Shemos Chapter 36 – Transcript

Shemot Chapter 36: The Structure of the Mishkan’s Construction

A Chapter Division Error

We need to start a tiny bit before the beginning of this chapter, specifically because, as my friend taught me today, this chapter beginning is entirely confused. It seems to have made a simple mistake, whoever organized the chapters here.

In order to explain, let’s go back a little bit, all the way to the beginning of the previous chapter, chapter 35, which is the beginning of Parshat Vayakhel and obviously the beginning of this part of the story of building the Mishkan.

The Structure of Chapter 35

The first step was Moshe got together all the people and told them the mitzvah of the Mishkan. We’re skipping the connection of Shabbos. He told them the mitzvah of the Mishkan.

What specifically did he tell them?

First, he told them that they should all bring their donations of the materials needed for the Mishkan—the gold, the silver and so on, the whole long list.

Second, he told them that they need people to volunteer, which means something like artists or artisans, to come and create all the parts of the Mishkan. And he gives them a list of the parts of the Mishkan and the vessels of the Mishkan.

That concludes Moshe’s speech and they all leave.

The Response: Donations of Material

Then we have the part where they actually come and bring all of the donations to the Mishkan, and we have a long list, even more detailed in some sense, of who brings what. But everyone bringing their parts for the Mishkan. So that corresponds to the first part of Moshe’s speech where he asked everyone for donations and they’re getting the donations.

The Response: Donations of Labor

Now comes the part corresponding to the second part of his speech, of his donation drive, so to speak, where he asked them for donation of labor. We could say there’s donation of material and donation of labor.

And now something changes. Instead of just having a list of who came, we actually get a description, and both of these things really correspond to what Hashem already told them, and we already saw the choice of Bezalel earlier in Parshat Ki Tisa when Hashem was speaking to him.

But anyways, now what we have is, when we come to the part of having who is going to do the work, we have actually a choice. It says God called the name, Hashem called the name Bezalel, and then also Oholiav, who will be in charge of the actual creating, of the actual work of making the Mishkan and all of its vessels and all of its parts.

Moshe’s Speech About Bezalel

So that’s the second part, and that’s another speech. It’s presented in two parts.

The first part is a speech of Moshe to the people. Moshe tells the people, look, see, God has called in the name of Bezalel and given him wisdom, filled him with the Ruach Elokim, which is wisdom, as we read in the week’s parashah last week, the story of Yosef for previous weeks. The Ruach Elokim here means wisdom or a certain innate talent, which they have.

And it gave him also a talent of teaching. God gave him a talent to teach. In other words, he will be in charge of all the other people who came to volunteer to do all the work, him and Oholiav.

And it gives a long description of all kinds of arts that they know well, and along with everyone else, every chacham, chacham lev, which again means here, wise in the sense of practical art, they know how to do these arts. God gave them the wisdom to do this, they will do all these things.

So that concludes Moshe’s speech to the people, and it’s important that they know that God chose Bezalel, they shouldn’t maybe be jealous, they should follow his instructions, and so on.

Where Chapter 36 Actually Starts—And Why It’s Wrong

This is precisely where this chapter starts, in the end of this part, in the end of Moshe’s speech about Bezalel. And the language is, it seems like—and this is where chapter 36 started—it seems like to whoever cut up the chapters, they thought that this is really a new part of the story.

Because if you read according to the way that he cuts up the chapters, he tries to cut them into logical parts of the story. So we have the part of the command part, the mitzvah, which he told the people, and then the next part of the story really is how they’re actually doing it, and we have a long description of doing each part, right? First the Mishkan, the curtains, the yeriot of the Mishkan, and then the vessels of the Mishkan, and then the parts of the bigger structure. You get a long list, a long description of each part, doing it.

And he started, this chapter started with this, because he thought that this is the beginning of Bezalel doing, doing, making, creating. V’asa doesn’t mean doing here, right? It means creating, creating all of these things.

The truth is, though, that this is just still part of Moshe telling the people that he will do. So v’asa, it’s not saying “and he did,” it’s saying “and he will do,” or “he should do.” All of these things, it’s a future command, or just telling us in the future what will happen, as it’s obvious from the context. And also, anyone that knows dikduk, that v’asa means “and he should do,” or “he will do,” not “and he did.”

So that just seems to be a mistake. That’s why in order to start this chapter, we have to start a little earlier.

Moshe Speaks to Bezalel and the Artisans

Then the next part we have, the next second part of this, is that Moshe speaks to Bezalel and Oholiav and the people who have come and volunteered to do the work themselves. So first he spoke to the rest of the people, the Bnei Yisrael, Adat Bnei Yisrael.

It seems to be important also in this story that he gathered all the people. By the way, if you want to compare it to the story of the Egel, where there’s also a similar story, a corresponding story, of the soliciting donations and then receiving them, then it’s very clear over there that it’s not all the people. There isn’t like an Adat Bnei Yisrael doing it here. There’s an explicit emphasis on Kol Adat Bnei Yisrael did it.

So therefore, they all seem to have to know at least about the appointment of Bezalel. Maybe they didn’t have to consent to it in some sense.

And now he calls Bezalel and Oholiav themselves and the people that are going to work along with them to start doing the work, to actually do the work.

Bezalel’s First Act: Stopping the Donations

And what is the first thing these people do? First thing they do is they actually take all the materials that were donated. Now, as they’re taking it, people are still bringing more. And this becomes the first act that Bezalel seems to do. The first act that he does is not the actual creation of the Mishkan, but the cessation of bringing the donations.

So each wise person, each chacham comes—for each person in charge of his part of his art that he knows. And it seems like we should imagine they check how much gold we need, how much silver we need, how much materials we need, and so on.

And they come to Moshe and they say, the people are bringing too much. They’re bringing more than what is needed for the work that God has commanded. We know, right? They got the plans. They got all the detailed plans, although we don’t yet have the detailed plans. We read them in Parshat Terumah and Tetzaveh, the detailed plans, and then we’re going to read them in some sense again when they’re being done.

But we have to assume that in between, Moshe read this to the people, the artisans in charge, and therefore they knew how much they need, and they came and they told Moshe, we’re receiving more donations than needed according to the plans.

And therefore Moshe commands them to proclaim. So send out a proclamation. That’s interesting. We had the kol also in the story of the Egel and other places. But here just the simple meaning is just an idiom for announcing something. Like literally making a voice go around or go over in the camp. But it just means they sent around messengers with announcements saying no man or woman should bring more for the donations.

And they actually stopped, and there was enough for everything and even more than enough. And of course later we get an accounting of what they did with everything. So what happened with this more than enough? We could imagine that we need always more than enough—you know, some parts are not working out, you need to fix it and so on.

The True Beginning of the Construction

So that’s the end of this first part of the story. This is really where if the person cutting up the chapters would have been smart, as I did actually in my book, you see that here starts a new part of the story, which is the actual Asiyat HaMishkan, the creation of the Mishkan.

Until now, the story of the gathering, of bringing the donations and getting together both the materials and the people. And here starts the actual creation of the Mishkan.

The Repetition of Details

Now, for the actual creation of the Mishkan, as we said, it goes through at great length, or at exactly the precise amount of length, we should say, all the parts of the Mishkan, and describes all of it.

And in a major sense, this is entirely a repetition of what we learned in Parshat Terumah and then later in Parshat Tetzaveh of the measurements, the exact amounts, the exact materials, how it was done. There isn’t any, almost any at least, any more details. It’s not like when we get the—I would have written it in the way that, you know, it tells you the plans and now you get some implementation details. You don’t actually get any implementation details or maybe one or two.

I haven’t right now put in the time to do a clear comparison, but it seems to me, and Rashi also more or less assumed—Rashi says over here, that he’s not going to do a lot of interpretation because he explained everything how it’s going to be already in the previous parshiyot. There are some differences, some language changes, but more or less the same structure and the same information. You just say it just—what we have is the actual happening of it.

And of course this is one of the questions on the structure of this book: why we have this very lengthy description of everything? It seems like just a story. Just like when we read a story it’s nice to say, you know, like for example we read the story of the Mabul—you know, God is telling you that there’s gonna be a Mabul and maybe even give some details, and then this actually happened. So in a very similar way here there’s the whole drama of him telling him and then it’s actually happening.

And for us maybe we don’t care so much about how many inches there was in each thing, but that is actually the story that this story is trying to tell us and therefore tells it.

But I will also go more or less like Rashi did today and just talk about what it says and not get into details of how it was and so on.

The Order of Construction vs. The Order of Command

So the first part—and of course this is a different order than we had in Parshat Terumah. Famously, Rashi explains that Bezalel changed the order because in Parshat Terumah, and we could explain this also in a practical sense, right? In some sense, the most important part of the Mishkan, the most holy part, we could say the central part, is actually the keilim. We start with the Aron, where the Shechinah is, and then the other keilim and so on, and therefore that’s the order in Parshat Terumah.

But actually to make it, you don’t start with that, you would start with the external part. To build a building and paint it and do all the things about it. So the order of asiyah versus tzivui—the order over here is the order from the outside in instead of the order from inside out what we had before.

So the first part…

The Layered Structure of the Mishkan

The Yeriot HaMishkan – First Level

This is the description of the Yeriot HaMishkan, the first level that they made.

The Yeriot Izim – Second Level

Then we have the second level, which is called the Yeriot Izim, which is the Ohel HaMishkan – a tent on the Mishkan. Again we have this language, Ohel, of course, just a word that means tent. HaMishkan also something just like tent or dwelling place. Apparently this is meant to be like some protection and it’s a little bigger, which makes sense because it’s going to be a protective layer. The lower layer is like a more beautiful layer, more delicate and needs protection, which is the Yeriot Izim which is a more coarse material and it’s protecting it.

There were more – previously we had 10, now we have 11. Previously we had 28 amot long, now we have 30 amot long, also by four because that doesn’t change, but we have a whole four more because there’s one whole you need more. Therefore, instead of having them being two parts of 5 and 5, now there’s two parts 5 and 6, and again connected with 50 loops. Earlier the loops were gold, now the loops are copper. Again, because this is at a higher level, this is not really about beauty, this is more about function or protection. And this is put on top.

The Third and Fourth Layers – Mikhseh Ohel

Then there’s even a third layer called, or maybe a third and a fourth layer, depending on how you read this, and it’s called Mikhseh Ohel, like a covering for the Ohel. Maybe like another layer of protection for rain or some, even more coarser materials made out of leather – leather of reddened leather of Eilim and another one of Tachashim. And then apparently these are, you could see how it’s getting progressively more coarse material and more protective. So from the more beautiful material that’s on the inside, they get these higher levels of coarse materials outlined and they did all of this. So that’s the end of the fabric, the fabrics of the Mishkan called the Mishkan here.

The Kerashim – Wooden Parts

Then we have one more part called the Kerashim, the wooden parts which are holding up the fabric. And again, in all of this is more or less the same we had before. We have the description of the Kerashim, their size. Each one is ten amot high, or here it’s called long, interestingly. I think that’s why it says, because they’re standing up, but we describe them as if they’re length and they’re width, instead of their height and their width, which is interesting. And anyway, they’re 10 by one and a half.

Each one has these Yadot, like hands that hold them – literally hands but like means like pegs or something – and they’re going to be put into something called Adonim which we discussed, Adonim made out of silver. One for each Yad, and how many of these? There’s double the amount of Adonim as the amount of Kerashim. There’s 20 Kerashim on each side, so 40 Adonim on each side, the long sides. Then at the end, the west side, we have six, and two more for the corners, so it’s together eight, or 16 Adonim.

Then there is something called Berichim, some kind of beam something that holds together. These are a bunch of separate, right, 20, 28, and 48 separate Adonim total – sorry, it’s 48 separate Kerashim. Something has to hold them together, so this is the Berichim. There’s five for each side, so together 15, maybe even a 16th one for the middle, or maybe the middle one is one of those five, which connect all the Kerashim. And this is analogous to like the hooks that we had by the Yeriot. The whole Mishkan is made like this because it’s portable, so there’s these smaller parts and then they get put together into one big thing in order to connect them all together.

We have also the description of how the Kerashim, although they were wood, they were covered in gold, and also their hooks or their rings in which the beams were put were also made out of gold. So that’s the story of the main structure of the Mishkan – the fabrics and the beams so to speak that hold them.

The Entrance Coverings

Now we need a door also. We just talked about the – because we discussed in the previous story if you followed, we only had three sides. We talked about the right side, left side and the back side, or the Tzafon, Darom and Ma’arav. We don’t really have a front.

In the front we have two things. We have firstly in the middle we have the Parochet. Parochet is going to go in the middle. It has also four beams to hold it, so the Parochet is also made out of fabric, the same kind of fabric as the Mishkan itself, right, the Yeriot HaMishkan. It has four beams of wood and gold covered to hold it.

Then there’s also another Parochet called a Masakh here, not called Parochet but called Masakh. Apparently Parochet is a fancier word that means specifically something fancy or something like that, and the Masakh for the door, again created out of those same fabric, but the beams holding it are not gold – the Adonim holding are not gold but copper. So the similar gradation we see: the internal one is entirely covered with gold, the external one, more external one, is covered with copper, although the hooks and the headers are covered with gold.

So that’s the story of the creation of the main structure of the Mishkan.