The building and dedication of the Mishkan as described in Vayakhel and Pekudei is a tidy literary counterweight to the sin of the Golden Calf. The Israelites eagerly donated gold to the building of a false god; now they hasten to contribute their wealth to construct a sanctuary for God Godself. This seems like it ought to be an unmitigated good. The Jews have sinned and have now been forgiven, and take up the instructions they have been given to channel their fervor towards God. They generously donate gold, silver, copper, fine yarns and skins, and gems. The women in particular spin the fine fibers into yarn to donate.
But this vision of a communal outpouring enthusiasm is not all that it appears. In telling us who brought these gifts, the parsha tells us that “וַיָּבֹאוּ הָאֲנָשִׁים עַל־הַנָּשִׁים,” which is most easily translated as “and the men and the women came,” (and which is how Rashi interprets the verse). But the conjunction in that phrase does not translate to “and;” “עַל” means “on” or “upon.”
The Kli Yakar,* an early modern Ashkenazi Torah commentator, picks up on this unusual phrase.
...מן הדין לא היו צריכין ליתן תכשיטיהן כי בשלמא האנשים שפרקו נזמיהם ועשו ממנו העגל הוצרכו ליתן נזמיהם ותכשיטיהן לכפר על נפשותיהם, אבל הנשים שלא רצו ליתן תכשיטיהן במעשה העגל אם כן אינן צריכין לכפרה ולמה יתנו תכשיטיהן... אבל מדקאמר "על הנשים" ולא אמר "עם הנשים" מסתבר לפרשו שבאו עליהם בכח גדול, כי לא רצו הנשים ליתן כל כלי זהב, שלא יאמרו שהיה חלק להם בזהב העגל, והאנשים באו עליהם ולקחו מהם בזרוע כל כלי זהב לכך. הזכיר בהבאת הזהב האנשים לבד, אבל ענין המטוה שאין בו חשד זה היו הנשים מתעסקים בו כמ"ש "וכל אשה חכמת לב בידיה טוו" וגו.
By right [the women], wouldn’t need to give their jewelry, since of course the men — who removed their earrings and made the Calf from them — needed to give their earrings and jewelry to repent for themselves. But the women, who did not want to give their jewelry in the incident of the Calf, therefore did not need repentance, and so why would they donate their jewelry!?... But since it says “on the women” and it does not say “with the women,” it is reasonable to interpret [the verse] that [the men] came upon them with great force, since the women did not want to give every golden vessel, so that they would not say that they had a part in the gold of the Calf, and the men came upon them and took from them by force every golden vessel. Therefore only the men are mentioned with the bringing of the gold, but the matter of the spinning, about which there was not this concern, the women were involved with, as it is written “And all the skilled women spun with their own hands etc.”
The Kli Yakar takes the textual ambiguity of “עַל, ”“upon,” to mean that the men set upon the women by force to take gold from them to donate. The women — who had not participated in building the Golden Calf — saw the donation of gold in particular as a form of repentance for the Calf, and worried that their participation would falsely suggest culpability. However, they enthusiastically undertook the work of spinning fibers for the Mishkan, which was unrelated to the sin of the Calf.
The phrase used to describe those who donated goods to the Mishkan is “נְדִיב לֵב,” “generous-hearted.” In contrast, the women who spun for the Mishkan — and the artisans who do the fine work for it — are described as “חכמ/ת־לֵב,” “wise-hearted” or “intelligent of heart.” What is the distinction between these two characterizations?
Dr. Liz Shayne, in a recent dvar Torah on Parshat Tetzaveh, writes that:
The heart, in the Torah, is not the seat of emotions. The heart is the home of the will….So when we revisit the language of חַכְמֵי־לֵב, those who are intelligent of heart, we see that their intelligence lies in their ability to project their will into the world. Their wisdom is the capacity to create a whole from the sum of its parts. The encounter between the human being and the wool transforms the latter into a sweater. Or, in the case of our parasha, into the coat and apron of the High Priest.
There is will and skill in the practices that allow us to make things, but there is also, as the presence of the word חַכְמָה shows us, knowledge. Making things is a form of knowing about the world.
Dr. Shayne elaborates about this form of intelligence:
“that knowledge is not simply the set of instructions that one follows, but the deep and embodied knowing that comes from doing. I often read knitting patterns over and over again, trying to understand the directions, but it is only when I cast on that I can truly see the garment take shape before me. I knew what I had to do the whole time, but I only really knew it once I set my will and my hands into the making.”
In contrast with the men, the “generous of heart,” the women who offered their spinning offered not just their property, but their labor.** What does this distinction mean in light of the Kli Yakar’s assertion that the way in which the “generous-hearted” men sought to offer gifts to atone for their participation in the sin of the Golden Calf was by seizing gold from women by force? Can “חכמת־לֵב,” this “deep and embodied knowing that comes from doing,” offer us an alternative to that generosity that came through violence?
Jenny Odell, in her book How To Do Nothing, discusses the world of the artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, which focuses on “maintenance.”
Ukeles’s interest in maintenance work as partly occasioned by her becoming a mother in the 1960s. In an interview, she explained, “Being a mother entails an enormous amount of repetitive tasks. I became a maintenance worker. I felt completely abandoned by my culture because it didn’t have a way to incorporate sustaining work.” In 1969, she wrote the “Manifesto for Maintenance Art,” an exhibition proposal in which she considers her own maintenance work as the art. She says “I will live in the museum and do what I customarily do at home with my husband and my baby, for the duration of the exhibition...My working will be the work.” Her manifesto opens with a distinction between what she calls the death force and the life force:
“I. Ideas
The Death Instinct and the Life Instinct:
The Death Instinct: Separation, individuality, Avante-Garde par excellence; to follow one’s own path — do your own thing; dynamic change.
The Life Instinct: unification; the eternal return; the perpetuation and MAINTENANCE of the species; survival systems and operations, equilibrium,” (26).
Part of what defines crafts, fiber arts most notably, is repetition, “the eternal return.” In contrast with the steady dedication it takes for those who are “intelligent of heart” to spin yarn for the Mishkan, the men who are “generous of heart” align with Ukeles’s characterization of the Death Instinct, exactly as they did when building the Calf: they pursue their own individual paths and desires, and they want dynamic — and immediate — change.
Dr. Shayne’s teaching, too, highlights this. She writes that:
it can be easy to fall into the idea that knowledge is a solely cerebral process. English, for example, distinguishes between art and craft; dismissing the latter and valorizing the former when both are ways of bringing beauty into the world. The artist, this misguided way of thinking says, creates and innovates, while the crafter merely follows a pattern. However, the men and women who created the Mishkan were masters of craft, not art: they followed God’s instructions in order to make God’s Mishkan real. And the language God uses to speak of them is the language of knowledge. חכמה.
The חכמה, the wisdom or intelligence of the spinners and craftspeople who built the Mishkan, is knowledge borne of a kind of unglamorous maintenance work — work that can be wrongly dismissed as “merely follow[ing] a pattern.” Spinning, knitting, sewing; these are forms of craft that require doing the same thing over and over again, stitch after stitch. Such is care work, too, the daily tasks of Ukeles’s “sustaining work.”
The ostensible tedium and lack of spark that can stick to maintenance work and to craft inheres in the very form of our parshiyot. How many schoolchildren — and adults — have complained of boredom in learning Vayakhel and Pekudei? After all, didn’t we see the initial instructions just a few weeks ago? So many of these verses are identical to ones we’ve already seen! Even Rashi, the erstwhile commentator, tells us at the beginning of Pekudei to go and see the interpretations of the vessels for the Mishkan that he’s already written a few parshiyot ago.
But perhaps Vayakhel and Pekudei teach us exactly this: that novelty is not always the point. There is holiness in reading these same words that we have already seen.
The Golden Calf happens quickly, in a dizzying rush, and even the men’s attempts to undo their sin simply repeat that same forceful and violent tempo. The donations for the Mishkan are seized from unconsenting women. What are the costs of speed, of urgency?
The building of the Mishkan takes slowness. We build God’s sanctuary with repetitive, mundane action. The Sanctuary comes into being through careful daily labor.
It can be easy, in the egalitarian community I so treasure, for us to treat care work as burdensome. We’re feminists, so we know it needs to happen, but it is still assumed to be secondary to the more important religious activities of uplifting prayer and of exciting Torah learning. But the thrill of a new idea or the delight of good davening are not the only things we need to build a true dwelling place for God. We must also devote ourselves to the sometimes repetitive, sometimes tedious actions of care for others and for ourselves, the cooking and cleaning and showing up each and every time.
We must create communities where we value not just chiddushim and flashy innovations, but the “boring” work of making sure people’s needs are met, over and over and over. We must be able to look at the holy things we’ve made and know that we made them stitch after stitch, day after day, seizing nothing by force. In Ukeles’s words, our working will be the work.
*Apologies to the sticklers, I know I should spell it “Keli Yakar” and I just can’t do it.
**If I had read more Marx I’d probably have more to say about this.
Thank you for making the connection between the art v. craft false dichotomy and the spiritually elevated v. maintenance work. It reminded me of the time I went to tovel some pots and had a chance to talk with the building super who was born in Guatamala and mystified at the (primarily) women bringing their pots and pans to the small pool. I hadn't really thought it through before, but, in talking to this outsider to Judaism, I realized what a novel concept it is. We immerse the pots to dedicate them to service of HaShem, at the altar/table in our temple/home. That kind of dedication is a direct connection to the extensive preparation that the Cohanim did for serving in Beit HaMikdash. It is the women who have taken over this maintenance, the women who have access to/responsibility for implements that we could choose to consider holy, could choose to fetishize in the same way that traditionally male religious items are honored. My soup pot feels ennobled.