Everyone knows the Ark was a key fixture in the innermost part of the Mishkan, aka the Tabernacle, in a room called the Holy of Holies. In the room just before that, known as the Holies, there were three pieces of spiritual equipment: The Menorah, the Showbread Table (known in Hebrew as the Shulchan), and the Inner Incense Altar (known in Hebrew as the Mizbayach HaPnimi).
Say you were to walk into that room called the Holies, the Menorah would be on your right, the Showbread Table on your left, and straight ahead in middle would be in the Inner Incense Altar. Their positioning has an important message.
The Menorah represents the light of our lives, the Torah. The Showbread Table represents our work careers and livelihood, bread as the sustenance of life. They’re opposite each other, one to the right, the other to the left, and may feel that way as well, as opposing polar opposites in our lives. Some people may feel a tug of war between their religious aspirations and their everyday worldly concerns. They may feel that pursuing a career and dealing with material matters detracts from living a Torah-filled life.
But these two fixtures are both inside the Mishkan’s “Holies”. They are both valid ways of serving G-d. Indeed, the ideal is when they are not contradictory, rather complimentary, its best when instead of opposing each other, they face each other, working in tandem, in unison as one.
They key to that harmony may be the Inner Alter that’s in the middle. Unlike the Outer Altar which featured animal sacrifice, here the focus was an incense offering. How you spice and flavor things makes all the difference. The “pleasing aroma” rising from the Inner Altar, may also represent the pleasantness of a harmonious balance of our spiritual and physical lives – a concept greatly encouraged and lauded in Chabad Chassidic thought.
The Incense Altar is known to represent the pillar of “Avodah” which means service, but literally means work. It takes a lot of work: time, dedication and conscious effort to create that pleasing blend of the Menorah and the Showbread Table, the spiritual and the physical, the Torah and our worldly experience. It’s not a mix you can get out of a bottle or assume for granted, but something that requires constant vigilance, inspiration, investment and life-long effort.