…kinds of artistic craftsmanship.” (Exodus 35:30-33) In both last week’s parsha, Ki Tissa and in this week’s parsha, Vayakhel, we meet Betzalel, the builder of the Tabernacle. He is a rare character-type in the Hebrew Bible – the artist, the craftsman, the maker of beauty in the service of God, the man who, together with Oholiab, created the Tabernacle and…
Right at the end of the book of Shemot, there is a textual difficulty so slight that it is easy to miss, yet – as interpreted by Rashi – it contains one of the great clues as to the nature of Jewish identity: it is a moving testimony to the unique challenge of being a Jew. First, the background. The…
The shock is immense. For several weeks and many chapters – the longest prelude in the Torah – we have read of the preparations for the moment at which God would bring His Presence to rest in the midst of the people. Five parshiyot (Terumah, Tetzaveh, Ki Tissa, Vayakhel and Pekudei) describe the instructions for building the Sanctuary. Two further…
…God as shachen, a neighbour, intimate, close, within the camp, in the midst of the people. Yet for all this, we wonder why the Torah has to go on at such length in its details of the Mishkan, taking up the whole of Terumah and Tetzaveh, half of Ki Tissa, and then again Vayakhel and Pekudei. After all, the Mishkan…
In Ki Tissa and in Vayakhel we encounter the figure of Betzalel, a rare type in the Hebrew Bible – the artist, the craftsman, the shaper of beauty in the service of God, the man who, together with Oholiab, fashioned the articles associated with the Tabernacle. Judaism – in sharp contrast to ancient Greece – did not cherish the visual…
…the clue: Moses assembled the whole Israelite community and said to them: “These are the things God has commanded you to do.” Shemot 35:1 The verb vayakhel – which gives the sedra its name – is crucial to an understanding of the task in which Moses is engaged. At its simplest level it serves as a motiv-word, recalling a previous verse. In…
Pekudei – in fact the whole cluster of chapters beginning with Terumah and Tetzaveh and culminating in Vayakhel and Pekudei – is an extraordinary way for the book of Exodus to end. The rest of the book is a tempestuous story of the Israelites’ exile and enslavement and the confrontation between the ruler of Egypt and the man he may…
The Torah in Parshat Vayakhel, which describes the making of the Mishkan, goes out of its way to emphasise the role women played in it: The men accompanied the women, and those who wanted to make a donation brought bracelets, earrings, finger rings, and body ornaments, all made of gold. Every skilled woman put her hand to spinning, and they…
…here. Rabbosai, Parshat Terumah begins a most extraordinary sequence. Hakamat haMishkan, the building of the first collective House of God, occupies Terumah, Tetzaveh, half of Ki Tissa, Vayakhel and Pekudei, an enormous length – the longest, as it were, single sequence in the Torah. And there is something very strange about it. As the late Nechama Leibowitz, of blessed memory,…
…word “good” appears seven times, the word “God” thirty-five times, and the word “earth” twenty-one times. The opening verse of Sefer Bereishit contains seven words, the second fourteen, and the three concluding verses thirty-five words. The complete text is 469 (7×67) words. The account of the construction of the Mishkan in Vayakhel-Pekudei is similarly built around the number seven. The…