A.
ויהי ביום כלות משה להקים את המשכן וימשח אתו ויקדש אתו ואת
כל כליו ואת ההמזבח ואת כל כליו וימשחם ויקדש אתם:
(“And it was, on the day Moshe was finished erecting the Mishkan; and he
anointed it and sanctified it and all its accouterments, and the altar and all
its accouterments; and he anointed them and sanctified them”; VII, 1).
The reader with a חוש חי לשפה
העברית, a “living sense of the
Hebrew language” (a favorite phrase of one of my rebbé’im), is
immediately struck by a grammatical anomaly in our verse. One expects the
opening clause to read: Va-yëhi bë-yom këloth Moshe lë-haqim eth ha-Mishkan,
with the first verb, “be finished” expressed
as a qal infinitive; instead, we find kalloth, the pi‘él infinitive,
which is much more often used to mean “finish” with such connotations as
“finish off,” “destroy,” which clearly cannot be the intent here.
The oddity did not escape the sharp eyes of Hazal,
and they read the infinitive by noting that it is formally identical with
the word kalloth meaning “brides.” Therefore the midrash (as Rashi
cites it) explains our verse as meaning: יום הקמת
המשכן היו ישראל ככלה הנכנסת לחופה
(“[On] the day the Mishkan was erected, Israel were like a kalla entering
under the bridal canopy [huppa]”).
The metaphor is very beautiful, and resonates
poetically in the original Hebrew not least because of the similarity between
the word nichneseth, “entering,” and the phrase Kënesseth Yisra’él, “the
assemblage of Israel,” used of Israel the aggregate nation in our collective
relationship with the Holy One, Blessed is He.
The ramifications of the metaphor are worthy of
some further exploration: Wherein lies the similarity between the erection of the
Mishkan and the kalla’s entry under the huppa, to
which the Torah seems deliberately to call our attention?
B.
There is a magnificent insight which I have heard
in the name of the great Rabbi El‘azar Man Schach זצ"ל, late rosh yëshiva of Ponevezh in
Bënei Bëraq:
A kalla entering under the huppa ideally
does so with the full knowledge that her wedding is not the end of a process,
but is the first step of her new life together with her husband. This is not
to say that, in order to reach this major milestone in her life, tremendous and
elaborate preparations have not been necessary, so much so that she must be
very careful not to lose sight of the fact that, in an ultimate sense, the
wedding, too, is a hachana, a preparation, for the immense task which
lies before her and her husband of building the bayith ne’eman bë-Yisra’él
to which they both aspire. It is in this, suggests Ha-Rav Schach, that we
should seek the point of the midrash concerning the Mishkan.
A great amount of precious materials, gold, silver,
copper, precious gems and fabrics, was donated to the construction of the Mishkan.
Many hundreds, indeed thousands, of hours of skilled labor under the
watchful eyes of Bëtzal’él and Oholi’av were dedicated to fabricating the parts
of the Mishkan and all its contents. All of these were hachanoth, “preparations,” for the erection of the Mishkan.
But the Mishkan’s erection itself is a hachana;
the ‘iqqar, the main point, would begin with the hashra’ath
ha-Shëchina, the infusion of the Divine Presence into the Mishkan, and
the resultant hih‘alluth, the exaltation of the world which would come
about as the result of the ‘avoda, the service, there. This would
inaugurate Israel, the bayith ne’eman which would influence and elevate
all around it.
There is another similarity between a wedding and
the Mishkan, implicit in Moshe’s sanctification of the Sanctuary and its
parts. A marriage is contracted when the groom gives his bride a ring and says,
Harei at mëquddesheth li.... (“You are sanctified to me....”), whence
the technical term for the wedding ceremony, qiddushin (“sanctifications”).
The identical verb is used in our verse.
The verb is in the factitive pi‘él
conjugation, which establishes or brings into being a new thing, condition or
state. The effect of qiddush is to bring into being a qodesh, a
zone of sanctity, whether of time (e.g. shabbath qodesh or miqra’ei
qodesh) or of space (the Qodesh ha-Qodashim established by Moshe in
our verse, enabling the hashra’ath ha-Shëchina, the
infusion of the Divine Presence promised when G-d told Moshe ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם
(“And they will make for Me a Sanctuary and I shall dwell [vë-sha-chanti]
amongst them”; Exodus XXV, 8), bringing close the Divine hiyyuth, the
vitalism or vitality which animates and makes possible the world’s continued
existence. In like fashion, qiddushin establishes the qodesh, the
zone of sanctity which is a bayith ne’eman bë-Yisra’él, necessary to
raising the next generation of the ממלכת כהנים וגוי קדוש, the “kingdom of kohanim and holy
nation” (ibid., XIX,6) which G-d established through the Torah to serve
Him in the miqdash and the world.
C.
Rashi makes another comment on the same
phrase: בצלאל ואהליאב וכל חכם לב עשו את המשכן ותלאו הכתוב
במשה לפי שמסר נפשו עליו לראות תבנית כל דבר ודבר כמו שהראהו בהר להורות לעשי
המלאכה כו' וכן מצינו בדוד לפי שמסר נפשו על בנין ביהמ"ק שנאמר "זכור ד'
לדוד את כל ענותו אשר נשבע לד'" וגו' לפיכך נקרא על שמו שנאמר "ראה ביתך
דוד" (“Bëtzal’él and
Oholi’av and every craftsman [hacham lév, literally, ‘wise of
heart’] made the Mishkan, and Scripture attributes it to Moshe?!
Because he dedicated himself to see the form of each and every thing as [G-d]
showed him on the mountain, to instruct those doing the work.... And so David,
because he was dedicated to building the Béyth ha-Miqdash, as it is
said, ‘Remember, Ha-Shem, of David, all his being depressed [because of] what
he swore to Ha-Shem’ [Psalms CXXXII, 1]; therefore it was called on his name, as
it is said, ‘See your house, David’ [I Kings XII, 16]”).
Rashi never comments simply to do so, but ever and always
because he sees some question inherent in the text. What question does he see
here?
It would appear that there is a hava amina, a
presumption, that the Mishkan should not have been attributed to Moshe,
but to all those responsible for fashioning it, that Moshe’s contribution to
the effort was to perform the final assembly after everyone else’s constructive
labor. In such a case, we would expect our verse to be in the passive,
something like the wording of Exodus XL, 17: ויהי בחדש
הראשון בשנה השנית באחד לחדש הוקם המשכן (“And it was in the first month of the
second year, on the first of the month, the Mishkan was erected”).
So, Rashi demonstrates that this was far
from the totality of Moshe’s contribution, that he was involved in every phrase
and stage of the work, instructing, explaining, supervising, inspecting,
ensuring that all went according to Divine plan and order, until: ותכל כל עבדת משכן אהל מועד ויעשו בני ישראל ככל אשר צוה ד' את
משה כן עשו (“And all the work of the Mishkan, the
Tent of Appointment, was completed; and the bënei Yisra’él did according
to everything that Ha-Shem had commanded Moshe; so they did”: ibid., XXXIX, 32).
For that reason, too, our verse properly says that Moshe finished, brought to
completion, ended the work of the Mishkan’s erection.
D.
Why does our verse occur here, in a parasha which
is always read just after or just before Shavu‘oth? As the Shëla”h famously
remarks, there is always an intimate connection between the parashoth and
the time of year they are read.
If the erection of the Mishkan, as our midrash
suggests, constitutes the huppa and qiddushin of Kënesseth
Yisra’él with her groom, the Holy One, Blessed is He, then surely Israel’s
ready qabbalath ha-Torah was the eirusin, the betrothal which
preceded it. Very prominent amongst the hachanoth, the preparations for
the wedding were Moshe’s instructions in Torah, given, as Rashi tells
us, with great mësiruth nefesh, great dedication, serving as an example
and inspiration to us now, having just accepted the Torah anew, of how to learn
and teach it over the next year.
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