Flour and Torah, Golden Table and Menorah

He placed the table in the Tent of Meeting on the north side of the Tabernacle, outside the curtain.

He put the menorah in the Tent of Meeting across from the table, on the south side of the Tabernacle.                                                          Exodus 40:22,24

            In placing the vessels in the Tabernacle, Moses preceded the golden table to the menorah.

            My father explained that the golden table, the table of the showbread, represents Israel’s material life, while the menorah symbolizes the nation’s spiritual life.

            Based upon this approach, we may note that the order of placing the vessels within the Tabernacle is paralleled by our Sage’s teaching:

Rebbi Elazar ben Azarya says: if there is no flour, there is no Torah; if there is no Torah there is no flour. Pirkei Avot 3:17

            Maharal of Prague expounds Rebbi Elazar ben Azarya’s thus:

For Torah as well provides sustenance for man, since Torah provides spiritual sustenance, as bread provides physical sustenance. Torah completes the soul.                                                                  Derech Ḥayyim

            Indeed, the symbols of the physical and spiritual lives of the Nation of Israel stood opposite each other within the Holy of the Tabernacle/Temple, serving, as it were as the approach to the Holy of Holies, which contained the Ark of Covenant with the Tablets, that is, Torah which completes the Jewish soul.