VAYAKHEL 5784
Vayakhel (Chapter 35-38:20) And he Assembled, gives us the blueprints the building of the actual mishkan, the portable housing for YHVH. We’re told how the materials are to be assembled (Chapter 35) and how the inner area and the tent over it and the frame for the inner part are to be built. (Chapter 36). Chapter 37 details the ark, the table on which it sits and all the utensils associated with this space. Chapter 38 tells us how to build the altar of sacrifice, the wash basin and the courtyard.
I want to discuss four themes.
The solar/lunar nature of the Hebrew Calendar as it impacts the parshiot.
The problem of now what after the experience of the divine
The artisans as being people “wise of heart.”
The embodiment of the ecological principle that enough is enough.
Vayakhel is sometimes read along with the following parsha, Pekudei as a double parsha. Why? The Hebrew calendar is a combination solar/lunar calendar meaning that the months are based on the lunar calendar. However, a strictly lunar calendar is shorter than a solar calendar. If, like Islam, you follow a strictly lunar calendar, the holidays wind up rotating throughout the year. Ramadan, for instance, can occur at any point during the year. That won’t work for us because the holidays are agriculturally based. You can’t bring the first wheat of the year to the Temple on Shavuot, for example, if Shavuot falls in the winter. Our ancestors reconciled this problem through very careful observation and calculation and added an extra month of Adar every 7 out of 19 years. 5784 is one such year, and we have two months of Adar this year (The holiday of Purim is always in the second month of Adar during leap years). When we have two months of Adar, we have a parsha for each Shabbat, but when we only have one month of Adar, we have to combine parshiot to get through the whole cycle. Vayakehl and Pekudei are the first two parshiot that can get combined.
Most of us don’t have any kind of relationship with the moon and lunar cycles. The moon is easily the most obvious way to describe the passing of time in pre literate societies. A week is a completely human construct—why is a week 7 days and not 5 days or 10 days? A year is based on the revolution of the earth around the sun, but it is too long to track easily and the weather isn’t a reliable guide because it can be unseasonably warm or cold, wet or dry. But the moon can be tracked in the sky. February 27, 2024 doesn’t mean anything in a preliterate society. But describing the moon as a bit more than half full and waning—that would tell them something and would match their observations of the night sky in a world without electric lights. Using a lunar calendar means we always know where we are in the moon cycle. I have no idea what phase the moon will be in on February 27, 2032, but I know it will be a full moon on the 15th of Adar 5792. (don’t ask me if 5792 is a leap year—I wouldn’t know that without looking it up.
Women have an obvious potential connection with the menstrual cycle. There is a movement to reclaim this connection by, amongst other things, talking about the menstrual cycle as a moon cycle. This is a potential potent kind of connection, I would think, but I’m not sure how many women think of their cycles that way or connect their cycles to the cycle of the moon.
Why is any of this important? It seems to me that our Hebrew lunar calendar gives us an opportunity to be more aligned with the more than human world. I can be ignorant that it’s a waxing half moon—that’s most of us. I can know that it is a half full waxing moon because it’s the 7nth of the Hebrew month, but it can make no difference to me. Or I can know it is a half full waxing moon and I can feel myself flowing with the waxing and the waning of the moon. Now I don’t notice any difference in me when it is a half full waxing moon versus a quarter full waning moon, and maybe I’m just not observant enough or I live inside too much at night. But anything we can do to feel the flow of the more than human world moves us away from our excessive orientation towards just the human world.
Do you have any kind of practice that aligns yourself with the moon cycle? Any kinds of practice that pull you away from the just the human world orientation towards a more than human world orientation? What kind of meaning do they help create or solidify?
Now what? Near the end of the previous parsha we read “Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant, since he had spoken with YHVH. Aaron and all the Israelites saw that the skin of Moses’ face was radiant, and they shrank from coming hear him.” (34:29-30). You go off on this tremendous personal growth retreat, whether it is a vision fast, a week at a retreat center, a transformational experience in a hotel ballroom. You feel like everything has changed, and your face is shining so brightly that everyone is a little scared and jealous of you. And, in the meantime, everyone has just been living their everyday lives. You’ve had your mind and heart blown, and they’ve been busy coping with the craziness that are our contemporary lives. Now what? That’s the question facing Moses and YHVH.
Their answer is to build the mishkan, the tabernacle. It’s an interesting choice. Moses doesn’t try to persuade the people that they too can have radiant faces if they climb Mt. Sinai and do a vision fast. He doesn’t try to get them to make haste to the promised land or urge them to transform their relationships with each other. He says let’s build the mishkan.
Why build the mishkan first? The text gives us no answers. It doesn’t say this is what he heard to do when he was up on Mt. Sinai. Let me first offer some spiritual speculations, and then some more communal/settled lives ones.
Maybe the mishkan is Moses’ way to give thanks to YHVH, who he encountered in an intimate way on Sinai. Maybe it is a way of ensuring to the people that YHVH will be with them, something that is truly important to Moses. In traditional face to face societies, the person returning with their face shining would have conversations with selected tribal elders who would guide them. Moses had no elders, and we don’t have much in that way either. In my own transformative experiences, the lack of guidance from elders is one thing that has really stood out to me. Maybe the mishkan is a way for Moses to keep YHVH close so YHVH can give Moses guidance.
Building the mishkan might also be Moses’ way of domesticating the people’s spiritual relationship to the divine. Saying let’s build the mishkan is arresting because Moses isn’t saying let’s do something that reeks of wilderness spirituality, as his encounters with the divine had been. He doesn’t say let’s do something transformational. Instead he says lets build a building, elect a board president, hire some principals and teachers. The mishkan is a very settled kind of spirituality.
The mishkan is also something that requires communal effort. He didn’t just tell his vision to his family and friends, and then do not much about it. Instead he came up with a plan that required some kind of concrete action from everyone. He seeks, I would argue and not particularly successfully, to unify the whiny community.
What is your experience, if any, with returning from transformational experiences? What kinds of guidance have you received and how useful was it? What would you do differently? What kind of things did you bring home with you to keep alive your experience on the mountaintop?
The artisans who build the mishkan, both male and female, are described as people with a “wise heart” at least 7 times (35:10, 35:25, 35:31, 35:35, 36:1, 36:2, 36:8). It’s an arresting phrase because we don’t usually associate wisdom with the ability to make things. That’s not just us, think about what you know about Proverbs, Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), Job, Pirkei Avot. These are the paradigmatic books of what is called “Wisdom” literature in our tradition, and while I don’t know the literature well enough to think if there is a connection in this literature between artisans and wisdom, I also can’t recall any connection at all. Yet in our parsha, there are 7 verses that make this connection explicit. That’s a lot.
Saying that the artisans have wisdom of the heart is an extraordinary compliment. Saying they have wisdom of the hands would be arresting enough, but wisdom of the heart, implies that the only reason they can create the sacred space of the mishkan is because they are exceptional people, not just talented craftspeople. But what makes them people with wisdom of the heart? The text gives us nothing. I want to say that these artisans are people who manifest some kind of connection with the divine through their artistry, but still, we certainly would not tend to label that connection as wisdom.
Do you know anyone you would characterize as having wisdom of the heart? What leads you to characterize them that way? Do you know anyone who is a talented craftsperson? Does who they are come through in their work? Would you describe them as wise of heart?
Enough is enough. The possibility of accumulating material goods is connected with the advent of agriculture and therefore the potential elimination of an at least semi nomadic lifestyle. After all, if you move, even only two or three times a year, from a winter camp to a few places in order not to gather too heavily or hunt too much in a given location, it’s really hard to accumulate stuff because you have to shlep it with you. But with agriculture and the possibility of permanent settlements because of the ability to store grain, it became possible to accumulate more, much more, than when you had to move it all, even using horses or dogs as pack animals.
The parsha contains a remarkable story. “All the wise persons who were doing the work of the holy came…and they said to Moses, saying “the people are bringing more than enough for the construction…And Moses commanded “Man and Woman, let them not do any more work for the donation for the Holy. And the people were held back from bringing.” (36:5-6). It is striking to me that they didn’t just enlarge the mishkan, or make it fancier in some way (though it was pretty fancy with lots of gold)
Enough is enough is a key ecological principal in humanity’s living in harmony with the more than human world. The rest of the more than human world seemingly lacks either the intention or the possibility of not living in harmony with the rest of the more than human world; lions can’t kill all the prey animals because otherwise they will starve to death; they have to maintain balance. But we humans are able to blow right past balance to excess.
Where, if anywhere, in your life do you feel like enough is enough? Where, if anywhere, does your life feel in balance? How might you expand that sense of balance to more areas of your life or the world? While the list of the ways in which our lives are out of balance with the more than human world is really long, what occurs to you as the most significant ways that your life feels out of balance with the more than human world?
QUESTIONS
Do you have any kind of practice that aligns yourself with the moon cycle? Any kinds of practice that pull you away from the just the human world orientation towards a more than human world orientation? What kind of meaning do they help create or solidify?
What is your experience, if any, with returning from transformational experiences? What kinds of guidance have you received and how useful was it? What would you do differently? What kind of things did you bring home with you to keep alive your experience on the mountaintop?
Do you know anyone you would characterize as having wisdom of the heart? What leads you to characterize them that way? Do you know anyone who is a talented craftsperson? Does who they are come through in their work? Would you describe them as wise of heart?
Where, if anywhere, in your life do you feel like enough is enough? Where, if anywhere, does your life feel in balance? How might you expand that sense of balance to more areas of your life or the world? While the list of the ways in which our lives are out of balance with the more than human world is really long, what occurs to you as the most significant ways that your life feels out of balance with the more than human world?
