Shabbat Vayakhel-Pekudai - Shabbat HaChodesh

Torah Reading Triennial Portion: Exodus, Chapter 37, verse 17 through Chapter 39, verse 21.
Second Torah, Exodus, Chapter 12, verses 1-20.
 
The Parshiyot we read this Shabbat are the final two of the book of Exodus, the second of the five books of the Torah. The subject matter is the construction of the Mishkan, the moveable sanctuary that our ancestors worshipped at during their sojourn in the Wilderness.
 
I found the following D’Var that I wanted to share with you in part, written by Ilana Kurshan:

. . . The act of translating vision into reality was not easy for Moshe. The midrash (Tanchuma Vayikra 11:8) plays on the term used in the Torah to describe the fashioning of the Menorah from gold – it had to be mikshah, made of hammered work. The word mikshah comes from the same root as kashah, which means hardness and difficulty. The Menorah posed a particular challenge to Moshe, perhaps because of the elaborate cups, calyxes, and petals adorning its branches. As the midrash relates, God therefore engraved the Menorah upon Moshe’s hand when Moshe was up on Sinai. Moshe was instructed to descend the mountain and then copy the image God had engraved on his hand so as to fashion the Menorah. Only after receiving an in-person tutorial from God on the mountain was Moshe able to come down and fashion the Menorah.
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According to this understanding, the challenge of building the Mishkan was the challenge of taking a heavenly vision and transforming it into human terms. This is a challenge familiar to many artists who are afforded a moment of inspiration in which they glimpse a vision which they must then translate into the materials at their disposal – whether it is paint or stone or music or language. The British Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge dramatizes this artistic challenge in his poem “Kublah Khan.” Coleridge explains in a preface that he wrote the poem one night after he fell asleep reading about Xanadu, the palace of the Mongol ruler Kublah Khan. He woke with a poetic vision of the palace, which he set about writing down, but he was interrupted by a knock at the door and the vision fled. The poem depicts the glory of Xanadu while also capturing the poet’s despair at his inability to recreate that “stately pleasure dome” in words, including the damsel who appeared in his vision of the palace:

Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry “Beware, beware!”

The poet longed to revive the symphony he heard and recreate the vision of the palace he saw in his dream, so that he might make domes and caves out of the airy immateriality of language. Devastatingly, the vision fled before he could take down notes on the palm of his hand, and the poem remained, as Coleridge termed it “a fragment.” His Mishkan was never built.

As Coleridge knew, much of the frustration of the artistic life is the frustration of trying to translate vision into reality and inevitably falling short. But this is also the challenge of the religious life. Our tradition imparts to us spiritual ideals that we have to incorporate into the messy reality of life on earth. Like the instructions for building the Mishkan, the Torah may be read as an instruction manual for building an ideal society: Care for the stranger. Respect the elderly. Do not covet. But when it comes to implementing those ideals in our legislation and in our lives, it is often far from simple.

And yet somewhat miraculously, as the Torah reports at the end of Pekudei, the Mishkan was completed according to plan: “Just as the Lord commanded Moshe, so the Israelites did all the work” (39:42). The cloud covers the Tent of Meeting and God’s presence fills the Tabernacle – with its golden Menorah and its braided chains of corded work and its embroidered screens of blue, purple, and crimson yarns, all exactly as God ordained. The building of the Mishkan reminds us that when we are able to translate heavenly visions into human terms, we do not just craft works of magnificent beauty – we also create a space that points to God’s presence in our midst.

“I said to them, Whoever has any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me; then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.” (Exodus 32:24)

We are told about the construction of the Menorah.  It was cast out of a solid piece of gold by an artist who carried a God given vision. The menorah had seven branches with carefully carved petals and flowers along each branch. The carving of the menorah can be likened to Michelangelo’s carving of the statue of David. Michelangelo shared how he looked at the solid piece of marble and chiseled away everything that was not David. In the same way, Bezalel looked at the gold and cut away everything that was not the menorah.

But this week we have a very different image. The Israelites, led by Moses’ brother Aaron, built a Golden Calf. Moses confronts his brother, asking how this could happen. Aaron says that he collected the gold from the people. He hoped that the people would hold on to their valuable gold, thus avoiding the building of an idol. But the people willingly gave Aaron their gold. Aaron claims that he threw the gold into the fire, and the Golden Calf simply emerged on its own. Rashi writes that Aaron cast it into the fire not knowing that this calf would come out. It just happened.

The Golden Calf just happened. There was no will, no vision, and no skill behind it. It was pure happenstance. Aaron did not mean for it to happen. It was out of his control. It is as if the calf created itself. If an event happens by chance, on its own, then nobody is to blame. And one of the fascinating facts of this story is that Aaron is not blamed and not punished. It was an event beyond his control.

There is an important insight here. When something good happens like a work of art, we are willing to give full credit to the artist. When something bad happens like a Golden Calf, nobody is to blame. It just happens. How often do we take credit for the good things we do but take no responsibility for the bad things we do? How often do we say, “it just happened?” We were caught up in events beyond our control. Our genes made us do it. Or our upbringing made us do it. We are victims. “The devil made me do it.” It is not a sin but an illness. It just happened.

I often think of a Midrash about the world’s first murderer Cain, who slew his brother Abel. God asks Cain, where is your brother, and Abel answers, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The Midrash compares it to a thief who runs into the night watchman after committing a robbery. The thief says, “I am a thief, I am simply doing my job. But you are a watchman. You should have done a better job guarding these items. You, the watchman, not me, the thief, are to blame.” In the same way Cain blames God. “You created me. You gave me my evil inclination. God, it is your fault that I killed my brother.”
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We live in an age where people avoid blame. Events just happen. But if we are to take credit for the good things we do, we need to accept blame for the bad things we do. If an artist made the menorah, then an artist also made the Golden Calf. Accepting blame is the first step towards true repentance. Aaron was unwilling to accept the blame. He said the Golden Calf just happened. Perhaps if he had accepted responsibility, the Golden Calf would not have become the worst sin of the Israelite’s sojourn through the wilderness.
 
This Shabbat, we also read from a second Torah about the Red Heifer, the Parah Adumah. It gives the people of the Wilderness the means to achieve ritual purity. This is a reminder that Passover is approaching (as if we needed a reminder) and that we should begin to ready ourselves for it.