Responsa sobre Exodo 25:44

The same applies to the Shew-Bread Table and the Altars in the Unique Temple, the gold coating was essential to their ritual purposes. Since that is so, despite the fact that in the written Torah²⁵²Lit. ‘The merciful one’ meaning, it is God who ‘wrote’ our Torah via Moshe, our master teacher A”H it states (Ex. 25:23) ‘Tree(s)’, its coating is not subsumed by it.²⁵³Meaning: Despite the Torah writing that the Table was to be made of wood (‘tree’) and that one could surmise that its ritual function was to ne made on a wood surface, the coating would NOT be subsumed under the heading of ‘wood’, and, its gold coating is essential, not just for beautification. If one would say that the coating of the Temple’s Table and Altar was for ornamentation, I have already written about this above, that gold is an unusual case, in that it has importance/value, and therefore cannot be ‘subsumed’, and will not be negated in term of ritual use. It was there that I answered the many question that arose from the discussion in tractate Khagiga, but this is not the place to impose yet another lengthy analysis²⁵⁴See pages 37-8 and note 162. This line of reasoning is quite deep and one needs time and patience to understand it.