Family Story about the Mishkan

For our family service, I gave myself the challenge of telling a story that could appeal to listeners of all ages about the building of the mishkan, the Hebrews' portable sanctuary in the wilderness. The story featured Bezalel and Oholiab and lifted up the latter as particularly important for his supreme ability to teach.

The Power to Teach
 
Maybe you know the story of the Golden Calf.

God freed the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt and led them to Mount Sinai. God gave the people the Ten Commandments, teaching them to worship only one God and to keep important laws like remembering Shabbat and honoring your parents. Then God called Moses to the top of the mountain and gave him the laws and stories of the Torah while the people waited below. But the Hebrews got impatient; they didn’t know where Moses was, and they were very eager to sing songs to God and to celebrate their freedom. The people gathered against Aaron, Moses’s brother and the people’s high priest. They forced Aaron to build them a statue made out of gold, a statue of a calf—a baby cow. They called that statue God, the one who freed them from the land of Egypt.

This was a big mistake. In fact, it was pretty much the biggest mistake they could make. The very first of the Ten Commandments was that only Adonai is God—no statue could be the one who gives us freedom! When God and Moses heard what the Hebrews had done, they both got very angry. Moses stormed down the mountain and shattered the stone tablets that had the words of God on them. He ground the Golden Calf into dust and forced the Hebrews to drink it. When he had calmed down, Moses begged God for forgiveness, and God agreed. God still loved the Hebrews and wanted to be their God. God gave Moses a new set of stone tablets with words of Torah on them, but God also knew that they would need some extra help as well.

The Hebrews had shown that they needed something physical to point to, something they could see and touch, that would remind them of God and of their responsibilities as Jews. The Golden Calf was definitely wrong, but some other object could inspire them to sacred living. God decided, in a way, to move in to the camp, to be among the people, and—so to speak—to live in a special home that the people would build for God’s presence. It would be a Tent of Meeting, in Hebrew a Mishkan, a dwelling place for God.

God told Moses to find two very special individuals to help build this special home. They were called Bezalel, from the large and mighty tribe of Judah, and Oholiab, who was from the much smaller tribe of Dan. God had given each of them very special talents. The Torah tells us מִלֵּא אֹתָם חׇכְמַת־לֵב, that God “filled them with a wise mind” (Ex. 35:35) and with רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים, “the spirit of God” (Ex. 35:31).  They would build the Mishkan, which means “a place to live.” For even though God doesn’t have a body, sometimes we can feel the presence of God; and God knew it would help the Hebrews to have one beautiful place where they could come to feel God’s presence any time they wanted.

Bezalel and Oholiab had a big job ahead of them; fortunately, they had help. God had also given many, many people in the camp the ability to craft exquisite things out of wood and stone and beautiful metals and precious gems. These men and women would weave the cloths and mold the silver and carve the poles and join the planks and polish the jewels and complete all the work that would help create the Mishkan, God’s dwelling-place on earth.

But there was a problem. The Torah doesn’t tell us this directly, but we can find hints if we look closely enough. You see, Bezalel and Oholiab were the best of the best, but they couldn’t do this job on their own. And when they would pass among the other artists, they would notice that—even if their designs were beautiful—sometimes there were mistakes. A beam was too long, a curtain too short, a tunic too broad, or a basin too deep. This was supposed to be a house for God, but when Bezalel and Oholiab looked at the project, it was full of mistakes!

Oholiab, from the tribe of Dan, rolled up his sleeves and got to work. He spent hours every day trying to help the workers from the camp. He hammered and wove and whittled and sewed until his arms were heavy and his feet couldn’t walk anymore. The work he did was excellent, but there was never enough time to do it all!

When Bezalel saw how tired his partner was, he knew he had to help in a different way. Now, the Torah tells us that Bezalel had one gift from God that Oholiab didn’t have: וּלְהוֹרֹת נָתַן בְּלִבּוֹ, “God gave in his heart the ability to teach” (Ex. 35:34). Bezalel was a moreh, a teacher, and a giver of Torah, of instruction. As we know, “There are many great sages whose wisdom is in their hearts alone but who don’t know how to teach it.”[1] Bezalel wasn’t one of those sages; he knew how to share his knowledge with others.

So Bezalel went through the camp teaching the workers how to improve. He showed the seamstresses a tighter stitch, and he taught the blacksmiths a stronger way to bind copper to gold. He moved much faster than his friend, Oholiab, and soon the work was much more precise. Six days a week—taking a break every Shabbat—the whole community worked together to build the Mishkan, and with Bezalel’s instructions (and with Oholiab’s expert help), they fashioned the work just as God had wanted.
When the building was complete, as God had promised, וּכְבוֹד יְהֹוָה מָלֵא אֶת־הַמִּשְׁכָּן, “The presence of God filled the Mishkan” (Ex. 40:35). At last, the Hebrews had a physical sign of God’s presence that would travel with them wherever they went; and they also had a place to go whenever they wanted to talk to God.

But you know what? Bezalel wasn’t done teaching. He kept on giving lessons of Torah long after the Mishkan was complete. He knew that one day, this building would be lost and the Jews would need a different way to come to God. The gift of רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים, the spirit of God, was one he shared with everyone he met, and it’s a gift that every one of us has inside us as well. Bezalel had built the ark, the place where the new tablets of the Torah were kept, but he also taught us, more importantly, that each of our hearts can be a place for God to live.

[1] Or HaChaim ad loc. פירוש לצד שיש חכמים רבים שתהיה חכמתם בלבם לבד שלא ידעו ללמדה.