Parashat Pekudei begins: אֵלֶּה פְקוּדֵי הַמִּשְׁכָּן מִשְׁכַּן הָעֵדֻת (Shemot 38:21). Up to now it was collecting the material for the Mishkan, and now the process of building starts. Who is in charge of building the Mishkan? Together with him there was also Ohaliav, but primarily it was Bezalel. Bezalel got an order from Moshe Rabbeinu how to build the Mishkan, step by step.
The Torah says: וּבְצַלְאֵל בֶּן־אוּרִי בֶן־חוּר לְמַטֵּה יְהוּדָה עָשָׂה אֵת כׇּל־אֲשֶׁר־צִוָּה ה’ אֶת־מֹשֶׁה (Shemot 38:22). Rashi points out that it doesn’t say “what Moshe commanded” but “all that Hashem commanded Moshe”: אֲפִלּוּ דְּבָרִים שֶׁלֹּא אָמַר לוֹ רַבּוֹ, הִסְכִּימָה דַּעְתּוֹ לְמַה שֶּׁנֶּאֱמַר לְמֹשֶׁה בְּסִינַי. Bezalel was right on the ball. Moshe Rabbeinu told Bezalel to first make the Kelim and then the Mishkan. Bezalel came to him and said: מִנְהַג עוֹלָם לַעֲשׂוֹת תְּחִלָּה בַּיִת וְאַחַר כָּךְ מֵשִׂים כֵּלִים בְּתוֹכוֹ. The normal process of people is first to do the house, and then to put the utensils inside: the furniture, the appliances, all the things you need in the house. You don’t first buy everything you need for the house and then look for a house.
Some people get engaged and don’t find a house, so they get married and they still don’t have a house; some even take it easy and don’t look: we’ll get a house afterwards. That is what Bezalel is saying over here: first you find a house. The Rambam says that the process is that one should first find a job, buy a house, and then get married. The Talmud says it the opposite way, that first a person gets married and then he gets all the other things. But the right procedure is that first a person gets settled. Today people do it a little differently, but that’s not our discussion for today.
Moshe Rabbeinu told Bezalel: amazing, how did you know? כָּךְ שָׁמַעְתִּי מִפִּי הקב”ה, that is exactly what Hashem told me. בְּצֵל אֵל הָיִיתָ: were you in the shadow of Hashem when He spoke to me? That’s why he was called Bezalel, b’tzel E-l, in the shadow of Hashem. And this is the way they ended up doing it: first the Mishkan and then the Kelim.
But it’s an interesting thing. What was Moshe Rabbeinu thinking, that he did it differently than what Hashem said? And how did Bezalel know that you need to do it the right way, first the house and then the Kelim?
Avodat Hashem Doesn’t Mean Out of the Ordinary
I heard from Rabbi Press, in the name of Rav Shmuel Birnbaum, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Mir, a very nice thought. The machloket between Moshe Rabbeinu and Bezalel was the following. Moshe Rabbeinu understood that whenever you do Avodat Hashem, whenever you do things for Hakadosh Baruch Hu and want to be more spiritual, you have to do things out of the ordinary, differently than you would do any other thing. Normally people first buy the house, then the furniture and the appliances, and then bring the kallah into the house. But this is Avodat Hashem; it needs to be extra special. First you do the inside, and then you do the outside.
But Bezalel told him: no. Minhag ha’olam. There is a strength in the words minhag ha’olam. One who is doing Avodat Hashem, at least in the beginning, should know that Avodat Hashem doesn’t mean you do outrageous things and jump the ladder to the last step. There is a quality in doing things exactly the way they should be done normally. Normal also has its place in Avodat Hashem.
Some people think that if I want to do Avodat Hashem, I have to not sleep at night, cut my hours of sleep very much, sleep one day yes and one day no, eat very little, roll in the snow, all kinds of things that torture myself. The Torah says over here: not necessarily. A person can be an oved Hashem who goes to sleep on time, wakes up on time, goes in the morning to pray, eats breakfast, then goes to learn or to work, and lives a normal life. That is also Avodat Hashem, as long as the structure is structured by the Torah. Later on, if a person wants to go up the ladder and start doing things a little extra, that’s fine. But slowly, slowly, so that it is already inside him, implemented, part of him.
People sometimes have that feeling we spoke about in the past, called frumkeit: an instinct to jump the ladder. I love Hakadosh Baruch Hu so much, I want to be so spiritual, and he jumps all the way to the last step, and right afterwards he drops all the way to the bottom. So Bezalel tells Moshe Rabbeinu: let’s do it the normal way, that’s what Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants. And Moshe Rabbeinu understands: you’re right, this is what Hashem actually told me to do. Minhag ha’olam has a very good place in Avodat Hashem as well.
The Mirrors of the Women
We found this also in the last parasha, Vayakhel. The women contributed to the Mishkan the mar’ot hatzov’ot, the mirrors, and from those mirrors they built the kiyor, with which the Kohanim purified their hands and feet when they did the avodah. What were the mirrors used for? Rashi says: בְּנוֹת יִשְׂרָאֵל הָיוּ בְיָדָן מַרְאוֹת שֶׁרוֹאוֹת בָּהֶן כְּשֶׁהֵן מִתְקַשְּׁטוֹת, they used them to beautify themselves, and even those they did not hold back from the donation to the Mishkan.
Moshe Rabbeinu, when he saw that, couldn’t tolerate it: וְהָיָה מוֹאֵס מֹשֶׁה בָּהֶן מִפְּנֵי שֶׁעֲשׂוּיִם לְיֵצֶר הָרָע. Mirrors are made for the yetzer hara. You want to use that for the holiest place of all, to purify the hands and feet of the Kohanim so they can do the avodah in kedusha and tahara? How is that possible?
Hakadosh Baruch Hu had a totally different approach: קַבֵּל, כִּי אֵלּוּ חֲבִיבִין עָלַי מִן הַכֹּל. Not only accept it, not only is it not disgusting as you say, but these are the most beloved things to Me of everything. One extreme to another. And the reason is that through these mirrors הֶעֱמִידוּ הַנָּשִׁים צְבָאוֹת רַבּוֹת בְּמִצְרַיִם; they had more children.
You would say a woman should make sure she doesn’t look too much in the mirror and doesn’t beautify herself. Hakadosh Baruch Hu says: no, no. You have to know, minhag ha’olam; this is the normal way, this is how I created the world. And if you do it l’shem shamayim, for the right purpose, this is the most beloved thing in My eyes.
Using the Physical World for Hashem
We said last year that the things Hakadosh Baruch Hu created in the six days of creation are things He wants us to use for the work of Hashem. Not like other religions that have different ideas of what to do with the physical things of the world. Every physical thing that G-d created, He wants us to use in a physical manner, but l’shem shamayim, and when you do that you elevate it to the work of G-d. The same with the mirrors: use the mirror for what it was created for, and do it l’shem shamayim.
We said last year that this is the idea of Shabbat. Shabbat reminds us that the world was created; it wasn’t there forever. Since Hashem created the world, He created physical things for human beings to benefit from them, l’shem shamayim. If it’s food, you eat it. But why do you eat it? So you can do the right things afterwards: go to shul, raise your kids to Torah and mitzvot, take care of your family, go to work to bring money for your family. If that is what you do with your strength after you eat and sleep, then you are eating and sleeping for G-d. On Shabbat we demonstrate that by eating and taking care of our body. Oneg Shabbat is an obligation; it’s a mitzvah. One cannot take it lightly and say, I’m not so interested in eating good, delicious food on Shabbat. No, you have to. Why? Because we are showing that G-d created these things for human beings to enjoy. And what do you do with that? You do the right thing: you make a bracha before and a bracha after, you go to sleep for the work of G-d. If a person does everything with the structure of the Torah, wakes up, washes netilat yadayim, goes to shul, prays, comes back, eats breakfast and bentches, these are the most beloved things to Hashem.
Jumping the Ladder
But jumping the ladder is a very dangerous thing. One can raise himself slowly, slowly, and when he feels he conquered the first step and it is now part of him and he’s safe to take the extra step, that’s beautiful. But if it’s still a little shaky and he takes the extra step, he’ll be even more shaky.
That was the mistake of Nadav and Avihu, who brought an esh zarah on the mizbe’ach. Some of the meforshim explain that the frumkeit, the Avodat Hashem, was burning inside their hearts. They saw the Mishkan and the mizbe’ach and couldn’t wait; they ran inside and brought fire. But that’s not Avodat Hashem, because Hashem didn’t command it. Do things normal; don’t jump the gun. Nadav and Avihu died on that day because of that.
Chava too. How did she end up eating from the Etz Hada’at Tov Vara, whatever the fruit was? She went the extra step. She told the nachash that Hashem said not only don’t eat from it, but also don’t touch it. She took upon herself extra things, and that led her to the aveirah of eating from the tree.
Elisha ben Avuyah and the Fire
I heard a beautiful chiddush from my good friend Moshe Franco. In Masechet Chagigah, daf 15, the Gemara speaks about Acher, Elisha ben Avuyah, who went off the derech. He was such a giant in Torah, the rebbe of Rabbi Meir; you can’t get higher than that. Why did he go off? Tosfot brings the Yerushalmi, where Elisha ben Avuyah himself said what took him off. His father was from the greatest people in Yerushalayim, and at his brit all the great Talmidei Chachamim and leaders of Yerushalayim came. Everybody was eating, drinking, singing and dancing, and Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua said: let everybody do their business; let us go and learn Torah. As they were reviewing the Torah, going from Torah to Nevi’im, a fire came down from heaven and surrounded them. Avuyah came and told them: Rabbis, you came to burn my house? They told him: don’t worry, we are only learning Torah, and the Torah rejoices as on the day it was given at Sinai, when the fire came down. Avuyah said: this is the power of Torah? If so, my son will be completely designated to Torah. And the Gemara says that since his intention was not for the right purpose, he lost his son.
The question is: what’s wrong? Don’t we know that a person should always learn Torah and do mitzvot shelo lishmah, because from shelo lishmah he comes to lishmah? He saw the fire, the honor, the big lights, he got excited, and he wanted that for his son. That is the process of shelo lishmah coming to lishmah, so why does Elisha ben Avuyah say this was the mistake?
And not only that. Once Rabbi Meir saw his rebbe Elisha ben Avuyah violating Shabbat and told him: come back, come back to Yiddishkeit. He said: I can’t, it’s too late. I already heard from behind the curtain: שׁוּבוּ בָּנִים שׁוֹבָבִים — חוּץ מֵאַחֵר (Chagigah 15a). Everybody is welcome to do teshuva, the door is always open, except Acher. But so what if you heard that? G-d created teshuva so that when a person sins, he can always do teshuva. Why was he so taken back by it?
Moshe Franco said a beautiful chiddush. If Avuyah had only meant to give his son over to Torah, and slowly, slowly Elisha ben Avuyah would build himself up, that would be fine. But the mistake was that as soon as the boy was a little big and knew how to read, he wanted him to be the highest and the best right away, a Gadol Hador, not giving him a chance to do any other thing. When every kid in the class was playing ball outside, Elisha ben Avuyah was in the Beit Midrash. The father was pumping Torah into him. Many times a person is not on the level to tolerate such a thing, and he jumped the ladder much too high and crashed right down. That is the fire he saw: I want that fire, I want it now, and my son is going to get it immediately. But the rabbis didn’t get that fire immediately; they worked slowly, slowly up the ladder until they reached it.
I heard this many times: when we read sifrei tzadikim we see the wonderful things the tzadikim did, the Torah they learned, how from the time they were young they always knew some very deep answer. That is very misleading. Every gadol went through a process. He fell and failed, he got up, he fell again and he got up again. You don’t conquer that high level immediately; it’s slowly, slowly.
When Rabbi Meir told Elisha ben Avuyah to come back, why couldn’t he? Because when a person has that understanding that I have to be the best right away, and if something falls and doesn’t go the way I want there’s no second chance, then he is not able to pick himself up, and that is the worst thing. We go through our lives with so much turbulence and so many hard days, and one needs to know: it’s not the end of the world. Today you fall, the next day you pick yourself up. Rabbeinu Tam writes that there are days of love and days of hate: sometimes a person feels his Avodat Hashem is down, he doesn’t have that excitement. Rabbeinu Tam says: don’t worry about it, eventually the feelings come back. כִּי שֶׁבַע יִפּוֹל צַדִּיק וָקָם (Mishlei 24:16).
That was the mistake of Elisha ben Avuyah: he got the fire immediately. When you want the fire immediately and you fall one time, you can hear all the voices in the world and you won’t be able to pick yourself up. Anybody else would say: so what, I fell, I pick myself up; it’s only a voice. And he would eventually conquer as well.
So this is the idea over here. Moshe Rabbeinu tells Bezalel: let’s build the Mishkan in such a way that first the Kelim are there, and then around them the Mishkan. Bezalel tells him: you can’t do that. Minhag ha’olam la’asot techilah bayit. You have to be normal. You want to do things out of the ordinary? That’s very nice. When you first conquer being normal, then go one small step at a time, trying and seeing if you can conquer the next step. But a person should always start with מִנְהַג עוֹלָם לַעֲשׂוֹת תְּחִלָּה בַּיִת וְאַחַר כָּךְ מֵשִׂים כֵּלִים בְּתוֹכוֹ.
Based on Rabbi Shay Tahan’s class “JRoot Radio – Mar 11, 2016 – Parashat Pekudei” (Parashat Pekudei): listen to the class.
