Pirkei Avos, chapter 6, mishnah 10. The beraisa opens: "Chamishah kinyanim kanah HaKadosh Baruch Hu b'olamo" - five special acquisitions the Holy One acquired for Himself in His world. On the face of it this is puzzling: the Holy One owns everything, He made everything and everything is His. But the beraisa is not speaking about ownership in general, rather about things that hold a special interest and a special value for Him.
As the Sifri describes it, we could say that they have sentimental value for Him. When a person owns an object, sometimes the object has purely economic value - it belongs to him in a technical sense and nothing more. But sometimes the ownership carries sentimental value as well: the owner cares about the object not because of what it is worth, but for an entirely different reason.
And what does it mean that an object has sentimental value? It means that part of the person's identity is bound up in that thing. He projects his identity into the object and says: this used concert ticket, my grandmother's old recipe collection, the old shirt my father used to wear - all of these are part of my personal story, part of who I am. That is what it means to be emotionally connected to something.
In the same way, and of course we are speaking here only in metaphor, the Holy One has a special connection with these five things. He is invested in them, and He sees His identity as intertwined with them, as it were, to the point that the Shechinah - part of His presence, whatever that expression may mean - is connected to and contained within these five acquisitions. He identifies them as the things that actually fulfill His will in this world and express His statement of purpose, and His presence rests and is revealed in them more intensely.
And these, in the language of the beraisa, are the five acquisitions:
Torah - one acquisition.
Heaven and earth - one acquisition.
Avraham Avinu - one acquisition.
Yisrael, the Jewish people - one acquisition.
The Beis HaMikdash, the house of the Holy One, as it were - one acquisition.
Torah, from where do we know it?
Where do we find a verse teaching that the Holy One has a special acquisition in the Torah? The verse in Mishlei, spoken as it were in the voice of the Torah itself: "Hashem kanani reishis darko kedem mifalav me'az" - Hashem acquired me, the Torah, at the beginning of His way, before He went into action, from long ago. Technically, that is the proof: the language of acquisition appears here, that Hashem has a portion in the Torah.
But beyond that, the Torah is the blueprint of the Holy One, His statement of intent and the purpose of His creation, the source from which everything came into being in order to fulfill that purpose. Therefore it is especially close to Him, and His presence in it exceeds all other places where the Shechinah rests. As the Zohar puts it, the Torah, the Holy One and Israel are one - the Torah is almost the embodiment of Hashem, as it were.
Heaven and earth, from where do we know it?
From where do we know that heaven and earth are also special acquisitions of the Holy One? From the verse in Yeshayahu: "Ko amar Hashem: hashamayim kisi v'ha'aretz hadom raglai, ei zeh bayis asher tivnu li v'ei zeh makom menuchasi". We see that the Holy One relates to heaven and earth as His throne and His footstool. True, there is no explicit language of acquisition here, but a throne is something special to a king, the symbol of his sovereignty and the thing most closely bound to him. It is comparable to what Pharaoh said to Yosef, that he would be his equal in everything, "rak hakisei egdal mimeka" - greater than him in every respect except for the throne.
And since there is no language of acquisition here, the beraisa brings a further verse from Tehillim: "Mah rabu ma'asecha Hashem, kulam b'chochmah asisa, malah ha'aretz kinyanecha". One might have thought the meaning is that the world is full of Hashem's acquisitions in the plural, but that is not how we read the verse. The reason is that the word "kinyanecha" is written here in the singular, without a second yud between the nun and the final chaf. And what is that single acquisition? The earth. That is: the earth is Your acquisition, and it is filled with the things You made. It emerges that Hashem has a technical acquisition, as it were, on the earth itself.
True, there is no mention here of the heavens, but heaven and earth go hand in hand. And since the earth, which is no more than G-d's footstool, is His acquisition - all the more so His throne, the heavens, is a special acquisition of His.
How Do We Know About Avraham?
How do we know that Avraham Avinu is a special acquisition of the Holy One, blessed is He? From the verse in Bereishis, in Malki Tzedek's blessing to Avraham: "Vayevarcheihu vayomar: baruch Avram l'Keil Elyon koneh shamayim va'aretz" - "And he blessed him and said: Blessed is Avram to the Almighty Most High, Who acquires heaven and earth." Who is the "acquirer of heaven and earth" spoken of here? The reading of the verse is not that this refers to the heaven and earth of the Holy One, blessed is He, that He is their owner, but rather that Avraham Avinu himself is the acquirer of heaven and earth, the owner of heaven and earth.
And why? Because he is the one who reconnected the world to G-d's will. He would bring people under the wings of the Shechinah and bring them to a connection with the Holy One, blessed is He. As the first of the believers, the first to call out in the Name of G-d, he brings the world to its purpose. He is like the craftsman who acquired his handiwork through wisdom - he made the world into what it was meant to be, and therefore the world became his.
And if Avraham is the one whom the Holy One, blessed is He, permits, as it were, to be the owner of the world, and this world is the world of the Holy One, blessed is He - all the more so does the Holy One, blessed is He, have a special ownership over Avraham himself. The reason we read the verse this way is that we are seeking a proof for the Holy One, blessed is He, having Avraham as an acquisition; for if you explain that "acquirer of heaven and earth" refers to the Holy One, blessed is He, then the verse teaches only about heaven and earth, and not about Avraham.
How Do We Know About Yisrael?
We have learned about the Torah, that it is a special place for the resting of the Shechinah; about heaven and earth, in which the Holy One, blessed is He, carries out His deeds; and about Avraham Avinu, who brought the world to connect to the resting of His Shechinah. How do we know that the Jewish people too, who received from Avraham Avinu the mission of continuing to bring G-dliness and awareness into the world and to reconnect the world to its Creator, are a special acquisition? From the verse in Shemos, at the splitting of the Sea: "Ad ya'avor amecha Hashem, ad ya'avor am zu kanisa" - "Until Your people pass through, Hashem, until this people that You acquired pass through" - until the people whom You acquired pass through. Here we have the language of acquisition: the Holy One, blessed is He, acquires the Jewish people.
However, the Holy One, blessed is He, took us out of Egypt, and one could have said that the acquisition is merely a technical consequence of that: we were His slaves, He took us, and now we belong to Him. An acquisition of this sort is nothing more than an economic value, and it does not necessarily indicate a special interest or an emotional value. And this very point, that the concern of the beraisa is not merely the acquisition itself but the specialness within it, is proven from the very fact that a second verse is brought.
And how do we know that the connection of the Holy One, blessed is He, to the Jewish people is not ownership alone, but a special desire and a special place in His heart? Because an additional verse is brought, in Tehillim, which contains no language of acquisition at all, but rather language of desire: "Likdoshim asher ba'aretz heimah, v'adirei kol cheftzi bam" - "To the holy ones who are in the land, and the mighty ones, all My desire is in them."
The holy ones and the mighty ones are Israel, and about them it says "all My desire is in them" - My will is in them, and in them alone. It emerges that the Holy One, blessed is He, has a special desire and a special will, something like a longing, for the Jewish people. Therefore this is not mere acquisition and ownership of economic value, but an emotional value, for the Holy One, blessed is He, is connected to us with a special interest - because we fulfill His purpose in creation, and we are the place in which the Shechinah can rest.
How Do We Know About the Beis HaMikdash?
And how do we know that the Beis HaMikdash too, the Sanctuary of G-d, has the status of a special acquisition and a special treasure? From the verse in Shemos: "Machon l'shivtecha pa'alta Hashem, Mikdash Hashem konenu yadecha" - "The foundation of Your dwelling place that You made, Hashem; the Sanctuary, Hashem, that Your hands established" - the foundation, the base of Your dwelling place which You made; the Sanctuary which Your hands established. Now, "konenu" is not a term of acquisition; it is written with a kaf and not with a kuf. We are not saying that G-d acquired the Mikdash with His hands, but that He established it with His hands.
Since there is no language of acquisition here, how do we know that Hashem has an acquisition in the Beis HaMikdash? The idea is that "yadecha" - Your hands, two hands, an investment of two hands in establishing the Beis HaMikdash.
This stands in contrast to the creation of heaven and earth, in which there was an investment of only one hand, as it says in Yeshayahu: "af yadi yasdah eretz vimini tipchah shamayim" - "My hand" in the singular, "and My right hand" in the singular. These are investments of a single hand, and from them it has already been proven that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the Owner of heaven and earth. And if in heaven and earth, which were made with an investment of one hand, He has a special interest - how much more so in the Beis HaMikdash, which was established with an investment of two hands, that it is a special acquisition of His.
Still, there is no language of acquisition here, and therefore an additional verse is brought, from Tehillim: "vayevi'em el gevul kodsho, har zeh kansah yemino" - He brought them to the boundary of His holy place, to the borders of holy Yerushalayim, and that mountain, Har HaMoriah, His right hand acquired. Here we have explicit language of acquisition.
And here is the novelty of the matter: the verse does not speak of Hashem's acquisition of the Beis HaMikdash itself, but of the mountain alone, the mountain upon which the Beis HaMikdash sits. In truth this is not a shortcoming but quite the opposite - the verse teaches that Hashem has a special acquisition even in the mountain when no Beis HaMikdash stands upon it, as in our own time. And how much more so does He have a special place in His heart, a special acquisition and a special connection, with the Beis HaMikdash itself when it is built and standing.
In summary: in this Mishnah we learned about five acquisitions that the Holy One, blessed be He, acquired in His world - not a general ownership of economic value, but a special connection that is a matter of emotional value, the Shechinah resting upon them and a declaration of His purpose in the world: the Torah, which is His blueprint and the goal of His creation; heaven and earth, His throne and His footstool; Avraham Avinu, who returned the world to its Creator; the Jewish people, in whom is His desire and His will; and the Beis HaMikdash, which was established with His two hands. And above all - Hashem's acquisition of Har HaMoriah even in the time of destruction, and how much more so in the Mikdash built and standing, speedily in our days.