The New Normal: How the Mishkan Changed the World

As we complete Sefer Shemos and begin Sefer Vayikra, the enigmatic Mishkan and its host of animal sacrifices strike the modern mind as archaic, ancient and irrelevant. But regardless of how alien it all sounds, the Mishkan actually normalized the presence of God - not only for our ancestors of old, but also for the Jew of today.

GOLDEN GARMENTS & GENTILE GLOVES

Lineage alone does not a Kohen make. Before they could serve in the Mishkan, Aaron and his sons had to be installed into their positions. Moshe was master of ceremonies.

“And you shall dress them; Aaron your brother and his sons with him. You shall anoint them, fill their hands and sanctify them – and they will become Kohanim for Me” (Shemos 28:41).

“And you shall dress them!” The holy garments of the Kohanim had immense spiritual power. By dressing his brother and nephews in these special clothes, Moshe sanctified them and inaugurated them as full-fledged Kohanim. It would be fair to categorize this event as a mystical ritual that defies human comprehension - on par with Chalitza and the Para Aduma - but as we shall see, Rashi does not view it this way.

Rashi is troubled by the mysterious words in the middle of the verse: “You shall… fill their hands.” What does that mean? Moshe should fill their hands with what? Rashi explains that it is just an expression:

“Filling the hands” is always an expression of inauguration; when one enters into something so that it becomes his privilege from this point forward. In French, when a person is appointed to be in charge of something, the ruler puts a leather glove called a “gant” into his hand and in this way [the position] becomes his privilege. The person who hands him [the glove] is called a “revestir.” This is the “filling of the hands.”   

The Ramban is unhappy with Rashi. What possible relevance could the French gant have to the understanding our verse?

That which the rabbi (Rashi) says that in French when you appoint someone to be in charge of something the ruler gives him a leather glove called a “gant” and through this glove he grants him the privilege [of the position] and this is the “filling of the hands” – I don’t know if the rabbi means to say that acts of inauguration are called “filling the hands” because of this glove - in which case he is bringing evidence from the fools.

The Ramban is asking an excellent question. Who cares what the French do? Does Rashi really expect us to believe that the origin of this biblical expression is to be found in the practices of medieval aristocracy?

The answer, obviously, is no. Any similarity between a biblical reference to hands and a French glove is entirely coincidental. Rashi is making an altogether different point.

It is natural for us to view the dressing of Aaron and his sons as a mystical event. Put on these holy clothes and poof, you’re a Kohen. Rashi is telling us that this reading is incorrect; the Torah uses an expression here that classifies this event as perfectly ordinary. Dressing someone in a uniform is a common procedure and there is nothing mystical about it. Gentile societies, France included, use uniforms all the time to install chosen men into military or political positions of power. This, says Rashi, is how we should view Moshe’s dressing of Aaron and his sons.

Not that the priesthood is a political position, God forfend. As the verse makes clear, we are talking about the sanctification of Aaron and his sons. But the Torah wants us to know that it is utilizing existing, natural procedures for the purposes of bringing Kedusha into the world.

I believe this understanding has profound implications for how we view sanctity and God's plans for the world. But first another example, this time from the Mishkan itself.

FURNITURE FIRST?

If we had to assign titles for the different actors in the Mishkan's construction, the closest modern approximations would be Hashem as owner, designer and architect, Moshe as site manager, and Betzalel as master craftsman. A craftsman typically takes orders from the manager, but as we shall see, sometime the craftsman knows best.

“Betzalel, the son of Uri, the son of Chur, of the tribe of Yehuda, did everything that Hashem commanded Moshe” (Shemos 38:22).

Rashi cites a Midrash.

“Betzalel the son of Uri… did everything Hashem commanded Moshe.” The verse does not say here that he did everything that Moshe commanded him, rather [it says that he did] everything that Hashem commanded Moshe. Even things that Moshe did not tell him, [Betzalel’s] own opinion was in line with what Moshe was told on Sinai. For Moshe told Betzalel to build the [Mishkan’s] “furniture” first and then the Mishkan itself. Betzalel responded, “Normal practice (מנהג העולם), would be to build the house first and afterwards put the furniture inside.” Moshe replied, “You were in God’s shadow! (בצל אל) That is exactly what Hashem commanded me to do!” And that is what they did. First [they built] the Mishkan and then they made the furniture.

This is a troubling Midrash. If Hashem told Moshe to build the Mishkan before the furniture, why did he tell Betzalel to do it the other way around? The Maharal writes in Gur Aryeh that Moshe “forgot,” but this is simply untenable. As Rabbi Mordechai Jaffa writes in his Levush Orah, we would not dare say of a minor prophet that he forgot a divine directive, all the more so of the father of prophets, our master Moshe!

In defense of the Maharal, we could argue that there was actually no Halacha here at all. Hashem commanded the Jews to build the Mishkan and its vessels; there were no directives about order. Free to choose, Moshe assumed that due to their greater significance (as described by the Gur Aryeh), the vessels should be made first. Betzalel countered that typically a house would be built before its furniture. Moshe agreed, and noted that, in fact, Hashem did tell him about the Mishkan first. This is what the Marahal meant when he wrote that Moshe “forgot.” Moshe did not forget a Halacha; there was no Halacha here to forget. It was just that before Betzalel’s insight, Moshe didn’t think that Hashem’s presentation had any bearing on the ideal order of construction.

What exactly was Betzalel’s argument? He claimed that the Mishkan should be built in accordance with ",מנהג העולם" the normal way of doing things. The Mishkan’s construction should follow the same plan as a house and houses are built before their furniture. This is what Betzalel said, but it is far from an obvious assumption. The Mishkan is no ordinary house. Utterly unique, it is God’s palace on earth. Why should it be subject to the rules of a typical construction project?  

Betzalel was making a profound statement. The Mishkan is not Heaven's embassy. Hashem does not want His sanctuary to be a sealed spiritual fortress divorced from the life of man. Quite the opposite. Hashem wants the Mishkan to be a beacon of light, radiating Kedusha out into man’s world. The function of the Mishkan is to facilitate the interaction between man and God – more of a consulate than an embassy – and for that to happen the Mishkan must be a part of our world from its very inception. Its construction should follow מנהג העולם, the way that people typically operate.

In a word, the Mishkan must be normal.

This is very much in line with Rashi’s understanding of the Kohanim’s inauguration. That too was done in the normal fashion, by way of dressing them in their uniforms. All this normalcy is central to Hashem’s plan. Through the model of the Mishkan, Hashem touches and elevates every aspect of Jewish society and life: from divine service and sacrifice down to the use of gold and silver, bureaucracy, politics and even home renovations.

SANCTIFYING ROUTINE

The Talmud famously tells us that our three daily prayers were established to match to the daily order of sacrificial offerings (Berachos 26b). This is not to say that prayer is merely a stand-in for offerings; there is a clear and independent biblical obligation to pray. However, the original Mitzvah is unregimented – no legislated number of prayers, no liturgy, and no set time (Rambam, Laws of Prayer 1:1). The Mishkan introduced routine to divine service. The Mishkan taught the radical concept that approaching God should not be a special event; it should be ordinary, familiar, regular. When interaction with God becomes commonplace, then all of life is elevated; this was the goal of the Mishkan. The sages took the cue and reformed Jewish prayer, legislating regular encounters with God into the daily schedule of every Jew.

PURIFYING PERSPECTIVE

The Mishkan was equipped with a washbasin known as the כיור, or laver. Prior to performing any service, the Kohanim must do קידוש ידים ורגלים, “sanctifying” their hands and feet by washing at the laver (Shemos 30:18-19). In the Mishkan, purity is critical and there is nothing surprising about washing. What is surprising is the laver’s origin.

“He made the copper laver and its copper base with the mirrors of legions” (Shemos 38:8).

What are the mirrors of legions? Rashi quotes a Midrash:

The Jewish women had mirrors they used for the application of makeup – even these [mirrors] they did not withhold from bringing for the Mishkan collection. Moshe was disgusted by these [mirrors], made as they were for [inciting] the Yetzer HaRa. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, “These mirrors are more precious to me than everything else, for it was through these [mirrors] that the women raised many legions [of Jews] in Egypt. When their husbands were exhausted [after a day] of back-breaking slave labor, [their wives] went and brought them food and drink, and they fed them. They took their mirrors and each [woman] looked in the mirror with her husband and teased him, saying, ‘I am more beautiful than you!’ In this way, they aroused their husbands and were intimate with them. They became pregnant and gave birth there, as the verse states, ‘Under the apple tree you were awakened…’ (Shir HaShirim 8:5).” This is the meaning of the mirrors of legions.

The very mirrors that Moshe rejected on grounds of impurity, Hashem declares to be His favorite things and dedicates for the purpose of purifying the Kohanim! Clearly, there is a novelty here in Hashem’s thinking that eludes even the greatest of prophets.

Moshe felt that women’s vanity mirrors have no place in God’s sanctuary. That would certainly be the normative approach, however, Hashem has a different perspective, a positive take. Bucking conventional “religious” instinct, Hashem proudly introduces a new way of thinking about the Yezter HaRa and reveals the latent Kedusha of marital intimacy. This is another example of the Mishkan’s unrestricted impact on מנהג העולם: the elevation of human sexuality through God’s unique, counter-intuitive perspective.

CAN WE BUILD IT?

When all its myriad parts were complete and it came time to erect the Mishkan, Moshe had a problem. The beams were too heavy.

Moshe asked the Holy One, blessed be He, “How can a human being set this up?”

Hashem replied, “Do it with your hands and make it appear as if you are lifting it. It will then stand up by itself.” (Rashi to 39:33)

If the Mishkan miraculously assembles itself, what is the value of having Moshe go through the motions and act as if he is doing it? And if Hashem really wanted the Mishkan to be assembled by Moshe, why didn’t He design the beams to be thinner and lighter so Moshe could easily lift them himself?

As we have learned, Hashem wants His supernatural providence to coexist with the natural world. This is why the miraculous assembly of the Mishkan – a symbol of creation itself – hides under the façade of Moshe's hands. But at the same time, we must be aware that our human abilities are always inadequate without Hashem’s active assistance. This is why the Mishkan was designed to be impossible for man to assemble alone.

The Mishkan's greatest innovation was the normalization of Kedusha. Experiencing the Shechina should not be foreign or exotic, or even an "experience" at all. If Hashem wanted to isolate Himself, He could have remained in heaven. The Mishkan demonstrates that Kedusha can, nay, must be routine, familiar and, to all appearances, perfectly ordinary. When we understand and integrate its lessons, the portable Mishkan becomes the vehicle that achieves Hashem's vision for creation, bringing the Shechina out of the sanctuary and into the daily life of every single Jew.

The Holy Essentials

The flow of the Torah’s thinking in the beginning of this week’s parsha is a bit mysterious. First we are introduced to the chief architect of the Mishkan, the talented Betzalel. The Torah reiterates every component of the Mishkan and instructs Betzalel and his team to put their creative artistry into the creation of each piece. Surprisingly, this is immediately followed by the mitzvah of Shabbat:

But keep My Shabbats. It is a sign between Me and you for all generations, to make you realize that I, God, am making you holy…The Israelites shall thus keep the Shabbat, making it a day of rest for all generations, as an eternal covenant.

Shemot 31:13,16

What does Shabbat have to do with the Mishkan?

This juxtaposition of the Mishkan with Shabbat is not at all coincidental. When the Torah prohibits “work” on Shabbat (31:14,15) it is speaking of exactly the same type of work that was just referred to in the construction of the Mishkan a few verses earlier (Talmud Shabbat 49b). There are two points here. Firstly, the construction of the Mishkan itself must be halted on Shabbat (Rashi to 31:13). Second, the Torah is defining for us the forbidden labors of Shabbat. There were thirty-nine different actions needed to construct the Mishkan and these are the categories of work that we are to rest from on the day of Shabbat (Mishnah Shabbat 7:2).

If we are to understand what Shabbat is about, we need to take a closer look at these thirty-nine labors. They seem to divide neatly into three sets. The first set contains all the actions necessary to produce the natural plant dyes for the Mishkan. It starts from the very beginning: plowing, planting, harvesting, etc. The second set contains all the actions necessary to produce the woven and leather curtains of the Mishkan. This set includes two different processes: the process of creating woolen textiles, and the process of curing hides. In the final set, we have the acts of construction itself: building, transporting materials, hammering, etc. Stated differently, these thirty-nine actions are about the production of food, clothing, and shelter – the essential acts of human survival! This is what we are being told not do on the Shabbat.

What is the significance of the fact that the work that we are to refrain from on the Shabbat is the same as the acts of Mishkan construction? And what is the significance of the fact that these just happen to be the things that people need to do to survive? What is the underlying message here?

The Mishkan is more than just a home for the Divine Presence on Earth; it provides a model for man. If God’s Presence can rest in a building, it must certainly be able to enter the heart of a Jew. As the Malbim (1809-1879) writes, “We should all build a personal sanctuary for the Divine Presence within the halls of our hearts” (commentary to Shemot 25:8). In other words, the Mishkan represents the potential of man. It follows that the construction of the Mishkan symbolizes the spiritual construction of the human self.

Of course, the primary tools a Jew utilizes in the construction of his personal Mishkan are mitzvot. However, we do not build with mitzvot alone. Look at the Mishkan: none of the processes of Mishkan construction are mitzvot – they are just simple acts like plowing and planting. And it is specifically these simple, voluntary acts that cannot be done on Shabbat. In fact, if one of these acts would happen to be a biblical obligation, there would no prohibition to do it on Shabbat! This surprising Halacha is derived from a verse near the end of our parsha:

You may work during the six weekdays, but on the seventh day you must stop. You must stop plowing and reaping.

Shemot 34:21

Why are the examples of plowing and reaping given here? In the Mishnah, Rabbi Yishmael explains our verse with the help of some classical Midrashic-style exegesis:

Rabbi Yishmael said, “Just like plowing is [always] voluntary, so too is the reaping voluntary. This excludes the reaping of the Omer [grain].”

Shevi’it 1:4

Our verse is not just giving examples; it is qualifying the Shabbat prohibition against working. All thirty-nine forbidden labors are only forbidden if they are like plowing – i.e. a perfectly voluntary act. (There is no such thing as an obligation to plow.) If one of the labors should happen to be a mitzvah – like the mitzvah to reap grain for the Omer offering – then it would not be included in the prohibition. (Careful here, this does not give license to drive to Shul or call your mother on Shabbat! It is only an act that the Torah explicitly specifies as an obligation that is permitted – and reaping the Omer is the sole example. Sorry.)

The Torah is underscoring what we already know – it is only “simple,” non-mitzvah acts that are forbidden on Shabbat. But, of course, the thirty-nine labors are not simple at all – they are the acts of Mishkan construction and the work we need to do to survive. The message is clear. Our Mishkan must be built with our non-mitzvah behavior! The Shechina enters man only when all of man’s actions, even the most basic and necessary, are beautiful and holy. If we conduct our “mundane” weekday activities with honesty, decency, and integrity, using the Torah as our guide, we transform ourselves into a sanctuary, a living Mishkan for God.

This is all very nice. However, on Shabbat we do not engage in construction, not the construction of the Mishkan nor the construction of the self. Why not? Because on Shabbat our work is complete and we are complete. Our Mishkan is standing and the Shechina has arrived. Shabbat is not the time to build; Shabbat is the time to celebrate the Shabbat day, appreciate the gift of life and welcome the presence of the Shechina.

But keep My Shabbats. It is a sign between Me and you for all generations, to make you realize that I, God, am making you holy.

Exodus 31:13

Building on Golden Ash

After choosing His people at the Exodus and marrying them at Sinai, G-d is ready to move in. The Jews were planning a magnificent terrestrial palace for their king right in the center of the community, but this week the construction schedule is postponed indefinitely. No, it’s not bad weather or a union strike. In Ki Tisa, the Jews build a Golden Calf.

It’s a long, sad story. In the aftermath of this sin, the Tablets are smashed, a brother against brother purge leaves thousands dead, and the nation is nearly annihilated by a plague of G-d’s wrath. In the end, with the help of Moshe’s prayers, G-d forgives. He grants the nation a second set of Tablets and He agrees to return to dwell amongst His people. After an eighty-day hiatus, the construction of the Mishkan moves forward.

That’s the story in a nutshell, but there is an important Midrashic teaching that must not be forgotten. Although the mitzvah to build the Mishkan was commanded before the sin of the Golden Calf, the Mishkan functions as an atonement for it. “Let the gold of the Mishkan come and atone for the gold of the calf” (Midrash Tanchuma 8). In this view, the Mishkan is not merely a sanctuary for G-d, but it is the medium which enables G-d’s presence to return after the Golden Calf fiasco.

Rashi (cf. 31:18, 33:11) takes things one-step further. Evoking the principle that Torah events are not necessarily organized in chronological order, Rashi is of the opinion that the mitzvah to build a Mishkan was actually first presented after the Golden Calf – apparently in reaction to the sin. (The question of which came first, the calf or the Mishkan, is an old debate recorded in many Midrashim.)

“Let the gold of the Mishkan come and atone for the gold of the calf.” This is a fascinating concept. The idea is that a mitzvah to donate gold in the service of G-d will rectify the donating of gold for sin. This might explain why donations for the Mishkan were not mandatory (cf. Shemot 25:2). Only a voluntary donation for a holy purpose could function to counterbalance the voluntary donations for the idolatrous calf. There was, however, one mandatory collection for the Mishkan and it appears at the beginning of this week’s parsha. It’s the collection of a silver half Shekel. This mitzvah is presented in a most mysterious way, as if the half Shekel somehow provides divine protection and atonement. Let’s read the verses carefully.

G-d said to Moshe saying, “When you take a census of the Israelites to determine their numbers, every man shall give G-d an atonement for his soul when counting them, so that there will not be a plague among them when counting them. Everyone included in the census must give a half Shekel… The rich may not give more and the poor may not give less…
You shall take the silver of the atonements from the Israelites and give it for the work of the Mishkan. It will thus be a remembrance for the Israelites before G-d to atone for your souls.

Shemot 30:11-13,15-16

This is the first time we have a mitzvah to count the Jews. It works like this: Instead of counting the people directly, a half Shekel coin is taken from each person – the rich can’t give more and the poor can’t give less – and then the coins are counted.

What is the meaning of this mitzvah? Since when do the minutia of good government become Biblical commands? What are we atoning for? And what is this business about a plague? There is something else going on here and Rashi tells us what it is:

These verses teach us that [the Jews] were commanded to take this census when the collection for the Mishkan began after the sin of the Golden Calf. This is because a plague had started, as the verse states, “Then G-d struck the people with a plague because they had made the calf…” (Shemot 32:35).
The analogy is to a flock of sheep, beloved by its owner, which is hit by a plague. When it is over, the owner makes a request of his shepherd. “Please count my sheep and learn how many are left.” This [request] reveals his love.

It’s not about the number. G-d does not need us to tell Him how many Jews there are. What G-d wants is for us to understand that He loves every single Jew – even after the sin of the Golden Calf.

What do we do with all the money? Well, the verse tells us to use it for the Mishkan. “You shall take the silver of the atonements from the Israelites and give it for the work of the Mishkan” (ibid). But the Talmud (Megillah 29b) is more specific. The Talmud tells us that these half Shekel coins were melted down and forged into the silver bases which supported the Mishkan’s walls (cf. Shemot 26:19).

The census after the Golden Calf, which served to express G-d’s love for every Jew, forms the foundation of the Mishkan, a sanctuary designed for G-d’s presence in the midst of a nation burdened by sin. This is because it is our awareness of G-d’s infinite love that drives repentance and transforms the nation into a vessel for the Shechinah. The Torah means exactly what it says:

You shall take the silver of the atonements from the Israelites and give it for the work of the Mishkan. It will thus be a remembrance for the Israelites before G-d to atone for your souls.

Could we come up with a better foundation for G-d’s house?