Vayakhel - Vicki Armour-Hileman

To Create a Mishkan, Open Our Baggage
Vicki Armour-Hileman
Rabbinical Student, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles
Former Rabbinic Intern, Board of Rabbis of Southern California

Parashat Vayakhel
Exodus 35:1-38:20If you are ever in Bangkok,
an activity I recommend
is boarding a boat on the river at sunset
and enjoying the glitter of Buddhist temples along the shore.
The reflection of light on the temple steeples is breathtaking.
What most impresses me, though,
is that many Thai temples are decorated
with a mosaic made from broken pieces of porcelain.

In smaller towns, the porcelain sometimes comes from broken dishes. Out of what is ordinary and shattered,
the Thais build their most magnificent and holy structures.
Out of the garbage of life, they construct towers
that point toward heaven.

I think parashat Vayakhel gives us something of the same phenomenon. The Israelites trudge through the wilderness,
dusty, thirsty, aching and complaining.
Then all of a sudden they open their packs and out come treasures.
Blue and scarlet fabric, lapis lazuli,
exotic furs, expensive wood, gold, silver, and copper.

Where did this gorgeous array come from?
The bible doesn't tell us exactly,
but Midrash suggests it is what the Israelites took
from their Egyptian neighbors.
If so, it is ironic
that their most precious possessions come from Egypt---
their most painful experience.

Much of the time the bible gives us sharp dualities---
blessings and curses in opposition to one another.
But this week, it is as if the Torah is saying "Not so fast!"
Sometimes out of pain, out of curse, we carry forth blessings.
Of course, saying that the Israelites are carrying riches
doesn't tell us what they will do with them.

In the Torah, the timeline after the moment at Sinai is confusing,
but Rashi insists the episode of the Golden Calf
comes before the instructions for building the Mishkan.
So, as it happens, the first thing the Israelites build with their treasure
is a Golden Calf.

The calf is a symbol of building a monument
to the very thing from which we are fleeing.
It is a memento of Egypt,
an adoption of the mindset of the oppressor,
a way to cling to a past that, though painful, was comfortably familiar.

As spiritual descendents of the Israelites,
we too are on a journey that includes pain
and the choice of what to make with it.
We, too, have our Egypts:
The parent who could not love us the way we needed to be loved.
The one person we could not bear to lose
who left us voluntarily or was taken from us.
The public failure that stripped us of confidence or dignity or reputation.
The illness, or disability that robbed us of strength,
that turned our bodies into our enemies or objects of shame.
These are our Egypts,
and we all carry something away from these experiences.
Our packs are heavy with memory.

Reflecting on life in the concentration camps,
Victor Frankl wrote that
"Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life" (Man's Search for Meaning 99).
In other words, it is the meaning we attach to our suffering
that determines whether it destroys us or leaves us better people.
I would add, it is what we build