And let all among you who are skilled come and make all that the Eternal has commanded: the Mishkan, its tent and its covering, its clasps and its planks, its bars, its posts, and its sockets … 
Shemot 35:10-11
The command to build the Mishkan (Tabernacle) was a huge mistake. Not because it was not a brilliant idea; it definitely was a superb divine brainwave! But it came much too late, and so it failed to do what it should have done: give the Israelites the strength to observe the commandments given them at Mount Sinai.
God underestimated this structure’s importance. Sure, being God, He must have done so deliberately, but the price for doing so was huge. By waiting so long before instructing the Jews to build this Divine Tent, He seems to have overestimated the Jews and underestimated the psychological impact of this tiny construction.
In fact, one wonders whether God did not miscalculate the whole enterprise of trying to get the Jews to accept the commandments and live by them.
Instead of the Jews being grateful after He rescued them from hundreds of years of Egyptian slavery, and becoming His dedicated followers, disciples and admirers, God encounters one problem after another with them.
On numerous occasions, God and Moshe were forced to call the Jews to order, make them regret their refusal to listen, and ask them to repent, only to see the obstinacy of the people overtake them again soon after.
Even after the splitting of the Yam Suf, the Reed Sea, the historic miracle par excellence, the Jews rebel yet again (See Shemot chapters: 15 and 16).
When God spoke openly to the nearly two million Israelites (six hundred thousand men and many more women and children) at Mount Sinai, telling them that it was He who had taken them out of Egypt, they became so afraid of the Divine voice that they asked Moshe to beg Him to stop this unprecedented heavenly communication. But only a little later, they had the chutzpah, the impertinence, to build a golden calf, dance around it, and worship it, declaring that this calf was their god who took them out of Egypt. As if God had never spoken to them, did not exist, and the experience at Sinai never happened!
This abominable violation of God’s laws — and specifically the most primary one of all, never to make any image of God — is a totally incomprehensible act. How was this possible?
The dangers of passivity
Many of us who were not present at Sinai might claim that we would never have made such a blunder.
And yet, any good psychologist could have warned God that this disaster was to be expected and that He Himself was the Cause of it. And worse, that things would never again be as God had hoped they would be.
The problem of the Jews was that their whole experience in the desert, including the splitting the Red Sea and the giving of the Torah was based on a huge psychological mistake. God had, in His goodness, overacted: The Exodus, the miraculous bread (Mana), the fowl (Tzlav) which fell from the heavens, the splitting of the Reed Sea, the receiving of the Torah at Sinai, the cloud of Glory guiding them through the desert … all this laid the foundation for the Jews’ inability to observe the commandments and listen to God.
In all these cases, there was one major problem: the Israelites were forced to remain totally passive. They were not to have any active part in any of this; they just had to let it all come over them. They had to walk out of Egypt, eat the Passover lamb, consume matzot, and observe a few more small rituals, but for the rest, they were condemned to be merely passive onlookers. All that was asked of them was to hear and obey.
One is reminded of Spinoza’ s (mistaken) claim that all that the Torah demands is obedience and piety.[1]
But this passivity could only be experienced as a betrayal of the Israelites’ dignity. The worst pain a man can have is to know that he is impotent to act, said Herodotus. For all the time after they left Egypt, the Israelites were treated as immature people, who could not stand on their own feet, and had no say in any matter of importance.
This was exactly what they had experienced in the last few hundred years while being slaves in Egypt. They were treated as “good for nothings”. Instead of finally feeling that they were free and treated as people of worth who could prove themselves, they were forced into a deep depression. All that they were asked to do was to obey without any creative input.
This only got worse when God began to speak to them at mount Sinai. All they heard were prohibitions and commandments. There was no divine request to take initiative and be creative.
In fact, in Egypt, they still had a feeling to contribute to society. They built Phitom and Raamses. They could at least have a feeling of accomplishment. “We may have been slaves,” they might have said, “but at least our work required creativity and ingenuity. We had to interact with our Egyptian supervisors, discuss with them how to build these two magnificent cities, be involved and execute the building plans.”
Sure, it was hard labor but as Dostoevsky said: Originality and the feeling of one’s own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.[2]
But in the desert, there was nothing to build, nothing to contribute, nothing to do but walk, rest, to listen and obey.
No wonder the Israelites were seriously thinking of rebelling against Moshe and returning to Egypt! True, it would be slavery again, but at least it would be accompanied by some feeling of worthiness and accomplishment.
Which is worse, the slavery in Egypt, which at least allowed for some gratification, or the feeling of total nothingness in the desert?
The need to act
So, in the subconscious of the Israelites there was a thought slowly growing, a search for any opportunity to become active and to prove themselves — to free themselves from all this negativity and passivity. If such an opportunity was not forthcoming from God, they had to create it themselves!
But when would be the moment to realize this dream? As long as Moshe was around, there was little chance to make this happen. His authority was too overwhelming.
And then God made the “mistake” for which everybody had been waiting! He called Moshe to come to the top of the mountain. It was clear that the purpose of this was to give him yet more instructions for the Jews to obey. More passivity.
This was the moment to act! Once Moshe was out of the way, and God was busy with Moshe at the top of Sinai, the Jews gathered and said: The way is free! Let us build something with our own hands, in which we can participate, be creative, and prove that we are not “good for nothings”; that we are not just slaves, not even to God, but free men of dignity and accomplishment. This structure will be our god, because it will symbolize our competence, give us self-respect, and pull us out of this passivity that is crushing us.
And so it was. They danced around the golden edifice like an artist admiring his work from every side: I am the maker of this! The artist is taken in by his own creativity and feels an enormous feeling of satisfaction.
And so, when God and Moshe look down from the mountain, they find these people in a tumult of exaltation. Neither of them seems to understand what actually happened down there, nor what the motivation was behind this need to build the Golden Calf. Moshe even calls for the death penalty for all those who were involved in this sin. And God made many more die.[3]
Sure, the sin was terrible. To replace God with an idol is intolerable — even when it is the result of the need to create and to feel competent. Still, the motivation makes perfect sense.
The Israelites’ mistake was not their desire to be active and to build something of meaning, but rather, that they declared this object to be their god. Art is nothing more than an attempt to transform an idea into an image. But that is only possible when such an idea is grounded in what the limited human mind can grasp. One can draw an atom on a blackboard, in order to have a figurative idea what it is all about. But we all know that this is not how an atom looks. The image is nothing more than an image, it is not Das Ding an Sich (the thing itself)! Once one starts to believe that it is, it becomes a lie, and in our case, a serious form of idol worship.
The Mishkan
It is only now that God realizes that He overestimated the Jews. He had believed that the Israelites would be so impressed by all the miracles He had performed that they would gladly submit to Him. They would find total satisfaction in serving Him and fulfilling His commandments.
But God Himself had made human beings in His image, which means that just as He is a Creator, so are we. Mere submission to His will could not satisfy this need. And so, God realized that the Israelites would only follow His commandments if they simultaneously would be able to be creative and take action.
It was this realization that brought about the command to build the Tabernacle. Not because God had any need for a dwelling place, but because the Jews were in need of building it and satisfying their need to be creative and to feel competent. Once that would be the case, they would be able to follow God’s commandments as people of dignity, capable of doing great innovative things. Submission to God’s commandments would only work when it would go hand-in-hand with human self-esteem, and a feeling of being a partner with God in His creation.
And so God’s commandment to build the tabernacle came as a replacement for the Golden Calf, a way to rectify the enormous mistake of the Golden Calf, and God’s own insistence that all that was needed was obedience.
This was a different commandment than all commandments given before. It did not ask for submission, but rather the reverse: a call for human initiative and creativity. In fact, it had replaced the Egyptian cities of Phitom and Raamses in which the Jews had at least felt some satisfaction.
Reading this story, we see with what enthusiasm the Israelites threw themselves into this sublime undertaking. They were able to “live it up” and realize this project. How revealing it is that we are constantly reminded that it was the Jews, and notGod, who created this structure. Numerous times we are told that it was God who told them to create it: They will make it … ; They will make the sanctuary; they will make the curtains, they will make the golden altar, etc.
There was no divine intervention in the construction of the Mishkan; it was solely man-made. It even had human architects: Bezalel ben Uri and Oholiav ben Achisamach.
The fact that it was all made by human beings seems to have so impressive that the Torah spends 250-300 verses on this small structure, compared to only 31 verses to describe the creation of the universe!
Only a partial answer
But it was God Himself who was responsible for the earlier debacle of the Golden Calf. Had He realized at the very beginning that it would be “mission impossible” for the Jews to submit themselves to His commandments without first asking them to be full partners in His creation, the Israelites would not have made so much trouble. Their honor would have been upheld, and they would have enjoyed the journey to becoming God’s people.
In fact some commentators, among them Ovadia Seforno,[4] suggest that God would not have needed to give so many commandments — including some of the Kashrut laws, many of the laws concerning sexuality, and the laws concerning sacrifices — had it not been for the incident of the Golden Calf. These laws would have been unnecessary, for had the Israelites felt themselves to be people of standing, they would have been strong enough to become the Chosen people without the extra instructions. They would have felt themselves to be playing an important role in the creation of the world. Judaism would have looked very different.
But it was no longer possible to rectify everything. The damage done by keeping the Jews passive at the beginning of their story never completely healed. And God and the Jews payed the price.
The feeling of being commanded, and having just passively to obey, stayed with the Jews and was never completely relinquished. It has remained with us until this very day.
And so, a sad chapter ended in Jewish history, but we live in its shadow.
After all, every sin has its origin in a sense of inadequacy.
Questions to Ponder
- In this essay, Rabbi Cardozo posits that the building of the Mishkan was commanded because “the Jews were in need of building it and satisfying their need to be creative and to feel competent.” Do you agree?
- Do you agree with the contention (which has been put forward by many other commentators) that the Mishkan was a response to the incident of the Golden Calf? What other reasons for building the Mishkan can you think of?
- It’s been pointed out that the Mishkan bears similarities to the traveling “palace” in which the Egyptian pharaoh would reside when out on campaign with his armies. Michael Homan famously showed the parallels between the structure of the Mishkan and the military tent of Ramses II, the very same pharaoh who is believed to have reigned at the time of the Exodus.[5] If the Mishkan was meant to be like the military tent of an earthly king, does that undermine Rabbi Cardozo’s thesis that its building was meant to empower the Israelites?
- Do you agree that “every sin has its origin in a sense of inadequacy”? Can you think of supporting examples? Contradictory examples?
Notes
[1] See: Tractatus Theologico Politicus, Chapter 14.
[2] A Diary of a Writer, 1873
[3] Shemot 32
[4] See Seforno on Vayikra: 11:2.
[5] Michael M. Homan, “The Tabernacle in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context” TheTorah.com (2018). https://thetorah.com/article/the-tabernacle-in-its-ancient-near-eastern-context
