Those who study Torah in that mood will not need a Temple: Torah will do instead, as is said in the very next Mishnah saying, ascribed to rabbi Halafta ben Dosa, a sage of the second half of the second century: ‘If ten men sit together and occupy themselves in the Law, the Divine Presence rests among them’: in other words, study of Torah has the same effect as worship in the Temple. In either case one is in the presence of the Shekinah, the localized dwelling-place of Israel’s god.
