Parshas Terumah 5786
- Torah Tavlin
- Feb 21
- 2 min read
ויעל המלך שלמה מס מכל ישראל ויהי המס שלשים אלף איש ... (מלכים א' ה-כז)
In the Haftorah, the Navi details Shlomo Hamelech’s imposed forced labor, and how he took thirty thousand men and forced them to chop wood for the Bais Hamikdash from the forest of Chiram. The Navi points out that he did not allow Klal Yisroel to work excessively hard, so he sent ten thousand men from Eretz Yisroel to the forest for just one month. At the end of the month, they went back home to rest for two months with their wives.
With the urgency that Shlomo Hamelech was placing on expediency, why did he send them home after only a month? Surely, they could work for a few months and then go home to rest for a few weeks before returning to work?
R’ Yaakov Ashkenazi zt”l (Tze’enah Ure’enah) says that Chazal (Talmud Yerushalmi) emphasize the importance of the mitzvah of פרו ורבו which takes precedence over the all-important mitzvah of building the Bais HaMikdash, for as the Yalkut Shimoni (Melachim I, Remez 180) points out, the workers were only in the field for one month laboring while they spent two months at home with their wives.
Furthermore, Chazal (Yerushalmi Kesubos 61b) note that a Talmud Chacham who wants to leave his wife to study Torah should not leave for more than a month. If he wants to study for a longer period, he must first ask his wife. If she tells him to go, then he is allowed to go and learn Torah. However, the wives who allow their husbands to study have an equally great merit as if they had studied Torah themselves.