants, and the Levite who is in your cities, for he has no share and inheritance with you. Beware for yourself lest you bring up your elevation-offerings in any place that you see. Rather, only in the place that God will choose, among one of your tribes, there shall you bring up your elevation-offerings, and there shall you do all that I command you.” (Deuteronomy 12: 11-14) We are commanded to offer all sacrifices in the Temple.(Rambam, Hilchot Ma’aseh HaKorbanot  The Sacrificial Procedure)

Seeking to get near to God with giving up and devoting our spiritual inner self, or seeking to get near to God with all our will and actions is pinned strictly down to the one Sanctuary dedicated to the divine Torah. Only the Torah elevates our soul to God, and only the Torah gives our will and what we accomplish consecration and importance.

In Mt Moriah’s ruins it has proved its mastery on the dispersed nation of its power of winning hearts and minds even more gloriously than in the brightest days of its past existence, “A throne of glory, higher than the first, the very place of our Sanctuary remains.” (Jeremiah 17:12) – Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch

We can still fulfill the concept of this Mitzvah when we take a moment to consciously focus our prayers toward Jerusalem. We know that God hears all prayers and does not need a prayer to be directed in one direction or another. God teaches us to focus all our spiritual strivings in one direction, to a place where our experiences can take root and flourish.