Parashat Tetzaveh

Parashat Tetzaveh
Adar 9, 5772 ~ March 3, 2012
Marshall Schwartz

There are two unusual structural elements in this week's parsha, Tetzaveh, that deserve careful attention. First, Tetzaveh is the only parsha from the beginning of Exodus until the end of the Torah from which Moshe's name is absent. Why is it missing? Secondly, this is the second of five parshiot – the last five in Sefer Shemot – which discuss in exquisite detail the building of the Mishkan. Why does this event deserve such a long, repetitive narration when the story of creation takes only 34 verses? Moreover, is there any relationship between these two anomalies?

Removing Moshe's name means that our text in this parsha presents us with a verbal construct not found anywhere else in the Torah. Instead of the usual, “Vayedabber YHVH el Moshe laymor”, or “Vayomer YHVH el Moshe”, or even “Tsav et B'nei Yisrael” – “And Hashem spoke to Moses, saying...”, “And Hashem said to Moses”, or “Command the Children of Israel” – we have the following verses:

“V'attah t^etsaveh et B'nai Yisrael, v^eyikhu eilekha shemen zayit zakh, katit lama'or, l^eha'alot ner tamid” [Ex. 27:20; “And you shall command the Children of Israel, that they shall take for you pure olive oil, pressed, for illumination, to cause the lamp to ascend continuously.”]

“V'attah hakreiv eilekha et Aharon ahikha v^eet banav itto mitokh B'nei Yisrael l^ekhahano li – Aharon, Nadav va'Avihu, Elazar v^eItamar b'nei Aharon” [Ex. 28:1; “And you shall draw Aaron near to you from among the Children of Israel – Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, Elazar and Ittamar, the sons of Aaron.”]

“V'attah t^edabber el kol hakhmei lev asher mileitiv ruah hokhmah veasu et bigdei Aharon l^ekad^esho l^ekhahano li” [Ex. 28:3; “And you shall speak to all those with a heart of wisdom, and they shall make the vestments for Aaron, to sanctify him in order that he may minister to me.”]

Moshe has become nothing more than “you”.

Three principal rabbinic explanations have been given for this parsha-long lacuna. The Vilna Gaon suggested that Moshe's absence from Tetzaveh reflects the fact that this parsha is always read close to the traditional date of Moshe's death, the seventh of Adar. So his absence from the parsha is a mirror of his absence from this world. The Paneah Raza, on the other hand, avers that the absence of Moshe's name is a reflection of the principle that “there is no anger that does not leave an impression”. More explicitly, when Moshe begged Hashem to send someone else to lead B'nei Yisrael out of Egypt, Hashem “became angry with Moshe” [Ex. 4:13-14], and declared that Aaron would accompany Moshe and speak for him. Thus, Aaron and not Moshe received the priesthood, and, since this parsha is concerned solely with the activities of the priests, Moshe's name was omitted. Finally, the Ba'al HaTurim declares that the reason Moshe's name is missing is Moshe's declaration in next week's parsha, Ki Tissa, that if Hashem does not forgive B'nei Yisrael for the sin of the Golden Calf, he should “blot me out from Your book which You have written” [Ex. 32:32] – and so his name is “blotted out” from the preceding parsha.

None of these three explanations seem completely satisfying. The Vilna Gaon's concept requires assuming many facts not in evidence: that the division and timing of the parshiot was set at the same time that Hashem dictated the Torah to Moshe; that Ezra and his colleagues has no role in determining the final status of our text; and, perhaps most telling, that Hashem revealed to Moshe the (approximate) day of his death by omitting his name from this parsha. Occam's razor rules out this drash.

As for Moshe's request to “blot me out from the book”, this, too, presents several difficulties. First, Moshe's complete statement in Ex. 32:32, after the episode of the Golden Calf, reads, “And now, if you would only forgive their sin! But if not, blot me out from Your book which You have written.” But Hashem did indeed forgive the sin of B'nei Yisrael – why then is Moshe's name blotted out? And if it was to be erased from “Your book which You have written”, why is it excluded only from this one parsha? I would suggest that Moshe's request may have served as a catalyst for removing his name from this section of the Torah, but was not the underlying cause.

Lastly, we turn to the Ba'al HaTurim's proposal, that Moshe's disinclination to lead B'nei Yisrael caused the priesthood to be transferred from himself to Aaron, and his name is omitted here because the parsha is concerned almost exclusively with the duties of Aaron and his sons. Is this a valid “punishment” for Moshe's reluctance? Wasn't losing the priesthood sufficient? And, if true, why was his name removed only from this one section of the Torah, and not any of the many other chapters that are devoted entirely to priestly activities? Perhaps excluding Moshe's name was a sort of punishment, but I do not find convincing the argument that the underlying reason was his reticence.

So what, then, was the cause? For what failing is Moshe's name excised from Tetzaveh? Hashem chose Moshe because he was the person best suited to confront Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of Egypt. But that election did not mean that Moshe was best suited for all the leadership tasks that needed to be performed in order for B'nei Yisrael to enter and conquer Canaan. Particularly, Moshe has clearly failed to reform this unruly mass of former slaves. Even before leaving Egypt, they start to complain: “May Hashem look on you and judge you!”, they cry to Moshe. “You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.” [Ex. 5:21] At Yam Suf, they muttered again: “They said to Moshe, 'Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the wilderness to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness!'” [Ex. 14:11-12] And then, just three days after seeing “the mighty hand of Hashem” split the Yam Suf, they again accost Moshe about the lack of food and water: “The Israelites said to them, 'If only we had died by Hashem's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us into this wilderness to starve this entire assembly to death.'” [Ex. 16.3] To top off this list, we have the Golden Calf, discussed in next week's parsha, but probably occurring at the same time that Hashem spoke the words of Tetsaveh to Moshe.

B'nei Yisrael are mired in their generations-long slave mindset. While Moshe has taken Israel out of slavery, he has not been able to take slavery out of the Israelites. Once dependent on their slave masters for not only their “pots of meat” but for the very structure of their lives, B'nei Yisrael are now dependent on Moshe. They are still far from being a coherent whole, a people who embraces their unity and responsibility as servants of Hashem. How then can this murky darkness that clouds their souls be lifted, replaced by the light of freedom?

I suggest that Hashem's solution to this dilemma had two distinct elements, both reflected in this parsha. One is the eradication of Moshe's name from this parsha, part a symbolic act to underscore the fact that the Israelites are dependent only on Hashem, not any human – not even Moshe. And this erasure may also be a symbolic punishment of Moshe for his inability to wrest the slave mentality from the hearts and souls of his charges.

The second salient of this campaign is reflected in the extended, if not exaggerated, repetition of the details of assembling the Mishkan and its accoutrements. What all the signs and wonders displayed by Hashem (the ten plagues, the splitting of Yam Suf, the revelation on Har Sinai) have failed to accomplish -- the molding the people into a cohesive group imbued with responsibility and identity – is achieved instead by moving the nation to act on its own behalf, by building the tabernacle. As Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has written,

That is when G-d does the single most unexpected thing. He says to Moses: speak to the people and tell them to contribute, to give something of their own, be it gold or silver or bronze, be it wool or animal skin, be it oil or incense, or their skill or their time, and get them to build something together – a symbolic home for my presence, a Tabernacle. It doesn't need to be large or grand or permanent. Get them to make something, to become builders. Get them to give...

During the whole time the Tabernacle was being constructed, there were no complaints, no rebellions, no dissension. What all the signs and wonders failed to do, the construction of the Tabernacle succeeded in doing. It transformed the people. It turned them into a cohesive group. It gave them a sense of responsibility and identity.

Seen in this context, the story of the Tabernacle was the essential element in the birth of a nation. No wonder it is told at length. … The Tabernacle did not last forever, but the lesson it taught did.

And this lesson is reflected in a small snippet of Talmud that we read at the end of Kabbalat Shabbat services (and which, here at Beth Jacob, we frequently add at the end of the daily Shacharit service):

Rabbi Elazar said in the name of Rabbi Hanina: Torah scholars increase peace in the world, as it is said: And all your children will be students of Hashem and your children will have abundant peace. Do not read 'your children' [banayikh], rather 'your builders' [bonayikh]. [BT Berakhot 64a]