Poverty’s Insights on The Weekly Parsha
What is the essential ingredient of greatness?
In the ascent to greatness, the most precious quality that a person can have is the desire to seek, to pursue truth with a ceaseless and tireless longing.
The closest those artisans had come to the extremely skilled work needed to construct the Mishkan was shlepping cement to build Egyptian treasure-cities. How were they able, with no previous experience, to fabricate something as beautiful, delicate and spiritually precise as the Mishkan?
When the Torah lists the heads of the Jewish People who were sent to spy out the Land of Israel, it lists them according to their importance. Yehoshua appears fifth in that list. G-d chose him to be the leader of the Jewish People precisely because of the quality that he was a seeker and wanted more.
When Moshe ascended to the supernal realms, Yehoshua waited for him at the foot of Mount Sinai for forty days. Yehoshua took no tea breaks, no days off. Even though he could have rushed out to meet Moshe and resumed his learning as soon as Moshe returned, Yehoshua was not prepared to waste those few precious extra moments between the camp and the foot of the mount.
Such is the nature of a seeker.
Source: Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz in Sichot Mussar; with thanks to Rabbi Mordechai Perlman and Rabbi Eli Merl and Rabbi Reuven Lauffer