AND THE LORD SAID TO MOSES:

"GO, DESCEND, FOR YOUR PEOPLE THAT YOU HAVE BROUGHT UP FROM THE LAND OF EGYPT HAVE ACTED CORRUPTLY.

THEY HAVE QUICKLY TURNED AWAY

FROM THE PATH THAT I HAVE COMMANDED THEM; THEY HAVE MADE THEMSELVES A MOLTEN

CALF! AND THEY HAVE PROSTRATED THEMSELVES BEFORE IT, SLAUGHTERED SACRIFICES TO

IT, AND SAID: 'THESE ARE YOUR GODS, O ISRAEL,

WHO HAVE BROUGHT YOU UP FROM THE LAND

OF EGYPT.' "

(Shemot 32:7-8)

The point is that the Torah and faith are what is essential for the

Israelite nation. All of the types of holiness, [that of] the Land of Israel,

Jerusalem and the Temple, they are but details and branches of

the Torah, and they are sanctified through the Torah's holiness. Therefore,

there is no distinction between different places in regard to matters of the

Torah, and it is the same both within and without the Land of Israel,

except for the commandments that depend on being in the Land…

The mind is too poor to grasp the necessary, eternal, and inconceivable Existent,

and so they invented for themselves ways to make shapes and images, or thought

of the celestial system, saying: this is the chariot of the Divinity, and this

observes and causes all worldly happenings, and they worshipped it and

sacrificed to it and burnt incense before it. And that which is grasped through

the senses and is seen brings about dancing of the soul and boiling blood. And

when they saw that Moses was late to return, they fell from their faith and wanted

to make for themselves a calf, and to bring down spirit from above upon that

image and to think of it as the chariot of the Divinity, that which presides

over the lower world, and which took them up from Egypt… regarding this Moses

cried out like a crane: Do you think that I am of any importance and that there

is any holiness besides God's commands, so much so that when I was absent you

made a calf for yourselves?! God forbid! I am a human like yourselves and the

Torah does not depend on me – even if I never had arrived the Torah would exist

without any change… Do not imagine, God forbid, that the Temple and the Tabernacle are intrinsically

holy objects! God dwells among His sons, and if they, to a man, have

transgressed the Covenant (Hosea 6:7), all holiness

is removed from them, and they become like profane vessels "intruders came

and desecrated it." Titus entered the Holy of Holies with a prostitute and

was not harmed (Gittin

56b) because its holiness had

been removed. More than that – the Tablets

– the writing of God – are not holy in themselves, but only for you. When the bride fornicated under her canopy

became as mere pottery shards – they lacked any intrinsic holiness – they are

only [holy] for you when you observe [that which is written on] them. The

conclusion is that there is

holy in His necessary existence, and to whom praise and worship is fitting.

(Meshekh Hokhma Shemot

32:19)

The

Construction of the Tabernacle: Work or Art?

Dov

Abramson

Take me to the Israelite camp by the

mountain

To see this busyness in the desert

In the slum of immigrant tent-dwellers.

I will wander a bit and breathe the smell of

laborers

In the immigrant slum the smell of laborers

                             . . .

I will go to the carpenters who carve acacia

wood

The Tabernacle's walls, tablets, altar, and

furniture.

From the smell of glue and sawdust, alcohol

and turpentine

They dream to grab a good place in the

middle of Florentine

Show me the carpenters who carve acacia wood…

And here a doubt attacks me from show

business

Will all of the crafts be allotted air time?

Or only those craftsmen who think thoughts

Who draw shapes that are embroidered or carved?

Show me the craftsmen who draw the thoughts.

                                                                             (Meir Ariel, Shir HaTa'asuka)

See, I have called by name Bezalel… and I have imbued him with the spirit of God, with wisdom, with

insight, with knowledge, and with [talent for] all manner of craftsmanship.

In our parasha we make acquaintance with Bezalel ben Hur, who we have

learned to think of as being the first Jewish artist. It is interesting to note

that Scripture does not use the word for "art"– omanut – in

connection with Bezelel.¹ Furthermore, we do not find its root, alef-mem-nun

used in this sense in connection with the building of the Tabernacle; it

appears nowhere in the five books of the Torah.² Perhaps in our day

we would have described Bezalel's tremendous and undoubted talent as more of a

craft than an art.³ It is reasonable to assume that Bezalel did not

create "art for art's sake."We can also assume that the strict,

precise and dictated framework of the Tabernacle's construction left him no

room for expressions of his own feelings, emotions, or beliefs. Such expression

is usually taken in our day as a basic criterion for the production of art.

Together with this, we can see that the Sages made a great effort to

attribute to Bezalel in particular, and to all those involved in the

construction of the Tabernacle in general, special virtues and qualities that

turn them into much more than mere skilled and professional artisans.

Rashi (Shemot

31:3) plainly states that

Bezalel was imbued with the Holy Spirit, and RaMBaN (Shemot 31:2) backs this up with the argument that someone

who came out of Egypt where he worked only with mud and filth all the days of

his life could not possibly be expert at crafts such as embroidery and weaving,

not to speak of fine arts such as gold and silver-smithing. Thus he explains

the need for God to call out Bezalel's name and to fill him with the divine

spirit, as mentioned in Scripture.

The Gemara in Berakhot 55a goes to even greater lengths in describing

Bezalel's unique qualities:

R. Yitzhak said: A leader should not be set upon the public unless the

public accepts him first, for it is said: See [plural], I have called by name Bezalel . The Holy One blessed be He said to Moses: "Is

Bezalel acceptable to you?"He told Him: "Master of the Universe, if

he is acceptable to You, shall he not be acceptable to me as well?"He told

him: "Even so, tell them [the Israelites]. He went and said to Israel: "Is

Bezalel acceptable to you? They told him: If he is acceptable to the Holy One

blessed be He and to you, shall he not be acceptable to us as well?”

And further:

R. Shemuel bar Nahmani said in the name of R. Yohanan: Bezalel was named

for his wisdom.

When the Holy One blessed be He told Moses: Go tell Bezalel "Make Me

a Tabernacle, an ark, and vessels,"Moses reversed the order and told him: "Make

an ark, vessels, and a Tabernacle.”

[Bezalel] told him: Our Rabbi Moses, it is customary for a man to first

build a house and then bring vessels into it, and you tell me to make an ark,

vessels, and Tabernacle? Where am I to put the vessels I make? Perhaps the Holy

One blessed be He said to make a tabernacle, ark, and vessels?

He said to him: Perhaps you were betzel el [in God's shadow] that

you know this?

And finally:

R. Yehuda said in the name of Rav: Bezalel knew how to combine the letter

from which heaven and earth were created.

All of these sources form a picture of Bezalel in which he is not only a

talented and versatile artist/artisan (after all, he worked in architecture,

interior design, typography, metalwork, weaving, etc.) but also a leader ("leader

of the community”), a mystic ("combines letters”) and Moses' interlocutor.

It seems that the multicolored image of Bezalel springs from the nature

of the Tabernacle project as understood by the Sages.⁴ The

Tabernacle, which the Sages viewed as constituting a physical this-worldly

expression of the Holy one blessed be He's presence, could not have been

constructed by a lesser person.

It seems that the Sages of Israel – even unintentionally – used the

figure of Bezalel to relate to the complex issue of "the essence of art"in

general and "What is Jewish art?"in particular.⁵ They did

this by giving expression to Bezalel's multi-dimensionality, thus sketching a

portrait of Jewish art as art which cannot remain at the level of work alone. By

its very nature it calls for a combination of the elements of originality,

spirituality, and leadership.

1 Onkelos

translates and in hewing stone (Shemot 31:6) as "in the art of stone…"see also Rashi.

2 The word oman ["artist"or "artisan”]

occurs only once in Scripture, in the Song of Songs (7:2): Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the

work of an artist’s hands. In Da’at Mikra, Amos Hakham points out

that this grammatical construction is odd because it’s accented letter mem

is inconsistent with the way the names of the other occupation-names are formed

in Hebrew [tabah, nagar, etc.]. The word comes from the Acadian,

and there, apparently, from the earlier Sumerian.

3 The

issue of craft vs. art is quite complicated. The boundaries between them are unclear

and are being constantly re-examined. Usually we attribute greater emotional

involvement to art than we do to craft. Of course, this issue is interwoven

with the general debate over the nature of art and the criteria for identifying

a work of art

4 See

R. Samson Raphael Hirsch on our parasha in which he treats the symbolism of the

Tabernacle’s construction at length.

5 In

connection with the question, "What is Jewish Art?"one should mention

the Adi Fund for Jewish Expression in Art and Design, which recently ran an

international symposium in this precise topic.

Dov Abramson is an artist and designer and a

graduate of Bezalel. His work, Ner Mitzvah, is currently on display in

the Jewish Museum in New York.

www.dovabramson.com

When He had

the Oral Law as a Joint Creation

speaking with him [The word "with”] teaches [us] that Moses would hear

(Rashi Shemot 31:18,

Judaica Press translation)

…Scripture said speaking with him;

would it not be better to have written to him?

Rather, this includes the Oral Torah and, as explained in Midrash Rabbah, it

was if they studied together, and so Rashi explained it. This

means that Moses was imbued with a great overflow of heavenly help, enabling

him to bear its [the Torah's] tremendous never-ending power.

(The NeTziV mi'Volozhin's Ha'amek

Davar, ad

loc)

A

soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing… (Shemot 32: 19): Rabbi Hilkiyah said in the name of Rabbi Aha: "From here we learn

that a person should not judge on the basis of an assumption."

(J. Ta'anit 4:5)

Saw

the calf and the dancing:

around it. Another says: The writing on the Tablets disappeared, so he broke

them.

And

some say that God commanded him to break them. It seems most reasonable to me

that it happened as it is written, that he was zealous for God and broke them

in his anger.

And I

have already told you about the allegory of "the husband of youth" in

the beginning of the parasha [i.e., God is the husband of Israel in her youth, the sin of the golden calf

was Israel's

infidelity, etc.]. The Tablets were the marriage contract, their shattering the

tearing-up of the contract.

(Ibn Ezra's Short Commentary on Shemot 32:19)

No one shall ascend with

you Since the first

ones [i.e., tablets] were accompanied by loud noises, sounds, and with a

multitude, the evil eye affected them. [Our conclusion is that] there is

nothing better than modesty.

(Rashi

Shemot 34:3)

The

Breaking of the Tablets

Rabbi

Meir said: Moses did not break the tablets [of his own volition] , but was

directed to do so by the All Powerful, as is written asher shibarta [Literally

which you broke]: [Understand it thus] Ye-yasher kochacha

sheh-shibarta [More power to you] for having broken them.

(Avot DeRabbi Natan, 2:3)

When

Moshe saw how they had sinned by making the calf, he said: How can I give them

the tablets? I will be obligating them to observe serious commandments and I

will be condemning them to death by divine power [when they transgress those

commandments], for it is inscribed upon them You shall have no other gods

before Me. He turned to go back. Seventy elders saw him, and ran after him;

he held the top of the tablet, and they held the top of the tablet. Moshe was

stronger than all of them, as is written (Devarim 34): And in all the strong hand and in all the great, awe-inspiring acts

that Moshe did before the eyes of all Israel.

(Avot DeRabbi Natan 2:3)

and he flung the tablets

from his hands, shattering them – not out of shock; it seems that he did this in order to frighten the

people and show them that the covenant between them and God had been broken.

(ShaDaL

Shemot 32:19)

Then the Lord would speak

to Moses face to face, as a man would speak to his companion…

This does not contradict what

he said later, You will not be able to see My face, because the

intention here is that the speech came to him clearly while he was awake rather

than in a vision at night; not as a parable or riddle, but rather as one man

speaks to his companion. The expression face to face is similar to that

which was said of Moses, who knew the Lord face to face (Devarim 34:10), which refers to the overflow of the light

of wisdom from he who overflows to him who receives the overflow without

mediation. Of this it is said I shall speak to him mouth to mouth, and

that is the difference between Moses' prophecy and the prophecy of the other

prophets.

(R.

Yitzhak Shemuel Reggio, 32:11)

And He said, "You will not be able to see My face, for man shall not see

Me and live."

For seeing the face in an

actual vision of fire – as you have requested – that you cannot see while you

are still alive. For man is composed of body and soul, but when the body

separates from it the soul is able to better grasp the Divine things, and this

is one of the Torah's allusions to the World-to-Come.

(R.

Yitzhak Shemuel Reggio, 32:20)

And the word of the Lord

will give you a heart of flesh.

(From

the haftarah for Parashat Para, Ezekiel 36)

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