Torah Portion: Terumah
On the Table shall you place show-bread before Me, always (Shemos 25:30).
It is a positive commandment to always place bread in the Sanctuary before Hashem, as it is written, On the Table shall you place show-bread before Me, always (Shemos 25:30). Two receptacles of frankincense were also placed on the arrangement of the loaves.
Among the roots of the mitzvah is the idea that Hashem commanded us to keep a continual mitzvah with bread, which is what man lives on, and therefore there is a need for continual blessing upon bread. And through our involvement in this [bread] to use it to fulfill Hashem’s command, the Divine will and blessing will rest upon us, for anything that a person uses to do the will of Hashem is itself blessed. Whenever a person directs his thoughts and intentions on a certain thing in use of a mitzvah, the blessing that flows in return will match that very thing.
We were commanded about these items: the Table, the Menorah, the Show-bread and the offerings for our own benefit and good. No one thinks for a moment — since there is no person in the world so lacking in intelligence to think so — that by our arranging of bread in the House of Hashem on the Table, which we place whole and remove whole, there is any kind of pleasure Above, Heaven forefend, not the sight of it, not its scent, nor anything else about it. It is only that Hashem commanded us to do this because He wishes that we be blessed from Him, because of His abundant attribute of good.
This commandment applies when the Temple stands, to the males among the Kohanim, for they are the ones obligated to keep the [Temple] service.
