5771 פרשת ויקהל

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah discusses how God told Bnei Yisroel to give donations for the building of the Mishkan. The Torah when describing the giving of the donations said “They should take the donations from you”.

 The Siforno is bothered by the question who is the “they” that will take the donations from Bnei Yisroel?

 The Siforno explains that the Pasuk is telling us that Bnei Yisroel should appoint its own people to collect the donations.

 The next Pasuk tells us that Bnei Yisroel should only be giving donations willingly and that the Gabaim should not take anything from Bnei Yisroel against their will.

 The question that we can ask on this Siforno is why would the Torah need to write apparently 2 extra words to tell us that Bnei Yisroel should appoint their own people to collect the donations? They could just as easily have put the donations in boxes specifically marked for each type of donation (for example a box for gold and one for silver, etc.) as they were giving the donations willingly anyway.

 The answer could be that when a person gives Tzedakah or in this case a donation towards the building of the Mishkan, they want to know that what they are giving is being used for the purpose it is being given. If a person doesn’t feel that way it could lead to the donation that was given to be with less than a full heart. This could also be why God told Moshe to tell Bnei Yisroel to appoint the Gabaim who will collect the donations. This is because they will appoint people they trust and feel will ensure that all their donations go towards the building of the Mishkan while if the Gabaim were appointed by God then on some small level a person might feel that maybe his full donation was not going to its intended donation thereby taking away from the completeness of the Mitzvah.

 This is a very important lesson for us. We know that the Yetzer Hara has two ways to try to weaken our Mitzvah observance. The first is by trying to prevent us from doing Mitzvos and the second is even once we do a Mitzvah, the Yetzer Hara tries to make us regret having done the Mitzvah. The Torah is telling us that especially when it comes to giving Tzedakah the Yetzer Hara works very hard to make us regret giving the money and one of the ways he can do it is by getting us to think that maybe not all the money is going to the charitable purpose or maybe the person is not truly needy. This can cause us to even on a small level regret giving the Tzedakah. Now that we are approaching Purim and Pesach, times of the year when there will be many opportunities to give Tzedakah we should work on ourselves to ensure that we give with our full heart and not let the Yetzer Hara sow any seeds of regret in our hearts.  

פרשת ויקהל – פקודי 5770  

 In this week’s Parsha, the Torah once again mentions the command that all those who wanted to donate to the cause of the building of the Mishkan should bring the following items. The Torah then goes on to list the items that were required to build the Mishkan and that should be donated. When the Torah listed all the items it put a Hebrew letter “vuv” which is used to mean and in front of each and every item except for the first one.

 The Ohr Hachayim explains that the reason the Torah put a “vuv” before each one of the items that were donated was to teach us that each one was equally important and the merit of giving each item was exactly the same as long as it was done with the proper intention.

 If we look at this Ohr Hachayim we can ask the following question. We know that the Torah does not have even one additional letter. Here the Torah added 12 additional letters to teach us something that would appear to be self evident. Just like you can’t have a functioning house with only the beautiful stones for the outside without the mundane wires and pipes the same thing is true of the Mishkan. God told Bnei Yisroel that the following supplies will be necessary in order to build the Mishkan as without each thing the Mishkan will not be complete. This being the case, it would be obvious that if everyone only brought gold that you wouldn’t have a Mishkan and furthermore, it should be obvious that if you gave the copper for the Mishkan which was just as necessary that you would also have the same great merit.

 The answer could be that a person’s natural tendency is that what has the most value is the most important and that if that is the case I want to be the one to give/do that thing. Anything less than the “best” thing is inferior. This tendency could have caused Bnei Yisroel to do one of two things both of which would have been wrong. Either everyone would have given only the most precious item being the gold and nothing else or the people who couldn’t afford the gold would have said to themselves I don’t have gold and I only have copper that isn’t worth anything so I won’t give at all. It is for this reason that the Torah felt it so important to add an additional 12 letters to teach people that everything that was needed to build the Mishkan was equally important and there was nothing inferior about any donation.

 In truth the lesson the Torah is teaching us involving the Mishkan is something that applies to other aspects of our Avodas Hashem also. People often times feel that it is more worthwhile and important to do the big Mitzvos and what people would consider mundane acts are not so important. Obviously, we know this not to be the case. If a person spends his whole day learning Torah but is not honest or does not deal properly with his family, friends or acquaintances he has not been serving God to the fullest. The same goes for any Mitzvah. If a person picks a few things that he feels are important and does not feel he needs to work on the other Mitzvos he is not serving God properly. A person must realize that all the Mitzvos are equally important in proper service of God. This doesn’t mean that a person has to be perfect in everything at once since that is extremely difficult but just that a person must realize that everything is important and if he has shortcomings in certain areas he must work on them too.

פרשת ויקהל 5769

 In this week’s Parsha, the Torah describes to us the details of the building of the Mishkan. At the beginning of  the Parsha, the Torah tells us that people gave donations of both their material possessions and their physical skills for the building of the Mishkan. When describing the people who donated their abilities to build the Mishkan, the Torah says:

 Betzalel and Ahaliav as well as all the wise people for whom God put wisdom into them to know how to do the work of building the Mishkan built the Mishkan. 

 The Torah when describing that God put wisdom into the people uses the word “Bahaima” to mean in them.

 The Rabbeinu Bechai quotes a Midrash that is bothered by the Torah’s use of the word “Bahaima” to mean in them instead of the word “Bahem”.

 The Midrash answers that the use of the word Bahaima is the same word that is used to describe domesticated animals. The Torah is teaching us that there were two groups of people who donated their skills to the Mishkan. The first group was made up of those who naturally had the necessary skills. However, there was a second group of people who wanted to assist in building the Mishkan who did not have any of the necessary skills but God gave them the necessary skills since they wanted to help build the Mishkan. This is why the Torah used the word Bahaima to mean even the people whose special skills were like an animal – meaning nonexistent God nevertheless gave them the wisdom they needed to accomplish these very technically difficult tasks.

 The question that could be asked on this Midrash is that we know God does not perform miracles when there is no need. If there were people who had the necessary skills, why would God need to perform miracles so that people with no skills could do the work? One could answer that if a person really desired to do something for the Mishkan then God made it possible for him to do the work by giving him the necessary skills. However, that would not fully answer the questions since there were things that needed to be done that did not require special skills like carrying the pieces of raw materials from place to place etc.

 The answer could be that a person who had the desire to help build the Mishkan in a particular way and he was lacking the necessary skills, God assisted him in being able to make the contribution he wanted to. If a person’s desire to serve God in a particular way, even when he doesn’t have the skills, is great enough then God will help him accomplish his goals.

 This idea can also apply in our lives today. Many times we say, I can never be a great Talmid Chacham, I am not brilliant like this other guy. From this Midrash we see that it isn’t true. If a person wants it bad enough and prays for it with true feeling God will give him the skills he needs. The same thing applies to all of the other aspects of our service to God. If we truly want to serve God, even in ways that would seem impossible based on our abilities, God will help us succeed. All we have to do is desire to serve Him and to try to put our desire into action, then God will help us succeed and we can grow to tremendously high levels in our service of God.    

5768 פרשת ויקהל

 In this week’s Parsha, the Torah discusses the building of the mishkan and the donations that were given by Bnei Yisroel towards the effort. When describing the donations given the Torah uses two different words to describe the feelings of generosity that Bnei Yisroel showed. The Pasuk says as follows:

All the people whose hearts were raised up came and those of generous spirit brought their donations for the building of the mishkan.

The Ramban explains that when the Torah used the words ”raised up his hearts” that was to describe the people who had the physical skills to build the mishkan and the vessels, while when the Torah uses the words ”generous spirit”  is talking about the generosity of the giving of the material items for the building of the mishkan.

The Ramban continues and explains the reason for the need to use two different descriptions for the two types of giving the following way:

The reason that the Pasuk used the language of ”raised up his heart” means to come close to the work since there was no one to teach them these specialized skills. Rather they just found it in their nature that they were able to do a specific type of skilled labor. If these people raised their heart in the ways of God they would go to Moshe and say “I will do whatever my master says.”

If we look at this Ramban more closely, we can ask the following question:

It seems from the Ramban that this was an active decision of the people who had these skills to donate their time which the Torah equates with someone being generous. Now, the Ramban on the Pasuk which describes the anointing of Betzalel as the chief engineer supervising the building of the mishkan says the following: 

When Bnei Yisroel were in Egypt they were involved in backbreaking labor with bricks and cement, they didn’t learn how to work with gold and silver and precious stones. It was a wonder that someone with no experience could be an expert in all these areas especially since even an experienced artisan if they spent many years working with cement would lose the ability to do the fine work necessary to work with gold.

 This being the case, when a person who never worked in this area, and had no previous skill gets a feeling that they would know how to do this fine work, just at the time that they need that skill for the mishkan, they would realize that they got the skill for the purpose of building the mishkan. If they would automatically come to that realization, then what is the great generosity of heart the Torah praises them for?

The answer can be that it is the natural tendency of a person to attribute his skills to himself. I have these skills and I am going to do with them what benefits me. Most people fail to realize that all the skills we have are given to us by God. It takes effort to stop thinking about using our God gifted skills for our own benefits as if they were really ours. This is why even though Bnei Yisroel only felt these skills at the time of the building of the משכן it is nevertheless a great praise when they used these skills for the proper things.

However, we see another very important idea here and that is we always have to be aware that God gave every person his own set of special skills. These skills can be used for physical as well as spiritual purposes. A person must remember that we are expected to make ourselves aware of what our skill set can be used for in our service of God. This awareness will enable us to make proper use of all our talents and to merit using them at the time of the redemption.

פרשת ויקהל – פקודי 5767

The Torah tells us the contribution of the Nessiim to the mishkan. The Pasuk says the following:

And the nessiim brought the precious stones for the choshen and the eifod.

Rashi explains why the word ”nessiim” is written without the letter yud it is normally written with.

Rashi writes the following:

 In the work of the mishkan the nessiim didn’t donate to the mishkan right away rather they said let all of Bnei Yisroel give first and whatever is lacking we will give. However, Bnei Yisroel gave so much that Moshe Rabbeinu told them to stop bringing materials for the building of the mishkan. The only thing left for the nessiim to bring were the stones for the choshen. Since the nessiim were lazy in the beginning, a letter was left out of their name.

This is a Rashi that we have all read many times but if we analyze it a little more closely, we can learn a very important lesson.

We see from Rashi that the actions of the Nessiim were deemed not to be proper.

However, if we would analyze the logic of the Nessiim it would seem that they had a good reason for what they did. If the builders of the mishkan needed specific materials in order to build the mishkan it would seem logical not to give more of the same materials that everyone else would give but rather to wait until they knew what was still required. The Nessiim had the wherewithal to give whatever was lacking, (as we see they did give the stones for the choshen which no one else did), so they could wait and then give whatever was truly needed and couldn’t be supplied by anyone else.

Furthermore, we know the Nessiim did want to give things to the mishkan as we see from Rashi who tells us that after all the materials were given, the Nessiim said “what is left for us to do”, so it is not like they were trying to avoid giving donations to the mishkan.

Nevertheless, the Torah tells us that even though the reasoning of the Nessiim could have been logical, it was actually the wrong thing to do. The question then becomes, what caused the Nessiim who were some of the biggest Tzadikim in the generation to make this mistake?

The last few words of Rashi give us the answer; Rashi says the following:

And since the Nessiim were lazy in the beginning (they waited to give what was missing) a letter was removed from the word of Nessiim.

What does the trait of  laziness have to do with not giving the donation for the building of the mishkan right away? As Rashi himself mentioned, the Nessiim didn’t give the donation because they wanted to wait and see what was needed.

The answer can be that the reason that the Nessiim did not volunteer to give the materials for the building of the mishkan right away was that they had a minute level of the trait of laziness and that enabled them to rationalize that their reasoning was correct. This is why there was a claim on their actions since they let a minute character flaw prevent them from seeing the truth.

We can learn a very important lesson from this Rashi about the power of the trait of laziness and how much it can impact us. One of the many weapons the yetzer hara uses against us is that it makes us think that a wrong action is really correct.  He does this by causing us to rationalize our actions. However, as we see from the nessiim, the yetzer hara catches us with what would seem to the eye to be perfectly logical reasons. For example, we can think that getting up late and not davening with a minyan is the correct action; when we tell ourselves it will help us learn better later. That is a ruse of the yetzer hara.  That thought really came from the yetzer hara making use of our trait of laziness to get us to do a sin. We see that this method is so powerful that the yetzer hara even used it to a certain degree with the nessiim who were tremendous Tzadikim. Whenever, we decide to do something, we should always double check that the logic we are basing ourselves on is really correct and not a ruse from the yetzer hara to trap us. If we do our best, God will help us and we will successfully defeat the yetzer hara and merit to see the redemption.