MISHKAN; DO NOT TRY IT ON YOUR OWN!
The Beis Halevi asks the question which every thinking Jew asks when learning Parshas Ki Sisa; how did the people who left Egypt, who experienced the ten plagues, who experienced the splitting of the Red Sea, who experienced HaShem Himself talking to them from the Heavens, who were explicitly told by HaShem at Mount Sinai not to create graven images, create and serve a Golden idol!?
The function of the Mishkan was to house the Schechina. All of the many fine details in every component of the Mishkan were for that purpose. Just as there is nothing extra in a car engine there is certainly nothing extra in the construction of the Mishkan. The specific dimensions of each item corresponded to aspects of HaShem’s Shechinah. Naturally these are all wrapped up in kabbalistic sodos (secrets) of which only few great Sages know.
Just as a master mechanic can build a car engine without instructions by virtue of his knowledge of how everything works, so should a great Sage be able to build the Mishkan by virtue of his knowledge of how everything works. As we will see, this assumption is not true.
The Beis Halevi explains that the Bnei Yisroel were confronted with the ultimate dilemma; what were they to do if Moshe Rabbeinu is dead!? In their mind, due to Satan’s shenanigans, the people were convinced that Moshe had died on Mount Sinai. So long as Moshe was with them, he took care of communicating with HaShem. Whenever they were afraid or if they needed some-thing, whether it was food or drink Moshe took care of it. However, with the new reality that Moshe is no longer with them they needed to bring HaShem’s Presence into their camp.
With this in mind, and only with this in mind, the people went to Aharon who was most knowledgeable about the sodos of Creation and so on, and asked him to make such a mechanism by which they could draw the Schechina into their camp.
Of course the Satan had other ideas and used this opportunity to create the Golden Calf. Granted, that thousands of our people actually served the Calf, but that was not the original intent. Those who did succumb to serving the Calf were duly punished and the entire nation accepted that punishment. They all realized how wrong they were.
With the construction of the Mishkan which followed the Golden Calf, our people attained an atonement for that grievous sin.
When we read the Parsha of Pikudei in which the Torah records the setting up of the Mishkan we find that every step of the setup concludes “they did as HaShem commanded Moshe”. Would it not have been sufficient for the To-rah to write either at the beginning or the end of the setup that everything was done as HaShem commanded Moshe? The answer is that after falling from their sin of the Golden Calf in which they tried to accomplish making a Mishkan on their own, they realized that even if you have the greatest Sage, without the mitzvah of HaShem, nothing will be accomplished. Therefore, every step and every detail was specifically done as HaShem commanded Moshe.
Every mitzvah that we do accomplishes so much in the world. The accomplishments impact our material world as well as the spiritual world. However, all those accomplishments only occur because they were commanded to us by HaShem and only when we do them in that context can we hope to achieve those accomplishments.
Have a very wonderful Shabbos.
Paysach Diskind