The Mishkan: Many become one
Shabbat Shalom to our readers.
This year, I am studying Bereshit with my year 10 students at Yavneh College. Re-examining the narrative they studied in primary school, this time through adult eyes, we have been exploring the overarching concepts of the texts. Via an analysis of the pshat (literal meaning) and the inferences derived by its commentaries, we are attempting to construct a nuanced picture of the authentic Jewish approach to these ideas. The theme we have chosen for the opening chapters of Bereshit is “Out of One, Many” reflecting the process by which one God makes space for the multiplicity of His creations, each of which are formed in pairs.
As we explored this idea, we found a relevant expression of it in the human experience of being born single and eventually partnering later in life – a microcosm perhaps of the process of creation whereby the single created space for others, finding partnership in righteous individuals, and ultimately in the Jewish nation. As part of our study, I asked students to provide terms that come to mind when they think of the single/partnered dichotomy. Interestingly, a student compared it to the notion of the freedom/constraint dichotomy – associating single life with freedom and autonomy, and the experience of finding partnership with limitation and dependency.
I was stunned by this, insofar as my experience of moving from being single to being married has been quite the opposite of this; I feel a much greater expansiveness and potential in my married years as compared to those of my bachelorhood. In attempting to express this to my students I quoted from a Talmudic statement that the weight which two single people can carry individually is less that the amount they can carry collectively when they lift something together. Interestingly, this notion is also expressed in relation to income, insofar as a range of local and international studies have discovered the “marriage premium” whereby both married men and women tend to earn significantly greater wages as compared to their single counterparts.
The combined power of a partnership over and above the sum of the individuals who comprise that relationship perhaps sheds light on the significant airtime given to the building of the Mishkan over the second half of the book of Shemot, making it more prominent than the cosmic story of Creation at the beginning of Bereshit.
The Creation story tells of the beginning of multiplicity – a process which gave rise to conflict more easily than it did harmony. In fact, the stories that immediately follow Creation are those of broken partnerships and communities, from Kain’s murder of Hevel to the corrupt age that gave rise to the Flood.
In contrast, the building of the Mishkan is a story of a disparate community coming together to build a single edifice. Moreover, it was comprised of the main elements of Creation, weaving together the inanimate (minerals such as gold, silver and copper) with living vegetation (wooden beams, linen garments), animals (skins used to cover the Mishkan as well as the korbanot) and human beings (the builders as well as those who served within, and transported, the finished product). The harmony elicited by the building of the Mishkan represents the ultimate purpose of Creation, that multiple entities should work together to produce results that outweigh the sum of their parts.
The story of the Mishkan is one in which “Many Become One”. It describes how entities can partner with one another to form productive teams, based on the unique properties of each individual element within the group, to produce a home in which the ultimate Oneness can naturally reside.
Rabbi Chaim Cowen is deputy principal, Leibler Yavneh College.
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