Your Humble Blogger has been traveling on weekends lately, for one reason and another, and so has been able to slack on the weekly parshah without the embarrassment of actually showing up unprepared. As a result, I’ve now missed three weeks, and if I don’t write something in the next hour, I’ll miss a fourth. So. Under the circs, I’ll go ahead and write about this week’s reading, parshah Pekudei (Exodus 38:21-40:38), and with luck I’ll go back and talk about the weeks I’ve missed later.
The parshah starts with an accounting of the gold used for the Mishkan, and the silver, and the copper. It talks in great detail about the priestly garments, and the stones for the twelve sons of Israel (which become the birthstones, right?), and all the bells and pomegranates to decorate the robes. I’m afraid I can’t actually imagine what it looked like; it’s a gaudy mess, I’m sure, but a picture doesn’t come to mind. And they bring all the stuff to Moses and Lo! as the Lord commanded, so had they done. So Moses blessed them (39:43).
Then the Lord tells Moses to actually use the Mishkan, and to bless and sanctify Aaron and his sons, and he does. And then the Lord moves in, and kicks everybody out.
Now, there’s a great midrash on this passage, which, as you haven’t heard it, I will now relate. When the Mishkan is complete, in 40:17, the Torah says Vayehi bachodesh harishon bashanah hashanit b’echad lachodesh hukam ha mishkan: It came to pass, in the first month of the second year, on the first day of the month, that the Mishkan was raised. Straightforward, yes? But when the Torah starts a passage Vayehi, it came to pass, the expectation is that what happens is a cause for sadness, not rejoicing. Why, then, is the completion of the Mishkan an occasion for sadness? Well, and some of my Gentle Readers who have children may already see where this is going. When my Perfect Reader presents me with a completed artwork, it means that I have to find something else for her to do.
The rabbis tell us that during the thirteen months that the Israelites worked on the Mishkan, there were no arguments, no fights, and no blasphemy. The community worked together, donated their materials and their labor, and they all created this magnificent thing. Now, they were done, and they would start the real wandering, and the squabbling, and the blasphemy, and the hey hey hey. Whether or no, there’s a sense that this was, in some ways, the easy part, where they all work to make something and they do it. Much easier than building a nation. So it makes sense for there to be, as there often is when a big task is completed, a sense of sadness and loss.
And, by the way, with this parshah completed, so too is the book of Exodus, and I’ll leave you with my new (probably temporary) tagline, which is the traditional phrase chanted by the congregation at the end of each of the five books. It means “Be strong, be strong, and may we be strengthened”, or perhaps, “From strength to strength, we strengthen each other.” There are more things in life than strength, of course, but at times, it is nice to be reminded that we draw strength from each other, while being strengthened ourselves. May all of you, Gentle Readers, go from strength to strength; know you strengthen me.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.