WHAT I MEAN BY “BUILDING THE TEMPLE”

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what I mean by “Building the temple”

Tora, Rashi, the Rambam, and the Zohar

Spoken transcript prepared for Alle

Estimated spoken length: approximately 30 to 36 minutes at a measured 130 to 155 words per minute

The source notes at the end are not part of the spoken transcript.

(Opening)

Hi, Alle. You asked whether I believe that the Jewish Temple will come down from heaven, and you said you were curious about my religious beliefs. I wanted to give you a serious answer, but in a way that does not assume you already know Jewish texts or vocabulary.

The short answer is this: I believe that rebuilding the Temple is a real part of the Jewish religious hope and tradition. I do not understand Jewish law to tell us simply to sit and wait for a building to fall out of the sky. A famous medieval commentator, Rashi, does give a reading in which the future Temple is already built in heaven and will be revealed and descend.

Chabad takes that view seriously. The Rambam, another major Jewish authority, describes the future Temple as something the Messiah will build. Chabad thinkers have tried to reconcile those descriptions.

My own starting point is the concrete command to build, and I think a claim about a heavenly Temple needs to explain how it fits that command.

There is a second part to my answer. I am interested in the Temple Mount, which in Hebrew is called Har HaBayit, meaning “the Mount of the House.” The word “House” here means the Temple. I also care about Eretz Yisrael, meaning the Land of Israel. But national life in the Land of Israel, events on the Temple Mount, and the halakhic question of how the future Temple is built are related subjects, not the same subject. Following news about the Mount does not by itself settle what the law says or what practical steps are permitted now.

My larger point is about how I decide what is authoritative. I start with the Tanakh, the Talmud, and a systematic legal code such as the Rambam's Mishne Tora. Tanakh is the Hebrew Bible: the Tora, the Prophets, and the Writings. The Talmud is the central collection of rabbinic teaching and debate in rabbinic Judaism. The Mishne Tora is the Rambam's organized code of Jewish law. When a later mystical teaching seems to change how a command is understood or practiced, I want to know what the source is, when it can be traced, and why it has legal authority.

That is a method for asking questions. It is not a claim that every later Jewish source is automatically false, or that every person who studies mysticism ignores Jewish law. I will explain the distinctions.

[part one: what the words mean]

A few terms first.

Chabad is a Hasidic Jewish movement. “Chabad” is an acronym for three Hebrew words: chochma, binah, and da'at, usually translated as wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. Chabad is one movement within Judaism, not a synonym for Judaism as a whole. It has its own teachers and traditions, while also treating the Tora, Talmud, and Jewish law as central.

Halakha means Jewish law: the rules and reasoning that guide Jewish practice. A mitzvah is a commandment. When I ask whether something is “halakha,” I am asking whether it is a legal obligation or rule, and how that rule is established.

The Rambam is Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides. He was a medieval Jewish legal scholar and philosopher. His Mishne Tora is a code organized by subject. One section is Hilkhot Beit HaBehira, “the laws of the Chosen House,” meaning the Temple. Another is Hilkhot Melakhim, “the laws of kings,” which includes his account of the Messiah.

Rashi is Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaqi, a medieval commentator whose explanations appear throughout the Bible and Talmud. A Rashi comment is enormously influential, but it is still important to ask what kind of statement it is. A comment explaining a passage is not automatically a new practical instruction that cancels a command in a legal code.

The Zohar means “Splendor.” It is the best-known and most influential work of Jewish mysticism, or Qabbala. Qabbala is a Jewish tradition that reads religious texts and practices through symbolic and mystical ideas about God, creation, and the spiritual meaning of the commandments. The Zohar is written mainly in a form of Aramaic, a language related to Hebrew that was widely used in ancient and medieval Jewish texts.

One more term: “Chol Hamoed” means the intermediate days of Passover or Sukkot. They fall between the opening and closing festival days. “Tefillin” are small black leather boxes containing passages from the Tora, worn on the arm and head during weekday prayer. Those two terms will matter in the example later.

[part two: the temple as A command]

The Temple is not a new idea invented by a modern movement. The Tora describes the portable sanctuary built by the Israelites in the wilderness and later speaks of a permanent place of worship. The Hebrew Bible then describes the First Temple in Jerusalem, its destruction, and the later Second Temple. Jewish prayer and study have continued to refer to the hope of restoration.

The Rambam states the legal point directly. In Hilkhot Beit HaBehira, chapter one, law one, he writes that Israel has a positive commandment to build a house for God, prepared for offerings to be brought there. He grounds that command in the Tora's words, “Make Me a sanctuary.” The same chapter goes on to describe the Temple's location, design, chambers, and construction.

The Rambam also speaks about the future in Hilkhot Melakhim, chapter eleven, law one. He says that when the Messiah arises, he will restore the Davidic monarchy, build the Temple, gather the dispersed of Israel, and restore the commandments connected with Temple service.

So there are two relevant statements in the Rambam. One is the general commandment to build the Temple. The other is his description of the Messiah building it in the future. Neither statement says that the Temple is an idea that can be replaced by a private spiritual feeling. The Rambam treats it as a real structure, at a real place, with a real public service.

That does not settle every practical question about the present. It does not mean that any person or group can decide on its own to begin construction tomorrow. Questions about authority, location, ritual status, safety, public responsibility, and the details of the law are serious questions.

I am not using the Rambam as a shortcut around them. The narrower point is that the legal tradition contains an explicit obligation to build, and the Rambam describes human construction as part of the messianic future.

When I hear the claim that the Temple will descend from heaven, I therefore ask: what does that claim mean for the command to build? Does it mean that people have no role? Is it a description of a miracle after human action? Is it an interpretation of the final form of the building? Different Jewish teachers answer those questions differently. We should not collapse all of those answers into one sentence.

[part three: what RASHI says, and what chabad says]

The Rashi people usually have in mind appears in his commentary to the Talmud tractate Sukkah, page 41a. A tractate is one division of the Talmud, and “41a” is a standard way of identifying a page and side. In a discussion about the timing of the future redemption, Rashi explains that the future Temple is already built and will be revealed and come down from heaven.

That is a genuine traditional interpretation. It is not something critics invented to make Chabad look strange. Chabad sources quote it and teach it. The Chabad position is not merely that the Temple Mount is important. It includes a real belief that the future Temple has a heavenly dimension and will be revealed from above.

But there is a necessary qualification. Chabad writings do not always present this as “human beings do nothing; we wait for a building to drop.” A published explanation based on the talks of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, sets Rashi beside the Rambam. It says that the Messiah and the Jewish people can build the parts of the Temple that human beings can understand, and that dimensions not understood by people can be revealed from heaven. Another explanation says that people build a sanctuary in this world and that the divine presence, or the heavenly essence of the Temple, becomes manifest within it.

Those are attempts to reconcile Rashi with the Rambam. They are intellectually more specific than the slogan “the Temple falls from the sky.” The basic distinction remains: the Rambam's legal description emphasizes building by the Messiah and the people; Rashi's comment describes a Temple built by God in heaven and brought into the world. Chabad treats both traditions as meaningful and explains how they can fit together.

So, to answer you directly: I do not say that a miracle is impossible. A religious person can believe that God may act in a miraculous way. I also do not say that the Rashi comment is meaningless. I say that I do not read it as a halakhic instruction to abandon the command to build or to wait passively. The Rambam explicitly says “build,” and his account of the future says the Messiah builds. If someone says that the final Temple descends from heaven, I want them to explain whether they mean the whole building, its final completion, its divine character, or some combination of those things.

There is a difference between a belief about what God may do in the future and a legal rule about what people are commanded to do. “God may bring about a miracle” is a theological claim. “The command to build no longer applies because a building will arrive from heaven” is a much stronger legal claim. I have not seen the Rashi comment itself establish that second proposition.

And I should be fair about the word “Chabad.” Chabad has many teachers, books, and individual members. A movement's central texts can be described, but no short script can tell you what every Chabad person thinks. The most accurate formulation is that Chabad gives substantial weight to the heavenly-Temple reading and has developed explanations that preserve a human role as well.

[part four: what can be known about the Zohars history]

Now to the Zohar, because this is where the historical question matters.

The traditional attribution is that the Zohar records teachings of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, a Jewish sage from the second century. His name is often shortened to Rashbi. In the traditional story, he and his son hid in a cave from the Roman authorities. Some traditional accounts describe mystical teaching being preserved secretly and disclosed later.

That is the traditional account. A historian asks a different question: what manuscripts, quotations, and references can be traced in the surviving record? On that question, the Zohar as a recognizable written work enters the documentary record in late-thirteenth-century Spain. Moses de León, a Spanish Jewish mystic, is the first clearly identifiable figure associated with circulating it. He said he possessed an ancient manuscript that came from the Land of Israel and was associated with Rabbi Shimon.

The historical record does not give us a securely documented copy of the Zohar from the second century, or a reliable chain of copies running from Rabbi Shimon to Moses de León. The textual evidence begins roughly a thousand years later, in the medieval period. That does not logically prove that no earlier oral teaching existed. It does mean that an assertion of second-century authorship is a traditional claim, not something established by surviving second-century manuscripts.

I also want to correct the “found in a cave in 1290” version. I have not found reliable historical evidence that Moses de León discovered the Zohar in a cave in 1290. That account appears to mix together two different things: the traditional story that Rabbi Shimon hid in a cave, and the much later historical emergence of the Zohar in Spain. Even a Chabad article about the Zohar's origins says that the exact way the text came into Moses de León's possession is unclear. It presents several different traditions about manuscripts, including stories about hidden manuscripts and a ship, rather than documenting a cave discovery by Moses de León.

This distinction matters. “A revered sage taught secret wisdom in a cave” is one traditional narrative. “A medieval Spanish writer possessed a newly circulating book and said it was an ancient manuscript” is another claim about the book's transmission. They are not the same event, and the second does not become historical fact merely because the first is part of the religious story.

There is also a distinction between the Zohar and Qabbala as a whole. Jewish mystical thought did not begin with one book appearing in medieval Spain. There were earlier forms of Jewish mystical interpretation and speculation. The Zohar became the central and most influential work in a later phase of Jewish mysticism. The historical point is narrower: the complete Zoharic literature that became famous is first traceable in late-medieval Spain, not in surviving documents from the lifetime of Rabbi Shimon.

Academic scholars disagree about the exact authorship and formation of the Zohar. The older influential theory associated with the scholar Gershom Scholem treated Moses de León as the main author. More recent scholarship often sees a layered work produced by multiple writers or a circle, with Moses de León probably contributing substantially. That scholarly discussion is not the same as proving every page came from one man. The careful claim is that the work took shape and circulated in medieval Spain, in a milieu associated with Moses de León, and that its traditional second-century authorship cannot be independently traced through surviving manuscripts.

A person can still believe that an ancient teaching was preserved orally or secretly. That is a faith claim about transmission. It may be meaningful inside a religious community. But if we are asking what the historical record demonstrates, the answer is that the traceable evidence begins in the late thirteenth century.

If someone claims a second-century book existed, the burden is to show evidence for that claim. The absence of an earlier manuscript does not prove the metaphysical impossibility of hidden transmission, but it does mean the claim cannot be presented as an established historical fact.

[part five: how A later book acquires authority]

The next question is how the Zohar became so influential.

It was not as simple as one rabbi accepted it, then another, then everyone became afraid to disagree. That description makes a complicated history sound like a single chain of pressure. The text gained influence through study, manuscript circulation, rabbinic teachers, liturgy, printing, and the prestige of communities and authorities that embraced it. Some Jewish authorities accepted its traditional attribution and gave it major religious authority. Others questioned its provenance or did not treat it as decisive in every legal matter.

A source can gain authority in more than one way. People may believe it is ancient. They may find its teaching spiritually powerful. A respected legal authority may rely on it. A custom may spread through a community. Later codes may incorporate it. Those routes overlap, but they are not identical.

If a practice changes, the historical question is not just “Did the Zohar cause it?” It is also “Which authorities cited it? What arguments existed before it? Which communities adopted the ruling? Which communities preserved a different practice?”

That brings us to a useful example: tefillin on Chol Hamoed.

Remember, tefillin are the small leather boxes containing Tora passages that Jews wear on the head and arm during weekday prayer. Chol Hamoed means the intermediate days of Passover and Sukkot. The legal question is whether those days count as ordinary weekdays for tefillin, or as festival days that already carry their own religious sign.

The Rambam's law on tefillin says that Shabbat and the full festival days are not times for wearing tefillin, because those days are themselves a sign. In the central paragraph where he states that rule, he does not explicitly name Chol Hamoed. Later readers therefore debated how his position applies to those intermediate days. Some commentators understood the Rambam to support wearing tefillin; others understood him differently.

The later commentator known as the Kesef Mishneh discusses this ambiguity. He says that there was a disagreement about Chol Hamoed and reports that the common custom had been to wear tefillin until later rabbis found a statement in the Zohar that strongly opposed it; after that, people refrained from wearing them. The Beit Yosef, Rabbi Yosef Karo's commentary on the earlier legal code called the Tur, also discusses the Zohar's position. In the Shulhan Arukh, Karo rules that tefillin are not worn on Chol Hamoed.

That is real evidence that the Zohar influenced a practical halakhic ruling and a widespread custom. It is a strong example for the point I am making: a mystical source can move beyond private spirituality and affect how Jewish law is practiced.

But the example also corrects the claim that the practice became universal. Rabbi Moses Isserles, known as the Rema, added Ashkenazi glosses to the Shulhan Arukh. On this issue he records the custom in his communities to wear tefillin on Chol Hamoed, with a blessing. The custom therefore remained divided. Some communities do not wear them; some Ashkenazi communities in the Diaspora do. Chabad and many other Hasidic communities do not wear them. Practices vary by community and by the ruling followed.

So I would state the example this way: the Zohar's authority helped change or reinforce practice in important communities, and the Shulhan Arukh codifies a ruling against wearing tefillin on Chol Hamoed. The Rema preserves a contrary Ashkenazi practice. The case shows influence, but it does not show that every Jewish community accepted one rule or that all Jewish practice became uniform.

It also matters that the Zohar was not the only material discussed. The legal debate included arguments from the Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud, earlier medieval authorities, and different interpretations of the Rambam. The Jerusalem Talmud is the earlier rabbinic compilation associated with the Land of Israel; the Babylonian Talmud is the later and more widely authoritative Talmud in most rabbinic communities. The Zohar became a major part of the argument, but it entered a legal discussion that already had multiple positions.

This is exactly why I do not want to use slogans. “It is only the Zohar” would erase the other legal sources. “The Zohar had no effect on law” would be false. The careful conclusion is that mystical authority became one factor in halakhic development, sometimes a very influential factor, while communities and authorities continued to disagree.

[part six: does A mystical reading make the text meaningless?]

There is a philosophical concern behind my criticism. In some mystical approaches, a text has an outer meaning and an inner meaning. The inner meaning is treated as a secret that only a trained or initiated reader can see. That can make the ordinary reading feel incomplete or even unimportant.

There is a traditional Jewish model sometimes called PaRDeS. It names four kinds of reading: peshat, the plain or contextual meaning; remez, a hint or allusion; derash, an interpretive or homiletical reading; and sod, a hidden or mystical reading. You do not need to memorize those terms. The important point is that Jewish interpreters have often spoken about more than one layer of meaning.

Multiple readings do not automatically make the ordinary text meaningless. A person can say, “This verse has a plain meaning, and it also has a symbolic meaning.” The problem arises if someone says, “The plain meaning does not matter, and only my secret interpretation gives the real answer,” especially when that private interpretation is then used to change a practical legal rule.

That is a concern about method and authority. It is not a proven description of every Qabbalist, every Chabad teacher, or every mystical reading. Many people who study Qabbala also study Talmud and halakha seriously.

My question is more exact: when a mystical reading changes the meaning or practice of a command, what public argument establishes that change? Who has the authority to make it? How does the interpretation fit the text and the legal tradition?

There is also a historical issue in the word “Gnosticism.” Gnosticism is a modern umbrella term for several ancient movements that emphasized special knowledge, or gnosis, as a route to salvation. It is not simply another word for any secret teaching, and it does not describe one single uniform religion. Qabbala should not be casually described as “just Greek Gnosticism.” It developed within Jewish scriptural and rabbinic traditions, and it also developed in a world where Jewish thinkers interacted with surrounding philosophical and religious ideas. Similarity can prompt a comparison; by itself, it does not prove that one system was copied from another.

My concern is not that Jewish mysticism has foreign influences, as if a religious tradition could ever develop in total isolation. My concern is the possibility that claims about hidden meanings can become difficult to test. If only an elite interpreter can say what a public text really means, then the interpreter can become more authoritative than the accessible text itself. That is a risk in any tradition that places great weight on secret knowledge. It is something to examine carefully, rather than assume about everyone who believes in mysticism.

[part seven: action, belief, and what I mean by “judaism”]

You said you have noticed that Jewish people come in an unusually wide intellectual variety. I think that is a fair observation. There are religious Jews, secular Jews, atheists who identify as Jewish, philosophers, mystics, legal scholars, nationalists, skeptics, and people who combine several of those identities. Jewish identity can be religious, familial, cultural, historical, communal, or some mixture.

My own emphasis is that Judaism, especially rabbinic Judaism, is deeply concerned with how a person acts. The Talmud contains extensive legal debate: what is permitted, what is required, what counts as harm, what counts as honest dealing, how to keep a festival, how to pray, how to treat another person, how to repair a mistake. It also contains stories, ethical teachings, theology, interpretation, and debate about God and human life. That nonlegal material is often called Aggada, meaning the narrative and interpretive parts of rabbinic literature.

I would not claim that the Talmud is “ninety percent law.” That is not a useful statistic. I would say that legal reasoning is one of its dominant and unmistakable features. And I would not say Judaism has no beliefs, or that Christianity is only about belief while Judaism is only about behavior.

Both traditions have beliefs, practices, ethical systems, and internal disagreements. My point is about the center of gravity in the sources I rely on: what is the right action, and how do we know?

That is why I am wary when a conversation becomes only, “Are you spiritual? Do you feel connected? What kind of religious identity do you have?” Those questions may matter, but they do not substitute for asking what the command says or what conduct is right. A person can speak constantly about spirituality while avoiding the concrete requirements that religious law places on them. That is a general human problem, not an accusation against every mystical person.

For me, a serious account of Judaism has to keep the public sources in view. The Tanakh is the Hebrew Bible. The Talmud is the major rabbinic record of interpretation and legal debate. The Rambam's Mishne Tora is a major attempt to organize the laws into a comprehensive code. Those sources do not answer every later question without interpretation. They give us a baseline against which later claims can be examined.

I also want to be precise: the Talmud is the central authority for rabbinic Judaism, but it would be too broad to say every Jewish person or every Jewish community has always treated it identically. Jewish groups and movements differ. I am describing the foundation of the rabbinic tradition that I am using in this conversation.

[part eight: the standard I apply]

Here is the standard I am trying to use.

First, identify the claim. Is someone making a historical claim, a theological claim, or a legal claim? “The Zohar was written by Rabbi Shimon in the second century” is a historical claim about authorship. “God preserved its teachings secretly” is a claim about religious faith and transmission. “We must not wear tefillin on Chol Hamoed” is a halakhic claim about practice. They should not be treated as if they were the same kind of statement.

Second, find the source. What is the exact text? Is it in the Tora, the Talmud, a medieval commentary, a legal code, a mystical book, or a later custom? A quotation should be read in context, not only repeated as a slogan.

Third, ask when the source can be traced. A later source may still be authoritative within a community, but its date matters when someone says it has been present from the beginning. A medieval manuscript cannot be treated as direct documentary evidence from the second century unless the chain of transmission can be supported.

Fourth, explain the legal authority. If a later text appears to differ from an earlier legal source, what rule permits the later text to control? Did a major authority rule that way? Did a community adopt it as a binding custom?

Is there an accepted interpretive principle? Or is someone simply announcing that a secret meaning overrides the public one?

Fifth, state the practical result. What exactly must a person do? If a theory about the Temple descending from heaven leaves the command to build intact, say so. If it changes the command, explain how. If the answer is that people build some parts and God completes or reveals others, then that is the claim to evaluate.

That approach does not settle every dispute in advance. It prevents me from treating an ancient-looking claim as ancient without evidence, or treating a spiritual metaphor as a law without showing the legal step in between.

(ending)

So, Alle, my answer is: I believe the Temple is part of the Jewish hope for the future, and I take the command to build it seriously. Rashi gives a real interpretation in which the Temple is already built in heaven and comes down. Chabad embraces that idea, while also offering explanations that give human beings, and the Messiah in particular, a role in construction. The Rambam's legal code explicitly speaks about building the Temple and says that the Messiah will build it.

On the Zohar, the traditional belief is that it preserves teachings of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. The historical record, however, first lets us trace the written work in late-thirteenth-century Spain around Moses de León and his circle. I cannot responsibly say that a cave discovery in 1290 is established fact. I also cannot honestly say the Zohar had no effect on Jewish practice. The Chol Hamoed tefillin dispute shows that it did have real influence, while the Rema's contrary ruling shows that the result was not universal.

My own position is not that every mystical idea is false, or that every person who studies it is avoiding Jewish law. My position is that claims about tradition, law, and history should be separated and tested. I start with the sources whose textual history and legal role can be examined. When a later source seems to change the baseline, I ask for the argument that connects it.

That is what I meant when I said it is not halakha to wait for the Temple to fall from the sky. I mean that I do not see the heavenly-Temple interpretation as cancelling the Rambam's command to build. A belief about what God may do and a legal instruction about what people must do are two different claims.

end of spoken transcript

source notes — not read aloud

1. Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Beit HaBehira 1:1:

sefaria dot org U.R.L

2. Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim 11:1:

sefaria dot org U.R.L

3. Rashi to Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 41a:

sefaria dot org U.R.L

4. Chabad, “Who Will Build the Third Beit Hamikdash, Man or G-d?” This presents Rashi's heavenly Temple view and several ways to reconcile it with the Rambam:

chabad dot org U.R.L

5. Chabad, “How We Can Build the Bais Hamikdash.” This explains the view that the Messiah and the people build what humans can understand, with other dimensions revealed from heaven:

chabad dot org U.R.L

6. Chabad, “The Zohar's Mysterious Origins.” This presents the traditional attribution, reports that the exact route by which Moses de León obtained the text is unclear, and discusses the medieval dissemination:

chabad dot org U.R.L

7. Annette Reed, “The Aramaic of the Zohar: The Status Quaestionis,” University College London. This summarizes the Zohar's late-thirteenth-century Castilian emergence, Moses de León's role, and current scholarly discussion of authorship:

discovery dot ucl dot ac dot uk U.R.L

8. Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayim 31:2, with the Rema's gloss:

sefaria dot org U.R.L

9. Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Tefillin 4:10, and Kesef Mishneh's discussion of the Chol Hamoed dispute:

sefaria dot org U.R.L

10. Chabad, “Tefillin, Mezuzah and Sefer Torah, Chapter 4,” notes 61 to 62, summarizing the Rambam, Kesef Mishneh, Shulhan Arukh, Rema, and contemporary custom:

chabad dot org U.R.L