Is devotion enough to build holiness?
Table for Five: Pekudei
In partnership with the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles
Edited by Nina Litvak & Salvador Litvak, the Accidental Talmudist
“Every man and woman among the Israelites whose heart compelled them to bring something for all the work that God had commanded to be done through Moses brought a donation for God.” – Exodus 35:29
Rabbi Elazar Bergman
Author of The Daven Better Book and Where Earth and Heaven Kiss
The Israelites were ready to do more, yearned to do more, but there was nothing left to do. The work was completed.
But it was not only the Mishkan (Tabernacle) that was completed. Each Israelite had only so much to offer to this amazing building project. He, and she, knew that it wasn’t a one-person job, no matter who the person might be.
So when he gave what he could, he gave it for his fellow Israelite as well. By doing so he “completed” not only the Mishkan, not only himself, but every other member of the Chosen People.
Even though no individual could do everything to build the Mishkan, by contributing so that the other person would also have the Mishkan, each one got credit for making the entire Mishkan. It is such caring and generous action that made the Mishkan a sacred home for the Shekhinah.
Likewise with the Torah. Neither you nor I alone can do all 613 mitzvahs. Yet when we do what mitzvahs we can so that each of our fellow Jews will have a share in them, that care and generosity builds the Torah and transforms the world into a Mishkan, a sacred home for the Shekhinah. Caring and generosity hold the Mishkan, Torah and Jewish people together. Good Shabbos!
Rabbi Elchanan Shoff
Author of Rabbi Elchanan Shoff on the Parashah
The purpose of the Mishkan/Tabernacle was to bring the divine presence to this world. “Oh, I know how to do that, it’s by focusing mainly on recycling,” one person will tell you. Another will tell you that it’s all about making sure that you cannot get a decent straw at a Dodgers game. The Torah tells us that the way that it was done, was by absolute fidelity to God’s instruction. No reinventing the wheel allowed! “The multitude of mitzvas,” writes Maimonides, “are advice from afar from the Great Adviser, to improve human attitudes and straighten hearts.” The mitzvos are from God, and He knows what works. The shabbat, the way that God commanded works wonders. Variations on it miss the point. Keeping shabbat improves families, builds communities (who live near one another, because they do not travel great distances on Shabbos as Torah requires.) Kosher food teaches incredible discipline. Even small children who come from Kosher homes who would otherwise throw a tantrum in a supermarket, begging mom or day to buy a popsicle or cereal box, will stop on a dime if “it’s not Kosher.” The level of discipline that is taught by this mitzvah would itself be a great value, even if that were all that it taught! But that’s NOT all that it teaches, because God knows much more than humans. He made us. To make ourselves vehicles of expressing His holiness in this world, we must obey him. To the letter. He knows best!
Rabbi Ilana Grinblat
Ahavat Torah
Rabbi Moses Isserles noted that this verse is out of order. It would make more sense for the verse to say: “The Israelites brough everything exactly in the manner that God had commanded Moses,” and then “all the work of making the Tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting and its furnishings was completed.” Why does the text say that the Tabernacle was completed before saying that the Israelites finished the work?
According to the Zohar, this means that the tabernacle completed itself – that God completed it. Korban Ha’oni toned that from here one can find encouragement in the work of doing mitzvot that “even when something seems beyond your abilities, God will help you to complete it.”
Often, we get overwhelmed facing great challenges, but this text reminds us that we are never alone. If our task is worthwhile, then God will help us get it done.
Rabbi Peretz Rodman
Masorti Rabbi in Jerusalem
The ancient Kohanim loved order, or rather: orderliness. They described Creation as God shaping and dividing primordial chaos until a coherent, organized world emerged. It was they, too, who taught us to differentiate kosher from unkosher species—again sorting things, defining categories.
Our verse begins vatekhal, “it was completed,” echoing the opening of the final stage in the priestly account of Creation, vaykhullu. That word vatekhal begins a passage that ends, too, with echoes of the first Creation story: “… the Israelites had done all the work. And when Moses saw that they had performed all the tasks…, Moses blessed them.”
The mishkan, the traveling Tabernacle, was a microcosm, a small model of the great world around us. Or rather, of a dream of how that world could be: God-centered, carefully arranged, perfectly functioning in harmony with a divine plan.
Let’s not overlook how that perfection is reached: both in our verse and in the last verse of the passage (v. 45), we are told that “the Israelites did just as the Eternal had commanded Moses.” The microcosm was designed by God, but constructed by human beings.
Whether our model of the perfect society is the priestly image of the tribes arrayed around the mishkan or the messier non-priestly vision of a society striving to live by divinely-revealed laws and instructions, the Torah reminds us that making the world livable and indeed holy is work that we ourselves are to take up and to complete.
Denise Berger
Freelance Writer
Throughout the construction of the Mishkan, as well as the creation of the vessels therein, and even the manufacture of the clothes worn by the Kohanim, the Torah notes that all has been done exactly in the manner instructed by G-d. Since we know that the Torah has no redundancy, we are called to look carefully to understand the intended lesson.
Intention I think is the key to understanding the verse. The message being imparted at each step of the way has its culmination here —- the people did everything and gave everything the way Hashem commanded, whatever that happened to be. In some instances Hashem gives an explicit direction, and in others He tells the people to act according to their hearts. It’s not hard to imagine a workplace setting where the leader seems to be inconsistent, and the team becomes cynical and disaffected. Not so with the Mishkan. Because Hashem acts with pure intentions, the people were able to recognize this and trust that what they were told is sincere.
The project of building the Tabernacle was undertaken not long after leaving Egypt. As slaves, one of the most disheartening elements was the sense that Pharaoh’s commands were capricious. The work was difficult and bitter because it was meaningless. Here it is literally filled with meaning.
At the outset, G-d announces that the Tabernacle will be a place to dwell among the people. The sincerity of this intention is what manifested in that space and made it holy.
With thanks to Rabbi Elchanan Shoff, Rabbi Ilana Grinblat, Rabbi Peretz Rodman, Rabbi Elazar Bergman and Denise Berger.
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