(Delivered March 21, 2025)

Shabbat shalom! 

There’s something I used to say to the children when they were growing up, a phrase that came up a lot when we were navigating the typical questions of life with small children: “My brother got more than me,” or “I want another cookie,” or “I was here first.” The thing I said, much more often than not, was, “There’s plenty for everyone if everyone shares.”

I wasn’t sure if it was true, even though I dearly wanted it to be. I said it so often, because I wanted the kids to hold it as a value, even if it wasn’t always real. I wanted for them to believe in the magic of people pulling together with generosity in order to make life better for one another. Not because that’s the way life always is, but because I wanted them to imagine it could be, and point their compass in that direction.

Had I been acquainted with it at the time, our parsha for this week, Vayakhel, might have been the inspiration for that bit of aspirational maternal wisdom / magical thinking. Vayakhel finds the Israelites busily collecting voluntary donations for the building and decoration of the Mishkan—the portable sanctuary that our ancestors created according to divine blueprint and brought with them throughout their travels in the wilderness of Sinai, on the way to the Promised Land. This process of building begins with a wish list and is scaffolded by instructions that reflect wholesomeness and deep purpose.

In Shmot 35:5, we find the words: 

קְחוּ מֵאִתְּכֶם תְּרוּמָה ליי כֹּל נְדִיב לִבּוֹ יְבִיאֶהָ אֵת תְּרוּמַת יי
זָהָב וָכֶסֶף וּנְחֹשֶׁת
Take from among you offerings for God; all whose heart is willing,
bring these gifts of gold, silver and copper.

Notice the phrase כֹּל נְדִיב לִבּוֹ. We have כֹּל—all, with its implications of inclusiveness; נְדִיב denoting nobility and generosity, and לב, the heart. All with generosity of heart. Many of the higher qualities of humanity are packed into this phrase. Rashi notes the implication that the heart is the seat of generosity, thus this whole phrase is heart-centered. Siftei Chachamim extends this reading to comment that it is the heart that inspires. Sforno reads in the phrase כֹּל נְדִיב לִבּוֹ a warning that giving must not be compulsory. When what you’re building is something for divine purpose, the manner of giving is relevant, as this famous phrase indicates.

Now if you have been tracking the Torah readings, you know that this holy project of Mishkan-building is not the only collective effort toward making something that’s been in play in this section of the scroll. Last week’s readings from Ki Tissa found the Israelites gathering up their riches to create something together, but the intention and result there were entirely different. In Exodus 32:2, Aaron responds to the Israelites’ desperate demand for a god to worship by saying:

פָּרְקוּ נִזְמֵי הַזָּהָב אֲשֶׁר בְּאָזְנֵי נְשֵׁיכֶם בְּנֵיכֶם וּבְנֹתֵיכֶם וְהָבִיאוּ אֵלָי
Snatch the gold rings from the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.

The word choice here—פָּרְקוּ—meaning to tear away or to break, is starkly different from the heart-oriented language for the Mishkan. There is inherent violence in the creation of עגל הזהב—the Golden Calf. Even the way the gold is collected speaks of tension, if not outright force. Although our sages try to save face for Aaron—saying that he submitted to the Israelites’ wild demands in order to stall for time, hoping that Moses would come back before he was able to actually make the idol—Aaron’s word choice betrays implicit brutality. At some subconscious level, Aaron knows that succumbing to the temptation for idolatry—an imitation of divine connection as opposed to the real thing—can only be unwholesome, to say the least.

The contrasting mode of collection in these two shared building projects teaches us that how we give—how we share—is consequential. Tearing the jewelry off a family member’s ears is a far cry from giving what the heart is inspired to give. The ill-gotten gold of Ki Tissa could only result in discord and degradation. And indeed Rashi suggests that the women didn’t participate voluntarily; their earrings had to be torn from them because they would never have given them of their own will.

By contrast, this week’s parsha opens with Moses gathering כּל־עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל—the whole community of Israelites—to receive instruction for what comes next. With the remnants of the Golden Calf still smoldering, it’s the entire assemblage that comes together, to try to pick up the pieces of their shattered society. And as they begin to heal, they know that only by giving fully, freely, and from the heart can they recover what has been lost and reset their compasses to the basic principle that there’s plenty for everyone if everyone shares. And that in that sharing, there is space for the divine to enter.