Vayakhel Moshe et kol adat b’nei yisrael.
Moses then convoked the whole Israelite community (Ex 35:1)
That’s how the full portion begins. Our section is a repetition of how to build the mishkan, the portable sanctuary. We know that when something is repeated in the Torah it comes to teach us something new. What are we meant to learn here?
Every Saturday , every Shabbat morning, I begin our service with this prayer:
אֱלֹהַי נְשָׁמָה שֶׁנָּתַֽתָּ בִּי טְהוֹרָה הִיא
My soul that You have given me is pure.
I remind you to take a breath, because soul is breath. And that you are a beloved child of G-d. G-d created you, breathed your soul into you and that your soul is pure. You are each created b’tzelem elohim, in the image of G-d.
So take this mirror and take a deep look and smile. Each of you is pure. Each of you is created in the image of G-d. Each of you is loved.
Our portion and yes, our haftarah too has a lot to do with purity. It talks about the pure gold the overlays the klei kodesh, the holy instruments in the mishkan they are building. The haftarah talks about purifying the impure people who have been scattered, exiled, because they polluted the land.
Anyone ever drive into Michigan and notice their slogan, “Pure Michigan.” While I believe it has to do with the pure natural beauty of Michigan, I bristle at it every single time. That’s a sermon for another time.
In the old days, people were scared of life giving fluids, blood and seminal emissions. You needed to be purified from them. They were seen as dangerous if they were somehow out of your body. Mary Douglas’s famous anthropology book, Purity and Danger, makes this very clear. During the second temple period, there were 70 mikva’ot surrounding the temple so that people, men and women could be pure before ascending to the Holy Temple.
These days, mikva’ot are used primarily by brides, by women after their mensuration and by people becoming Jewish. Having worked at a mikveh I know that they are expanding their uses to create meaningful observances. People recovering from illness, beginning chemo, ending chemo, retirement, milestone birthdays, before Shabbat or other holy days. The possibilities seem endless. I have been witness to many life-affirming rituals both happy and sad.
Pure isn’t about cleanliness. In fact you take a bath or shower before entering the mikvah. Anita Diamant prefers the term ritually ready. She should know. She wrote the Red Tent and founded the mikvah I worked in and her most recent book is “Period.”
Sometimes, however, this all gets lost in translation and in practice. So what is the most unusual about this portion is that it includes the women. Over and over again:
Men and women, all whose hearts moved them, all who would make an elevation offering of gold to GOD, came bringing brooches, earrings, rings, and pendants—gold objects of all kinds. (Ex 35:22)
The Torah is going out of its way to emphasize the role of women in building the mishkan. How appropriate that we read this portion this year during Women’s History Month. Did any of you go to Gail Borden to see the exhibit about Barbie? It it worth the trip. While I was not allowed to have a Barbie growing up (not the right image according to my intellectual parents), the creator of Barbie, Ruth Handler, “a nice Jewish girl” who wanted a different kind of doll for her daughter than just a baby doll. Barbie could be anything you wanted. A doctor, an astronaut, a computer programmer, an office worker, a police officer. The sky was the limit. Go see the exhibit.
Did you know that there is Tefilin Barbie. A custom doll (and out of my budget, still). She can wear tefilin, read and lift Torah.
While women were not prevented from wearing tefilin or chanting Torah, they were most certainly discouraged. They are exempt—so not required from time-bound mitzvot, such as tefilin or saying the Sh’ma as a specific time. That doesn’t mean they can’t. Even Saul’s daughter and Rashi’s daughters are documented in the literature to wear tefilin.
Not chanting Torah is a little more complicated. It is not, as I was first told as a Tufts student, because women might be impure (read menstruating). Much like the waters of the mikvah, you cannot pass impurities to the Torah. Full stop. Period, (Pun intended.) Rather, women had more time so could better prepare and the rabbis of the Talmud were essentially afraid that a woman, or a child, would show the men up.
Here at CKI we don’t have that problem. We have men and women who help lead the service. We have men and women who serve equally on the board of directors. And this wasn’t always the case.
Here during Women’s History Month, it is important to point out that two women’s organizations were founded during the month of March, both in 1912. The first, Hadassah was a platform for women to learn and exhibit real leadership skills in an era where there were not many venues. Like Esther, nee Hadassah, Henrietta Szold, founded Hadassah to give women their voices and to improve the lives of women living in then Palestine, through a focus on nursing. The women found their voices and have raised millions for Hadassah Hospital, their critical medical care and research.
The second organization also near and dear to me, is Girl Scouts. Founded by Juliette Gordon Low and based on a model from the UK, it was founded in Savanah on March 12, 1912. It gave girls the chance to learn real skills and to earn recognition through badges that were not available to most girls and women at that time.
Nonetheless, despite Ruth, Henietta and Juliette, women are still denied participation in many of opportunities allowed men in this country. My husband’s ex-wife was denied the possibility of becoming an archaeologist by the University of Michigan. Their policies would not allow a woman to travel to a dig. Their daughter was told she didn’t need to take chemistry in high school. She is now a chemical engineer evaluating intellectual property. And, of course at some point, I was told I couldn’t be a rabbi because I was a woman.
Yet, our portion reports that women were responsible for helping to build that mishkan.
“Every skilled woman put her hand to spinning, and they [all] brought the spun yarn of sky-blue wool, dark red wool, crimson wool and fine linen. Highly skilled women volunteers also spun the goats’ wool.” (Ex. 35:25-26)
“Every man and woman among the Israelites who felt an urge to give something for all the work that God had ordered through Moses, brought a donation for God.” (Ex. 35:29)
As Rabbi Lord Sacks, z’l” the chief rabbi of Great Britain pointed out, “Indeed the emphasis is even greater than it seems in translation, because of the unusual locution in verse 22, Vayavo-u ha-anashim al hanashim, which implies that the women came to make their donations first, and the men merely followed their lead (Ibn Ezra, Ramban, and Rabbenu Bachye).”
Perhaps this is because they still had their gold, since they didn’t give it up to build the Golden Calf, the story we read last week. It is because of this refusal that Rosh Hodesh has been given to women as a half-holiday.
Perhaps as Kli Yakar (R. Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz, 1550 –1619) instructs, since the Tabernacle was an atonement for the Golden Calf, the women had no need to contribute at all, since it was the men not the women who needed atonement. Nonetheless, women gave, and they did so before the men. They led by example and the men followed.
And then as Sacks points out, “He [Betzalel] made the copper washstand and its copper base out of the mirrors of the dedicated women [ha-tzove’ot] who congregated at the entrance of the Communion Tent. (Ex. 38:8”)
Those mirrors, passed down through the generations of women enslaved are the same ones that the women used to woo their husbands. Those husbands so tired from their forced labor as slaves did not want to procreate. Perhaps the original “Not tonight, I have a headache.” But the women, according to the midrash, would lure their husbands. Moses initially rejected these gifts because the mirrors were made for temptation and lustful thoughts. But G-d told Moses to accept them since they were more precious to G-d than anything. They helped the Jewish people survive. (Midrash Tanhuma)
What then do we do with our text today? We remember as Rabbi David Greenstein suggested to the students at the Academy for Jewish Religion, we are all klei kodesh, holy instruments and what we are building here is a kehila kedosha, a holy community. A kehila kedosha built as the men and the women were building the mishkan as a place for both women and men built by men and women. We continue to build this place, this very community. Each of you in pure. Created by G-d, in the image of the Divine. Each of you is loved.
There are 50 days between the Second Night of Passover and Shavuot, which this year begins the evening of June 1. For many years I have taken on a personal project. Some years it has been as simple as remembering to buckle my seat belt, or unpacking one box a day. (That one isn’t simple!). One year I finished the draft of a book. 
