Shmuli Gold and Jason Klein

Parsha: Vayakel

Shiur reviewed: Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Reviewed by: Shmuli Gold and Jason Klein

He is looking at Betzalel, the person who is told to make the kaylim for the mishkan. The pasook goes into great detail as to the skills that HASHEM gave to him, and Ohaliav who would also be assisting him in the building of the mishkan and its vessels. Until now, Bnei Yisroel were the people who worshipped HASHEM, whom that they cannot see. Now they have a mediator(the mishkahn) between them and HASHEM with something physical and tangible. Even at Har Sinai the people did not see any image, but rather, they only heard a voice coming fro the heavens. Until the 18th century, image making was considered to be avodah Zarah, and even furthermore, the the Romans would made their Caesars into Gods and erected statues of them all across the country. But the physical aspect in Judaism is not totally non-existent. We put on Tefilon every day. But we also see this in the physical things involving the mishkan. There are beautiful curtains hanging, and the greatest question of the mishkan’s physical aspect, was the Aharon which was plated with gold and had the two kruvim on top. The Rambam writes, that the people of that time were very much concerned with beauty and therefore the mishkan was made into a very beautiful place. Containing beautiful curtains, along with almost everything in the mishkan being plated with gold. All the clothing of the kohanim were also threaded with gold and other precious materials. That’s why everything was so beautiful. 

The burning of ketoret to mask the smell of the korbanot was another way we enhanced the beauty of the mishkahn. In other works written by the Rambam, we find how beauty, good smells, artwork, and peaceful singing, play major roles in spirituality of the building(which was physical to begin with). 

Rav Kook, comments on the work of the great painter, Rembrandt. The Rambam believes that Rembrandt was a tzadik, because he believed that the light in Rembrandt’s paintings was the light that HASHEM gave to us on the day of creation. He also admired the way in which Rembrandt saw the light in ordinary people without any attempt to beautify them. Also the way Rembrandt painted great biblical figures and events. Let us see the transcendentalism quality of the human, the only thing in the universe on which god set his image.

Art in Hebrew has a semantic connection with faith or faithfulness teaching us as William Blake said, “To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of you hand, and eternity in an hour.”

The name Betzalel means in the shadow of Gd, art is the shadow cast by the radiance of HASHEM that suffuses all things.  The world is charged with the grandeur G-d. it will flame out, like shining from shook foil. As Goethe said, “Where there is light, the shadow is deep”. When art lets us see the wonder of creation as HASHEM’s work and the human person as HASHEM’s image, it becomes part of religious life, with one condition. As opposed to the Greeks, The Jews believe in hadrat kodesh, the beauty of holiness: not art for the sake of art. 

From what we heard in the dvar Torah, we felt that the main pint of his discussion on how after the aseret hadibrot, and don’t do avodah Zarah, and after we sin at har sinai with the goldn calf, Hashem tells us to create for him a sanctuary filled with beauty and physicality, and this is the main discussion in this dvar torah. He brings a very interesting idea that we had never heard previously from the Rambam. The Rambam writes that it is easier to connect to something spiritual, by using something physical, hence the great lengths to make the mishkan as beautiful as possible. We would give over this dvar torah to others and suggest that others do the same.