Our Talmudic sages state repeatedly that it is despicable for one to benefit from a miraculous event. In tractate Shabbat (103b) we read, for example, of a person whose wife has died, so that he had no one to suckle his infant son. "He suddenly developed a woman's breasts so that he could suckle his son." Abaye says of this: "How despicable this man is that the divine order of Creation was altered for him!"

Rashi, in the wake of these sages, says: "The further one places himself from a miraculous event, the better it is" (Ta'anit 24b). There, too (Ta'anit 24a), Rashi writes even more definitively: "One may not benefit from a miraculous occurrence!" How, then, can it be possible for Rashi to rule, on the one hand, that one must not benefit from a miraculous event however insignificant while, on the other hand, he compiles a ruling that we are obliged to benefit from an extremely significant unprecedentedly miraculous event like the descent of a Temple from Heaven, with Temple vessels and garments, and that it is permissible to benefit from this event and to perform Torah precepts by means of the result of this event, not for a limited period of time, but for all time?

The following rule of Torah observance is simple: one may not rely on a miracle, neither in secular matters nor in matters of sanctity, and certainly not in Temple affairs.

In tractate Yoma (21) the Talmud reads: "R. Yehoshua ben Levi said: a great miracle took place regarding the shewbread -- at its removal it was as it was at its arrangement" (i.e., it remained warm on the table from one Sabbath to the next). Nevertheless the Talmud states clearly in tractate Shabbat (124a), that reeds must be place on the table to separate one loaf from another, lest they grow moldy. Rashi explains at this point: "for we may not rely on a miracle."

Similarly, the Talmud often concludes with regard to Torah precepts involving the Temple (v., e.g., Yerushalmi Yoma 1:4 concerning the High Priest in the Temple on the Day of Atonement) that "we may not rely on a miracle."

Nahmanides stated a famous rule concerning many Torah precepts: the Torah, when warning [one not to perform a certain act], does not rely on miracles (Nahmanides, Leviticus 21:17), and adds considerably more.

In light of this the question arises -- with regard to the opinion of those who feel that Rashi's opinion is that we must not build a Temple by human means until such time as a miraculous Temple descends from Heaven -- how it is that the Torah requires that we rely on a miracle specifically with regard to the Temple. Not only must we rely on a miracle, as it were, but we must do so that it is forbidden to build the Temple by human means because of the certain miracle of a Temple descending from Heaven! If this is so, Rashi must have come up with a novel ruling which contradicts what he himself writes elsewhere, for if in all other circumstances Rashi wrote that one may not rely on a miracle, even in the Temple, then with regard to the rebuilding of the Temple, Rashi feels that we must rely on a miracle. What, then, is the truth? Are we to rely on a miracle, or not?

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# pgs: 1 + article index, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Volume I, Number 1