A “Betzalel Production”

It always amazes me how many people it takes to make a movie. The end credits of a major production read like the telephone directory of a small town with hundreds of people all involved in bringing us a couple of hours of fantasy. And yet at the beginning of the film there is always one name by itself. “A Francis Ford Copolla Film” or “A “Martin Scorsese Film” or “A Steven Spielberg Production.” In spite of the myriad of workers on a film, the film is still called after its director, for it is his vision that makes the film.

Everything in this world is a marriage of form and matter. Take a spoon for example. The matter of the spoon is the metal. Its form is its shape. The form of something always reveals its purpose. The form of a spoon is that it has a handle at one end to grasp it and a receptacle at the other to contain soup, sugar and the like. The form of something always reveals its purpose, and the purpose of something ultimately reveals its spiritual dimension. Even a spoon has a spiritual side! Everything in this world reveals a marriage of the physical and the spiritual, of matter and shape, of potential and purpose.

Just as the lowest physical object unifies these two entities, so too do the highest of physical existences. The Mishkan, the Tabernacle, was one of the most spiritual physical objects that existed. It was the house in which the Shechina, the Divine Presence, would dwell.

The Mishkan was constructed by many people. Moshe called upon every G-d-fearing man and woman to assist by spinning and weaving tapestries and constructing the components of the walls of the Mishkan with their own hands. The special skill of the women was spinning goat hair for the tapestries. The hair was both fine and stiff which made it difficult to work with.

G-d gave all those who worked on the Mishkan a measure of special know-how. This supernal wisdom was not limited only to humans. Even the animals that transported the beams of the Mishkan knew which route to take and did not require guidance.

The two people in charge of building the Mishkan were Betzalel and Oholiav. G-d gave them a special degree of insight to help them fulfill their task of fashioning the vessels of the Mishkan and to form even the most delicate of patterns, all of which were necessary for the vessels to perform their allotted spiritual functions.

However, in the Torah the only one who seems to receive credit for the building of the Mishkan is Betzalel. The verses in the Torah repeat over and over “and he made it.“

The reason is that Betzalel not only exerted himself in the physical construction of the Mishkan, but he labored more than anyone else to understand the spiritual depths in each of the mystical vessels of the Mishkan. Because of this effort G-d rewarded him with the highest level of spiritual insight into the Mishkan and its implements.

Betzalel endowed the vessels of the Mishkan with lofty and holy thoughts. He was the spiritual maker of all that it contained and thus the Torah attributes the construction to Betzalel alone.

It was a “Betzalel Production.”

Taking Off Your Gloves

You hurry down the platform. You have to take the next train out of town. The train whistles. It’s about to leave. To open the door of the carriage you need to remove your glove. As you do so, the glove slips from your grasp, floats neatly between the bottom of the train and the platform, and lands on the track. There’s nothing you can do. Either you lose the train and save the glove, or lose the glove and catch the train.

What would you do? Miss the train and save the glove? Or save the glove and miss the train? Well, this is what one of the great figures of the Mussar movement did:

He took off his other glove and threw it under the track.

If you look in the written Torah you’ll be hard pressed to find a single mention of the word ‘rights’. Obligations – of these, the Torah is full. Obligations of a master to a slave; the obligations of a child to its parents; of a pupil to his teacher and vice versa; of a community to the poor; of the individual to the community; obligations to the orphaned, to the sick, to the convert; the obligations of man to G-d. ‘Rights’, however, are something that the Torah hardly mentions. Why?

You can construct a legal system that spells out people’s rights ("…all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…" ) or you can write a code, like the written Torah, that spells out their obligations. You’ll get to the same place. The end result will be the same because to the extent that you have obligations you don’t need rights, and vice versa. The end result will be the same.

With one big difference.

If you base a system of law on rights you turn people into takers; if you base it on obligations you turn them into givers.

The Torah wants to create a nation of givers, a nation who will throw the other glove under the train so the person who finds it will have another to complete the pair.