Don’t Stop Giving
As they journey through the desert, the Tabernacle is the defining feature of the Israelite camp. This week's double Torah portion, Vayakhel-Pikudei, deals with the details of the Tabernacle's construction. The entire community participated in this process, bringing freewill offerings to build the Tent of Meeting. At a certain point, though, enough is enough, and as donations begin to pile up, Moses issues a proclamation that rings out across the Israelite camp. And in response, the Torah says, "the people stopped bringing: their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done."
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As the Israelites wandered through the desert, from Sinai to Canaan, the Tabernacle was the defining feature of their camp. Colorful, bejeweled, glorious by any measure, the Tabernacle was where G-d’s spirit descended to rest amid the Israelites. For the entirety of their journey, G-d’s spirit provided protection, sustenance in the form of manna, safety from plagues like leprosy, and opportunities to repent for sin.
The entire community participated in the process, and this week’s double Torah portion, Vayakhel-Pikudei, deals with the construction of the Tabernacle, down the details of who spun the string that wove the cloth that were ties and looped together to make the walls of this holy place.
Exodus 35:21
And everyone who excelled in ability and everyone whose spirit moved him came, bringing to the LORD his offering for the work of the Tent of Meeting and for all its service and for the sacral vestments.
Men and women, all whose hearts moved them, all who would make an elevation offering of gold to the LORD, came bringing brooches, earrings, rings, and pendants—gold objects of all kinds.
And everyone who had in his possession blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats’ hair, tanned ram skins, and dolphin skins, brought them;
everyone who would make gifts of silver or copper brought them as gifts for the LORD; and everyone who had in his possession acacia wood for any work of the service brought that.
And all the skilled women spun with their own hands, and brought what they had spun, in blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and in fine linen.
And all the women who excelled in that skill spun the goats’ hair.
And the chieftains brought lapis lazuli and other stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece; and spices and oil for lighting, for the anointing oil, and for the aromatic incense.
Thus the Israelites, all the men and women whose hearts moved them to bring anything for the work that the LORD, through Moses, had commanded to be done, brought it as a freewill offering to the LORD.
The generosity was overwhelming, and in the end, the freewill offerings were more than enough to build the Tabernacle, and furnish it with holy objects of gold and silver.
In some ways, overabundance of generosity can be as challenging as a lack of generosity. A winter coat drive might successfully collect 100 coats every year, but if the next year 1000 coats are donated, the organizers might not have the capacity to sort and delivery so many coats. While it’s wonderful that so many coats are being donated, but there’s a disconnect, and at the end of the day it means the coats are being put to the best use possible, which is unfortunate.
Moses perceives a similar challenge, as donations pile up even as work continues on the Tabernacle. So he puts out a call for all preparation work to make objects for the Tabernacle should stop, a proclamation that rings out across the Israelite encampment.
Exodus 36:1
Let, then, Bezalel and Oholiab and all the skilled persons whom the LORD has endowed with skill and ability to perform expertly all the tasks connected with the service of the sanctuary carry out all that the LORD has commanded.
Moses then called Bezalel and Oholiab, and every skilled person whom the LORD had endowed with skill, everyone who excelled in ability, to undertake the task and carry it out.
They took over from Moses all the gifts that the Israelites had brought, to carry out the tasks connected with the service of the sanctuary. But when these continued to bring freewill offerings to him morning after morning,
all the artisans who were engaged in the tasks of the sanctuary came, each from the task upon which he was engaged, and said to Moses, “The people are bringing more than is needed for the tasks entailed in the work that the LORD has commanded to be done.”
Moses thereupon had this proclamation made throughout the camp: “Let no man or woman make further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary!” So the people stopped bringing:
their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done.
It’s a curious thing, to ask people to stop giving. Sforno, the 16th century Italian rabbi and physician, comments that:
“he did not proclaim that no more donations should be brought. But he did proclaim that no more work, such as spinning, weaving, etc, intended for materials used in the construction of the Tabernacle should be begun.”
It’s easy to look at Moses’s actions with skepticism. As someone who spent years of my professional life raising money for Jewish nonprofits I’m appalled that someone as prominent as Moses would ask the community to stop giving, or rather to stop preparing to give, which is worse. He cuts off the habit of being ready to give, asking that woodcutters stop felling trees and shaping them into beams, that spinners cease turning goat hair into string, and that weavers desist from using that string to make more fine cloth.
It’s a poor comparison, for sure, but imagine if the most prominent member of the Jewish community today stood up as asked folks to stop giving to a major Jewish organization saying, essentially, that enough had been collected to accomplish the mission of that organization.
This, though, is where the Torah works its magic. What appears in text to be a proclamation against preparing new donations is not as negative as it may seem. Moses understand that unlike so many of our modern Jewish projects, the building of the Tabernacle is a finite project—there are only so many materials needed, and only so many objects can be incorporated in the design. Unless Moses steps, the Israelites will keep preparing gifts for their new sanctuary, whether or not they are needed or can even be used. Unless Moses steps in, the value of the work will soon begin to diminish, because the reality is that soon those gifts will go to waste. Instead of building an ever-widening sanctuary, the Israelites will be left with a pile of unused materials, no less painfully and carefully wrought than the materials used to build the Tabernacle, offered by the people to adorn G-d’s house with no less adoration or humility, but discarded nonetheless.
It’s a tough balance to strike, between encouraging people to help out, to give, to be involved, but still make sure that their effort isn’t going to waste, that it’s being put towards real work that makes a real difference, no matter what kind of work that is.
Some scholars argue that the building of the Tabernacle is a metaphor for re-building the world, and if that’s true then there’s so much more work that needs to be done. We’re still building the structure of a more inclusive world, and we’re definitely not yet in a place where people need to stop working on the individual pieces of that structure. We’re at a place where people need to double down on their individual work. Like the building of the Tabernacle there are endless types of work to be done. We can’t all be Bezalel or Oholiab, but each of us can find our own wheels to spin, our own ways to weave the threads of a better world.
Shabbat Shalom
