How would you define the word “holy?” It’s not “religious,” nor is it “spiritual.” I actually prefer the word “distinctive.” You see, one doesn’t have to be otherworldly to be holy.
Take money, for example. It’s greasy, often corrupt, the ultimate expression of materialism. But give it to a pauper, and you’ve sanctified it.
This week in Vayakhel—the first of two portions read this Shabbat—the Mishkan, or sanctuary built in the wilderness, was finished. The people had contributed all the various materials necessary, and the sanctuary was complete. It wasn’t only a House of God, a House of Worship or the first synagogue in history. It was a place for God’s infinite presence to reside, be seen and felt tangibly. It would make the earthly material world into a spiritual, holy, Godly place.
God was very comfortable up in heaven, but it seems He wanted to feel at home down here, too. For reasons the mystics grapple with, He desired that in the physical realm, there should be a manifestation of the Divine. So gold, silver, copper, different types of wool, tapestries, animal skins, spices etc., all came together to create the sanctuary where God’s sacred presence would be discernible on earth.
Perhaps nowhere was this idea more evident than in the contribution by the women.
“He made the copper urn and its copper base from the mirrors of the women who had congregated at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting” (to give their contributions).” — Exodus 38:8
The urn was used for the Kohanim (the Jewish priestly class) to wash their hands and feet before performing the sacred services in the sanctuary. Today, when the Kohanim bless the congregation in shul, they, too, must wash their hands first.
Rashi shares some of the behind-the-scenes goings-on. The copper the women were donating for the sanctuary was sheets polished brightly until they shone and became like mirrors. The women used them to adorn themselves. Moses found it distasteful to use objects of vanity in the House of God and was reluctant to accept them.
But God told him to take them from the women. Why? Because these mirrors were used to build the legions of Israelites back in Egypt. The menfolk would come home after a day of backbreaking labor in the service of the Egyptian taskmasters, and they were hurting and exhausted. All they wanted was to sleep. But the women used their mirrors to entice their husbands to carry on their intimate marital relationships.
Far from denigrating these polished copper mirrors for usage in the sanctuary, God told Moses: “These are more precious to me than all the other donations.”
Thanks to the women using them, the Jewish people were fruitful and multiplied in Egypt. The Jewish nation was born as a result of these righteous women and their mirrors.
This story carries with it a very important and revealing message about the Jewish view of marriage and family. Other faiths consider marriage unholy and, at best, a concession to human frailty. The ideal holy men and women are those who disavow marriage and pledge to live a life of celibacy. Other faiths encourage escaping to the mountaintops to live lives far removed from the everyday, mundane, material existence. In their view, to be spiritual means to reject the physical.
Judaism says no to all that.
“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth,” is the very first line of the Bible. Heaven and earth are part of God’s universe. He is to be found down here on Earth as He is found in the heavens above. The whole purpose of creation was to establish a “dwelling place for God below.” When we take the earthly, material world and use it for a higher purpose, a Godly endeavor, we are bringing heaven down to earth and elevating the lowly earth to the heavenly realms.
So it was when the Israelites built the sanctuary in Moses’s time, and so it is now when we use the material world appropriately for worthy, Godly causes.
And marriage is a perfect example. We mustn’t reject the physical relationship; we must sanctify it. That’s precisely what marriage is all about. In other faiths, the celibate is holy. In Judaism, if a young person doesn’t marry, it’s a tragedy (just ask his or her mother).
We neither reject the world nor escape it. We embrace it. We engage with it. And by using it correctly as God has taught us, we elevate and sanctify it.
And that is why the Creator put us here in the first place, to do just that. We live human lives. We marry, we raise families, we use the material world to build a sanctuary for God on earth. Every mitzvah we do takes an element of the material world and sanctifies it—whether it be tefillin, kosher food, Shabbat candles, etc.
The women back in Egypt knew this secret. We must learn it, too.
