Inside and Out
This month, we observe the festival of Passover. At our seder tables, we retell the story of our redemption from Pharaoh. During that retelling, we are asked to place ourselves inside the story — to feel as if we were there, in servitude, then redeemed, present at Sinai, and now on a journey to a promised land. It was on that journey that the Israelites built a portable sanctuary, the Mishkan. At its center was the Kodesh HaKodashim, the Holy of Holies. And inside the Holy of Holies was the Ark.
Bezalel made the Ark of acacia wood — a rare and precious commodity in the desert. He then covered the wood, inside and out, with pure gold, and made an Ark cover of pure gold. We are also told of a further adornment: וְעָשִׂ֧יתָ עָלָ֛יו זֵ֥ר זָהָ֖ב סָבִֽיב — and make around it a gold molding. Inside the Ark would rest the tablets of the covenant — both the broken first tablets and the unbroken second set.
Our sages take note of the detail that the Ark was overlaid inside and out with pure gold, and they wonder why. It is a reasonable question. The Israelites are given no instruction that the Ark is ever to be opened. The Ark, with the covenant inside and the hammered gold cherubim above, is the throne of God. It is from that place — hovering over the Ark, between the almost-touching wings of the cherubim — that God speaks to Moses. If the Ark is never to be opened, if its inside is never to be seen, why cover the inside with gold at all?
The rabbis answer by comparing the Ark to a person. Rava taught: Any Torah scholar whose inside is not like their outside is not truly a Torah scholar. But this teaching extends well beyond scholars. When the Israelites ask for a king — forgetting that they already have one, namely God — they are told that the king must write two Torah scrolls, read them, know them, and live by them. The king is meant to be the greatest scholar of the law, the Rosh Yeshivah of the nation. But the king has something no ordinary scholar possesses: authority, an army, and the ultimate power to decide who is jailed and who is free, who goes to war and who lives in peace.
As the Ark is covered in pure gold inside and out, so too must the king’s inner life and outer actions be of one seamless, unquestionable integrity. With the power to send people to war, to put the lives of soldiers and civilians on the line, the king must be of pure integrity — wholly dedicated to the moral and ethical demands of Torah. No wavering. No pretense.
Without that integrity, the power of the king ceases to be a source of blessing and becomes a force of chaos and destruction.
This brings us back to that gold molding on the Ark — זֵ֥ר זָהָב, zeir zahav. The rabbis notice that this word, זֵר, zeir, ‘molding’, is very close to another word we encounter later in Torah: אֵ֣שׁ זָרָ֔ה, aish zarah, the ‘strange fire’ that consumes Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu when they misuse the power of the Mishkan. The difference between adornment and annihilation is as fine as the change of a single vowel, זֵר zeir becoming זָר zar— and what crowns the Ark becomes what kills.
If the mere breath of pronunciation can mean life or death, how much more so the power of whole words — words used carelessly, words used to disparage, words used to incite. Words can transform the covenant’s power into destruction for entire peoples. The king must be like gold inside and out. Appearance matters. Words matter. When a leader plays games with power, those around them will surely suffer. Integrity is not an adornment that makes some leaders look more impressive than others. Integrity is the difference between a leader who brings people to flourishing and one who leads them to ruin.
The Mishkan of the Exodus became the model for the First Temple, for the Second Temple, and for synagogues like ours. Above our own Ark is inscribed a teaching from the Babylonian Talmud: דַּע לִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עוֹמֵד — Know before Whom you stand. Every leader — every person — must ask that question. Not just when we are in the sanctuary, but in every moment when our power is exercised and words are spoken.
At Passover, we place ourselves inside the whole arc of our journey — from bondage to redemption, from Sinai to here. We are still on our journey to a promised land. We carry the covenant not in a portable Ark, but within ourselves. The charge has not changed: inside and out, in our private intentions and our public actions, we must reflect Torah’s gold.
Chag Sameach,
Rabbi Marc