Parsha Themes Archive

The second half (chaps 25-40)of the sefer (book) recounts Hashem’s instructions for building a movable Temple (the “Mishkan”) and the implementation of these instructions by Bnei Yisrael.

This week, we stand at the opening of this second half. This part of the sefer contains five parshiot: the first two and last two focus on the Mishkan, while the middle parasha (or at least the middle of the middle parasha) tells the infamous story of the Egel (Golden Calf):

The first half of Sefer Shemot progresses from the arrival of Ya’akov’s family in Egypt to their enslavement there, then to the birth and rise of Moshe, the plagues, the exodus, the miracles at the sea, the people’s complaints, the visit of Yitro, the revelation at Sinai, and finally the laws of Parashat Mishpatim. Although what unites all these components of the story is the development of the nation and its relationship with Hashem, these events are all independent narrative/legal units.

For instance, while the story of Moshe’s birth and development into adulthood is related, to some to degree, to the account of the plagues, and both of these are related to the splitting of the sea, and all of these themes are related to Hashem’s increasing level of Self-revelation (climaxing at Sinai), and all of these have some connection to the visit of Yitro and the laws of Mishpatim, we can see that despite the connections between these units and the larger themes toward which they contribute, they are all distinct units.

In contrast, the second half of Sefer Shemot is unified and tightly cohesive, narrowly focused on one topic: how and whether Hashem will maintain an intimate Presence among Bnei Yisrael in the movable Temple, the Mishkan. Instead of looking at this unit piece by piece, parasha by parasha, this week we will take a bird’s-eye view of the whole Biblical terrain before us.

In the end of Parashat Mishpatim, Moshe ascends Har Sinai to receive instructions from Hashem. In extraordinary detail, spanning Parshiot Teruma, Tetzaveh, and the beginning of Ki Tisa, Hashem lays out for Moshe the plan for His residence within the camp of Bnei Yisrael. All of these details come together to accomplish a fantastic (as in “fantasy”) goal: “They shall make a Temple for Me, and I shall dwell in their midst” (25:8). Hashem plans to pitch His tent among the people’s tents; He will be their next-door Neighbor.

Many people have wondered (some of them great biblical commentators, some of them bored shul-goers who can’t believe they’re hearing all of the innumerable details of the Mishkan, which they heard in Teruma and Tetzaveh, repeated almost word for word in Va-Yak’hel and Pekudei) why the Torah repeats all of the descriptions of the Mishkan and its peripherals. Is it not enough for us to “listen in” on Hashem’s conversation with Moshe in Teruma and Tetzaveh, in which He goes through all of the details? What need is met by the nearly verbatim repetition of these details in Va-Yak’hel and Pekudei, where we hear that the Bnei Yisrael did all that Hashem had commanded? Why not just tell us, “Bnei Yisrael built the Mishkan exactly as Hashem had commanded Moshe at Har Sinai. They assembled the parts, and then Hashem’s glory filled the Mishkan” -- end of sefer?

One oft-quoted answer is that the Torah wants to contrast the people’s total obedience to the instructions for building the Mishkan with their disobedience in building and worshipping the Egel. There is some textual support for this idea in Parashat Pekudei: every time the Torah reports that the people finish working on a particular piece of the Mishkan, it ends by saying that they did the work “as Hashem had commanded Moshe.” Some examples:

(39:1) . . . they made the holy clothing for Aharon, JUST AS HASHEM HAD COMMANDED MOSHE.

(39:5) . . . gold, blue, purple, and red, and fine-twisted linen, JUST AS HASHEM HAD COMMANDED MOSHE.

(39:7) . . . on the shoulders of the Efod as a reminder of Bnei Yisrael, JUST AS HASHEM HAD COMMANDED MOSHE.

This refrain appears so many times in Pekudei -- fifteen times! -- that one begins to feel that it cannot be incidental, and that the Torah is using this device to contrast the people’s complete obedience to Hashem’s commands with their earlier “Egel behavior.”

This is a tempting reading, but there are at least two reasons why it is not a satisfying explanation for why the Torah repeats the intricate descriptions of the Mishkan and its contents:

While the “just as Hashem had commanded Moshe” is an important pattern and surely communicates something, it is difficult to use it to explain the repetition of the Mishkan’s details. (Next week I will offer an explanation of this pattern which I believe works better than the above idea.)

Our question -- why the Torah repeats the Mishkan instructions in Va-Yak’hel and Pekudei -- may be answered by examing the relationship between the two poles of the second half of Sefer Shemot and the fulcrum between these poles; or, to put it in English, if the second half of Sefer Shemot is a sandwich, with Mishkan Description #1 (Teruma and Tetzaveh) and Mishkan Description #2 (Va-Yak’hel and Pekudei) as the “bread” sandwiching the Egel Disaster (Ki Tisa) between them, what is the relationship between the “bread” and the “filling” of this sandwich? How does the Egel disaster affect the Mishkan plans?

While Hashem is communicating the plans to Moshe, Bnei Yisrael are busy worshipping the Golden Calf. Hashem, of course, becomes infuriated; first He threatens to destroy the people completely, but then, somewhat appeased by Moshe, He spares them. But He refuses to accompany the people on their journey to Cana’an:

“I will send an angel before you -- and I will drive out the Cana’ani, Emori, Hiti, Perizi, Hivi, Yevusi -- to a lanflowing with milk and honey; but I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necnation, and I might destroy you on the way!” The people heard this evil news and mourned.

Hashem’s decision to not accompany the people on their trip to Eretz Cana’an is not simply a moment of discomfort in the developing relationship between Hashem and Bnei Yisrael; it brings the relationship screeching to an emergency stop. In response to the people’s rejection of Him through their worship of the Egel, Hashem ‘recoils,’ completely cancelling the plan for the Mishkan! All of the intricate blueprints we have traced through Ki Tisa become, well, doodling paper. Since He refuses to dwell (“shokhen”) among people who worship idols, what purpose would a dwelling (“Mishkan”) serve? If there will be no “ve-shakhanti,” then obviously there can be no “Mishkan.” Ibn Ezra makes this point explicit:

“I [Hashem] will not accompany you [to Cana’an]”: they should not make a Mishkan, for I will not dwell among Bnei Yisrael.

That the sin of the Egel spells the end of the Mishkan is not only logical and intuitively suggestive, it is also implicit in the way the Torah refers to the Mishkan throughout these parshiot. The Mishkan is referred to by several different names; one of the most prominent names is “Ohel Mo’ed,” “The Tent of Meeting,” which appears thirty-two times in Sefer Shemot in reference to the Mishkan. (Despite the fact that some people *do* go to shul in order to meet their friends, the “meeting” meant here is the meeting between Hashem and Bnei Yisrael.)

The word “mo’ed,” “meeting,” shares the same root as the words “no’adti” and “iva’ed,” a word which Hashem uses in sentences like, “I will meet you [”ve-noadti”] there [in the Mishkan] and speak to you from atop the Kaporet [covering of the Ark], from between the two cherubs on top of the Ark of the Testament . . .” (25:22). The name of the movable Temple communicates its function: a place to meet with Hashem and stand before Him in worship and communication.

But then the people worship the Egel. Moshe descends the mountain, smashes the Tablets, punishes the chief offenders, and chastises Aharon for his role in the catastrophe. Hashem spares the people’s lives but refuses to accompany them on their journey to Cana’an. Then the Torah reports (in Ki Tisa) that Moshe creates a new “Ohel Mo’ed”:

Moshe took the tent and pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and called it the “OHEL MO’ED.” Anyone who sought Hashem would go to the “OHEL MO’ED” outside the camp.

there is now instead

Moshe does not name this tent “Ohel Mo’ed” by accident. He is chastising the people, showing them what they must live with (or without) now that they have lost the Mishkan.

But the people do teshuva, and Moshe pleads their cause before Hashem. In several incredible scenes in Ki Tisa (which we will examine in microscopic detail when we get there), Moshe intercedes with Hashem and “convinces” Him to return His presence to the people and lead them “personally” to Cana’an. Hashem’s agreeing to once again accompany the people means that the plan for the Mishkan is restored: His agreement to maintain His presence in their midst means that He will “need” the Mishkan to live in. (For some elaboration on whether Hashem needs a Temple or not, see this past week’s haftara, “Ha-Shamayyim Kis’i,” Yeshayahu 66:1-2.) The next two parshiot, Va-Yak’hel and Pekudei, detail Moshe’s instructions to the people about the Mishkan and their faithful obedience to the instructions. And since Hashem has forgiven the people and restored His Presence, the Torah returns to using the term “Ohel Mo’ed” to refer to the grand Mishkan where He will reside (the term appears 15 times post-Egel in Sefer Shemot as a reference to the Mishkan) rather than the forlorn tent of the period of His anger.

With the understanding that the second half of Sefer Shemot is a cohesive “Mishkan unit” with the Egel at its core and “Mishkan sections” on both sides, we may have an explanation for why Va-Yak’hel and Pekudei repeat Teruma and Tetzaveh: the details of the Mishkan are repeated in order to powerfully communicate to us the total restoration of the plan of infusing the camp of Bnei Yisrael with Hashem’s presence. If the audience of the Torah (i.e., us) were emotionless, purely intellectual beings, it might have sufficed to say simply, “Hashem forgave the people for the Egel at Moshe’s behest and reinstated the plan to build the Mishkan. The people built the Mishkan, assembled it, and Hashem moved in.” But the Torah’s audience is people, emotional beings; we need more reassurance than just the stated fact of Hashem’s return.

To illustrate with a cliched joke about Jews: a middle-aged Jewish couple come to see a marriage therapist. They have been married for thirty years. “What seems to be the trouble?” asks the therapist. “My husband doesn’t love me anymore,” the wife complains. “Ridiculous!” barks the husband, “of course I still love you! How could you say such a thing?!” The wife turns to her husband in surprise: “You still love me? You never tell me you love me!” The husband raises his finger in the air and says indignantly, “Thirty years ago, on our wedding night, I told you I loved you. If anything had changed, don’t you think I would have told you?!”

It is not enough to just be told. Having read of the Hashem’s murderous fury at Bnei Yisrael, then the severing of the close connection between Hashem and Bnei Yisrael, we need powerful reassurance to feel that He has truly forgiven us for our rebellion, that He has truly come back. The way the Torah communicates that Hashem is with Bnei Yisrael once again is by offering the Mishkan again in all of its detail. In a sense, we have ‘lost our faith’ in the first rendition of the Mishkan command; that command was taken away when we were unfaithful. We need to hear it again to believe that Hashem is again willing to live among us.

If this still seems far-fetched, perhaps an illustration will help. In Tanakh (the Bible), the relationship between Hashem and Bnei Yisrael is often compared to a relationship between a man and a woman. Midrash Tana de-Vei Eliyahu Zuta, chapter 4, offers the following parable to convey the impact of the Egel on this relationship:

“. . . To what is this comparable? To a king of flesh and blood who had betrothed a woman and loved her completely. What did the king do? He sent for a man [i.e., Moshe] to serve as an intermediary between him and her. He showed him all of his marriage canopies, all of his rooms, all of his secret places [i.e., all the divine secrets revealed to Moshe during his seclusion with Hashem atop Sinai], and then he said to the intermediary, ‘Go to the woman and tell her that I do not need anything of hers; except that she should make for me a small marriage canopy [i.e., the Mishkan] so that I can live with her, and all of my servants and the members of my household will know that I love her completely.’ While the king was still busy commanding the intermediary about the marriage canopies and preparing to send many gifts to the woman, people came and said to him, ‘Your fiance has committed adultery with another man!’ [i.e., the Egel]. Immediately, the king put everything aside, and the intermediary was thrown out and left in haste from before the king. And so it was with the Holy One, Blessed be He, and Yisrael, as it says, ‘Go down now, for your nation has strayed . . .’ (Shemot 32).”

To summarize and extend this mashal: Hashem sits in private (Har Sinai) with his closest confidant, telling his friend (see 33:11) howhe plans to make permanent his relationship with the ‘woman’ he loves. He talks in great detail about his plans for the home in whithey will share their relationship and excitedly shows his friend drawings of the home and the furnishings he has designed for it (Parashat Teruma and Tetzaveh). But while he is eagerly sharing this dream with his friend, the woman he loves is in someone else’s arms (Ki Tisa). A messenger interrupts the man’s conversation with his friend to report his lover’s betrayal. In a flash, his love turns to rage. He shreds the plans for the home they were to share.

Slowly, over time, the man’s friend succeeds in convincing him to forgive the woman (latter half of Ki Tisa); he is also moved by her regret for what she did in a moment of weakness and insecurity (“We have no idea what happened to Moshe . . .”). But she is overcome by guilt; she cannot forgive herself, cannot believe that he has truly forgiven her. In order to convince her that he has forgiven her, the man re-draws for her all of the intricate drawings he had made of the home they were to share and all the things with which they would fill it (Va-Yak’hel and Pekudei). He presents her with the images in all of their detail and intricate beauty -- and now she can believe it.

This may be why the Torah repeats the details of the Mishkan: we need to see the “drawings” again in all of their detail in order for us to believe that despite our infidelity, Hashem can forgive us when we do teshuva.

If you are one of the bored shul-goers, wondering at all this repetition, maybe thinking about the Mishkan in this way will help. Besides the repetition, we may be put off by the ‘ritualistic’ tone of the sections of the Torah which describe the korbanot (sacrifices, coming up mainly in Leviticus/VaYikra) and the technical-sounding sections of the Torah which describe the structure and contents of the Mishkan. But the essence of the Mishkan is not the ritual/technical, it is the place where Hashem ‘goes’ to be near us and where we go to be near Him. This is not a “modern” theme we are reading into a ritual/technical text, it is explicit in several places in the plans for the Mishkan, where Hashem articulates the theme that the Mishkan in general and the Aron (ark of the covenant) in particular are where “I will meet with you”: see Shemot 25:22, 29:42, 29:43, 30:6, and 30:36. Obviously, then, both parties (Hashem and us) should be deeply caught up in the details of the encounter we experience when we visit Hashem at ‘home.’ Next week we will examine some of the technical details -- the special clothing of the kohanim -- and consider how this clothing contributes to the relationship between Hashem and Bnei Yisrael.

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