LET,

THEN, BEZALEL AND OHALIAV, ALL THE SKILLED PERSONS WHOM THE LORD HAD ENDOWED

WITH SKILL AND ABILITY TO PERFORM EXPERTLY ALL THE TASKS CONNECED WITH THE

SERVICE OF THE SANCTUARY, CARRY OUT ALL THAT THE LORD HAS COMMANDED.

(Shemot

36:1)

In the "Tabernacle of Love" All Are Equal Before

God

Bezalel was the name given him by his nation. The

Holy One Blessed be He called him by five names that

were connected with the Tabernacle of love. [He was called] Re'ayah (from the verb ro'eh, "see"), for God showed all of

Israel that he had been fashioned from the beginning to construct the

Tabernacle. Ben- Shoval (?), for he

came to stand up the Tabernacle. Yahat, for he inspired hitato (the

fear of) God in Israel. Ahumai, for he

connected (iha) Israel with God. Lahad, for he raised up hod

(majesty) and splendor in the Tabernacle, which was Israel's splendor.

And Rabbi Ada

bar Hiyya said: Lahad,

for the least important (hadal) tribe attached

itself to him concerning the Tabernacle. Which was that? At his side was Ohaliav son of Ahisamakh, of the

tribe of Dan (Shemot

38:23). Rabbi Hanina ben Pazi

said: No tribe was greater than the tribe of Judah, and none less important than

Dan, [whose founder] was a son of a servant-woman, of whom it is written: Dan's

sons: Hushim (Bereishit 46:23). God said: let him [Bezalel] join together

with him [Ohaliav] so that his spirit shall not be

haughty, for the great and the small are equal before God.

Rabbi Hanina

said: A person should never let his honor make him haughty; the Tabernacle was

built by these two tribes together. Even the Temple was built that way, [by] Solomon

from Judah and Hiram from Dan, for it is said, he was of he tribe of Naftali, the son of a widow-woman (I Kings 7:13). In Chronicles it is written: the son of a woman of the daughters

of Dan (II Chronicles 2:13). His father was from Naftali,

and his mother from Dan.

(Tanhuma

Ki Tissa 13)

Hodesh [Month], Hiddush

Pinchas Leiser

Anyone

who has read Rashi's comment on the first verse of

the Torah is acquainted with Rabbi Yitzhak's question regarding the Torah's "editorial

policy," and its solution: the Torah begins with Bereishit

in accordance with the verse, He revealed to His people His powerful works (Tehillim 111:6). The various views flowing from that verse

are well-known, and are largely dependent upon the various "spectacles"

through which different Jews read the Torah.

It

seems to me that because of this, less attention was paid to the interesting

alternative suggested by Rabbi Yitzhak in Rashi's

commentary, that it, the idea that the Torah could have begun with the section,

This month shall mark for you… (Shemot

12:2), known as Parashat Ha-Hodesh, which serves

as this Shabbat's additional Torah reading.

Rashi brings

Rabbi Yitzhak's idea in these words:

And

Rabbi Yitzhak said, "The Torah should have begun with none other than this

month shall mark for you, which is the first commandment that the

Israelites were commanded.

The

commandments constitute the Torah's significance; thus there seems to be no

reason that it begin from Genesis. The RaMBaN

develops a different approach to Rabbi Yitzhak's statement, and claims that, in

any event, we are unable to understand the Act of Creation from the narrative

of Bereishit. However, if we study Parashat Ha-Hodesh, perhaps we

will be able to come up with additional reasons why it may be considered to be

the Torah's second beginning. Perhaps we will even be able to understand why

this section was chosen as the additional reading for the Shabbat in which we

bless the coming month of Nissan, the first of months (Shemot 12:2).

The

commandment to sanctify the new month was given to Moses and Aaron while they

were still in Egypt. It symbolizes the turning point, the renewal of an

enslaved people. As Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote in his commentary on this

passage:

It is

only after all this, that the words This

month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; get their real

meaning: This renewal of the moon shall be a beginning of renewals for you.

That is, noticing, realizing, the fresh birth of the moon shall induce you to

achieve a similar rejuvenation. You are to fix your moons, your

periods of time by taking note of this ever fresh recurring rejuvenation. It

does not say this month shall mark the beginning of the months, but shall

mark for you, it is not a question of the actual months

but of our months. That is also why… we find new moons and festivals referred

to as your months and your festivals whereas the definitely fixed

seventh day is never caller your Sabbath…

So

the Jewish consecration of the New Moon is an institution for the periodical

fresh spiritual and moral rejuvenation of Israel by finding itself again in

conjunction with its God…and they give the meaning of Rosh Hodesh – which literally finds its expression in the mussaf sacrifice – as being concentrated in what they

explain to be the goal that the goat sacrifice of Rosh Hodesh

attempts to attain, viz.: "to atone for the pollution of the Sanctuary

that remained unknown from beginning to end": to work against all our

estrangement from all holiness and holy ideas into which we have unconsciously

drifted, and which we ourselves could not notice. Without this regularly

bringing ourselves back into communion with our God… we should always slide

farther and farther from Him, always be getting more and more estranged from

Him; quite unconsciously and without our noticing it, our natures would become

less and less responsive to the light of His Spirit, our natures would become

darker and darker until – like Pharaoh – our hearts would become so hardened

and weighed down that even the most startling signs and the most affecting

wonders would not achieve this rebirth, the rejuvenation of our inner selves.

But

the Jewish idea of atonement comprises not only the spiritual and moral rebirth

of our inner selves, but along with it a fresh arrangement of our external, our

social and national conditions. The rebirth of our inner selves must come

first, the other then results…The heathen knows no new thing, not in the

world, not in humanity, not in his gods, nor in the powers he places above men

in the world…everything swims down the stream of blind unalterable necessity…

(Isaac Levy translation)

According

to Hirsch, the role of the Jewish People is, by means of recognition of the

renewing month and the paschal sacrifice, to develop consciousness of change

and renewal at the experiential level, in defiance of the deterministic

world-view of Egyptian paganism.

Paganism

is seen as frozenness, as a closed and deterministic world upon which man can

have no influence. The world we are charged to develop is a world of

change, a developing world. The RaMBaM's statement in

Hilkhot Hametz u'Matzah (7:3) is apposite:

It is

necessary to make a change [from regular behavior] on that night so that the

children will see it and ask, "Why is this night different from all other

nights?" until he responds to them and says to them "this and that occurred

and this and that happened"… if he is alone, he should ask himself, "Why

is this night different?"

Changes

invites questions, and questions are necessary in

order to develop consciousness of change and faith in the possibility of

change.

Rabbi

Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote these words in the end of the 19^th

century and relates to the two beginnings (Nisan and Tishrei)

metaphorically as figures of light and darkness, completing his comments in

poetic style

Everything

pertaining to the earth is born bare and without blossom out of the night, and even

though it rises to the brightness of midday and riches of blossoms

and fruit, sinks bare and blossomless to the night of its grave. Everything

holy and Jewish has its origin in Light and Life and even though it has to meet

and contend, in running its course, with Night and Death, out of darkness and

death it struggles back to Light and Life, and what was born out of morn and

spring, ends again at dawn, rejuvenated to a new Spring.

It

seems to me that the tension between these two beginnings, the renewed creation

of the world on the one hand, which we celebrate in Tishrei,

and the birth and liberation of a people in Nissan, on the other, allows these

to serve as the twin focal points for religious contemplation.

The

moon represents the ability and the need to believe in renewal and change. In a

special way, the renewed moon of Nissan constitutes an appropriate opportunity

for contemplating the possibility of a change of direction, of escape from

bondage to the light of freedom. Pharaoh represents that part of us that

consecrates the status quo and does not believe in change. Will we have the

strength and wisdom to liberate ourselves from this pagan stasis, to have faith

in change, and to renew ourselves?

Pinchas Leiser, editor of Shabbat

Shalom, is a psychologist

Even In Sacred Matters, Peace Among People

Must Be Observed

Then they brought the

Tabernacle to Moses (Shemot 39:33)

Our Rabbi teaches us a number of

rulings made in order to preserve peace. Our rabbis taught: They said these

things because of darkei shalom ["the

ways of peace"]: A Cohen reads from the Torah first, after him a Levite,

and after him an Israelite, because of darkei

shalom. Come and see how endearing peace is to God; in the hour that they

entered the Land, God told Moses do not harass [the Moabites] or engage them

in war (Devarim

2:9).

(Tanhuma

Pekudei, 10)

On Repetition in the Description of the Tabernacle

Let us take to heart that the

Tabernacle and all that belongs to it is nothing but a symbol, and nothing can

exist as a symbol unless it is made intentionally for a symbolic purpose. Let

us take to heart that even writing, which is so inherently symbolic that

it has no meaning beyond that which it represents, cannot be used for holy

purposes unless the scribe had proper intention, so much so that a Torah scroll

bears the sacredness of a Torah scroll only if it had been intentionally been

written as such… Let us also take notice that awareness of the symbolic

meaning of the Tabernacle's equipment in the time of their manufacture and

installation was especially important because that equipment – the Ark, Table,

Menorah, Curtain, and clothing, all exist outside of the Tabernacle as items in

everyday use.

If we pay attention to all of

this, we will understand why the Torah repeats time and again the details of

the Tabernacle's making, and why the Torah (Shemot 39)

once again gives an exhaustive inventory of the Tabernacle when it is brought

before Moses, and why it repeats it in telling of the erection of the

Tabernacle (Shemot

40)… The purpose of all these

detailed repetitions is to teach us: during the time of the Tabernacle's manufacture,

its presentation to Moses, and its raising, those engaged in the work remained

aware of the symbolic meanings to which the Tabernacle refers. All of it – both

the whole and its parts – were made and brought and raised up in the spirit of

those intentions.

 (Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, as quoted by

Prof. Nehama Leibowitz in

her Iyyunim le-Sefer

Shemot, pg. 458)

We Must be Purified in Order to be Redeemed

And Parashat

Ha-Hodesh [is read on the] fourth [Shabbat], before

Rosh Hodesh Nissan, the day which it deals with. And

the month of Nissan is the beginning of all months and of the order of the

festivals. Our Rabbis of blessed memory said: It would be logical for Parashat ha-Hodesh to precede Parashat Parah; [after all,] the

Tabernacle was erected on the first of Nissan, and the parah

aduma (red heifer) was burnt on the second of

Nissan. Why is Parashat Parah

read first? Because it deals with Israel's purity, purity from the impurity of

the dead, so that their offering of the paschal lamb need not be pushed off to

the "second" Passover.

(Sefer

HaShLHa, Meggilah 42)

Thus said the Lord God:

people – declares the Lord God.

(Ezekiel 45: 9, the haftorah for Parashat Ha-Hodesh according to Yemenite custom)

But the prince shall not take

people may not be disposed of their holdings.

(Ezekiel

46:18 – the conclusion of the haftorah for Parashat Ha-Hodesh according to Ashkenazic custom.

Editorial Board: Pinchas Leiser (Editor), Miriam Fine (Coordinator), Itzhak Frankenthal and Dr. Menachem Klein

Translation: Kadish Goldberg

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