VAYAKHEL-PEKUDEI: Exodus 35:1-40:38; Numbers 19:1-22
Haftarah: Exekiel 36:16-38
This Dvar Torah is in honor of my mother, Mindel bat Shraga Feivel v’Shaindl, whose yahrzeit was Monday this week and who did not have the chance for any formal Jewish education. She was impressed that it was taken for granted that the graduates of Esther Miller Bais Yaakov would attend seminary in Israel.
Vayakhel-Pekudei deals with the actual construction of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, and its consecration by Moses. The last lines of the book of Exodus treat of the Shechina, the presence of G-d, resting in the Tabernacle and that the Jews would journey according to the presence of the cloud over it. Given who this is dedicated to, we should talk about the explicit presence of women in the construction of the Mishkan. In, as mettle fatigue and many, many others have described, “the most successful fundraising drive in history” that opens the parsha, “the men came with the women” to bring whatever they had that was needed to construct the Tabernacle. The women also did the weaving and the spinning of the fabrics for the two tents, the curtains, and the priestly garments. Then we have
“He made the Laver of copper and its base of copper, from the mirrors of the “tzvaot” who “tzvau” at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.” (Exodus 38:4)
No one knows what this Hebrew word means. It is the same word as “Adonai Tzvaot”, G-d, Master of Legions, which interestingly according to tradition Hannah introduced as a praise of G-d. JPS translates it as “performed tasks”. Aryeh Kaplan in the Living Torah chooses Rashi with “congregated” but shows us the alternate translations of Ibn Ezra as “craftswomen”, Targum as “worshiped”, Ibn Janach as “celebrated” and Avraham ben HaRambam as “exiled themselves” which is VERY interesting. Rashi then uses this translation to point out the midrash that the Almighty forced Moses to accept these mirrors for the very reason that Moses wanted to reject them: when Pharaoh tried to separate husbands and wives the wives would go down into the fields and entice their husbands with the mirrors, and because of this the Jewish people became a great legion, a tzva. The Almighty emphasized that this was all done for the sake of holiness. The Ramban adds to Rashi’s interpretation that the selflessness of the women in donating their jewelry and mirrors, which were of the best quality copper, is exactly the sort of thing the Mishkan is meant to inculcate in the people. This midrash is a fitting tribute to my mother who never gave up in the face of great physical and social straits and always emphasized to us the importance of family and giving back.
After this throat-clearing…
It is notable that the political leaders really stand back from the building of the Mishkan. There is even a midrash that the nasiim, the tribal leaders, (we read about their offering when the Temple was dedicated as the Torah reading each day of Hanukkah) have a letter missing from their name because they did not exercise leadership--they decided that they would just bring whatever was missing. The only things left for them to bring were the “shoham stones and stones for the settings for the ephod and the breastplate and the fragrances and the oil for illumination, the anointment oil, and for the spice incense” (Exodus 35:27-28). Moses tells the people to bring what they have and that Bezalel, the "technocrat", is in charge. (I got feedback on this that the person, whose name the editing software keeps “correcting”, thought of Bezalel as more of an artist than as a technocrat. I described Bezalel as the technocrat because Bezalel is the person who knows HOW things are to be done. Technocrats usually are not considered people who are accomplishing their own goals but are the people who know how things work in order to get an approximation of political goals that have been decided already.) Then they bring the completed Tabernacle to Moses and lo and behold, as G-d had commanded, so had they done! And Moses blessed them(Exodus 39:43). But this has happened before when the people intuited how to bring the Pesach offering properly. In Egypt the people realize that they can stand up and do something to bring their freedom. After receiving the Torah and the Golden Calf, the people again realize that they can stand up and do something to restore their lost dignity and capacity for holiness. Rav Hirsch comments that the people’s hearts are described as ndiv, free-giving, but also as naso, elevated: “indicates the inner uplift which urges one to do something oneself above the run of one’s ordinary actions….The purpose of the Mishkan and its whole high meaning was grasped. Everyone who thought he [sic; remember Hirsch lived in the 19th century] was able to help in any way, by gifts or work, felt himself personally elevated by taking part in a work for such an object.” Hirsch also comments that the work was done with “ndavas ruach” so that the whole inner human spirit participated in the giving and that “ish v’isha”, each man and woman, is juxtaposed to “the children of Israel” to indicate the feeling of complete equality that each person had in this endeavor. He extends the comment to say that this pure clarity of intent is the explanation of the mind-numbing repetition of almost everything that was said in Terumah/Tetzaveh here. Just as the scribe of a Sefer Torah must have the correct intent with each letter, the craftspeople/Bezalel had the correct intent with each part. This may even be, according to Hirsch, the true explanation of “pekudei haMishkan” which is usually just called an accounting. Instead pekudei is used for a census of people, and here it can be a census of the parts because it describes only the precious metal that was needed to make them. The free-will offerings of silver, for example, are not included.
But having the building is a center for the community to journey around. Once the community is settled in one place, our entire history of having various structures has shown that the structures have not compensated for the failures of political leaders to do justice or to eliminate idol worship. Hirsch’s comment on this takes off from the copper, the least precious metal, being described as both the copper of raising and the copper of waving (horizontally). He writes, “That would then express the whole profound truth which underlies the whole idea of the Sanctuary, namely, that in its true depth the realm of the Jewish Sanctuary is nothing supernormal, towering above, and denying, ordinary life and its conditions. But just as the Altar had to be erected actually on the earth itself, without any space intervening, the Altar of the Torah not on the verdant Gerizim but on the stark bare Ebal[he is referring to the oaths that the people are to take when they enter the Land for the first time], so altogether the sanctuary of the Torah presupposes the concrete actuality of human earthly life. It is to this that it belongs, it is in this that it is to be realized.” A more concrete example is of Tova Mirvis, in her recent memoir “The Book of Separation”, visiting the Western Wall on the way out of Orthodoxy and being unable to pray at all. The connection/unity between people is necessary but clearly not sufficient (see: Tower of Babel) for the connection to G-d and once either is deliberately broken just having a holy place doesn't get off the ground of intellectual awareness. At Jewish Unity Live in St. Louis (an annual fundraiser for the Kollel) they had a coup of getting the head of the OU to be on a panel, which is available on YouTube for anyone remotely interested. This person was once in Duluth and the two people from out of town were needed to make a minyan. After studying the history of the community he determined that the community put all their money into "cathedral synagogues" instead of schools. A structure can simply mean that the community had wealth and influence in the past.
Chazak chazak v’nitchazeik!
(I am very sorry if anyone on the East Coast was unable to read this. It clearly did not sink in that mettle fatigue said these are usually posted on Thursday morning.)
