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113  twenty-two Listening to Heart-Wisdom Parashat Vayakhel (Exodus 35:1–38:20) Jill Hammer There are two modes of revelation in the Torah. One mode is that of Sinai; revelation comes from a mountaintop, in the form of laws and principles. The law treats everyone equally. It is a transcendent law, Divine in origin, and descends to touch every member of the covenant with its truths. The other mode is that of the mishkan, the Tabernacle or Sanctuary. As the Israelite people build the mishkan, the shrine they will carry through the wilderness, they rely on their inner wisdom and individual gifts. Although the pattern of the mishkan comes from the Eternal, the gifts that make the sanctuary what it is come from the depths of the human heart. The mishkan is replete with images of love and relationship: images we can use to transform our experience of what Torah is. Both of these models appear at the beginning of Parashat Vayakhel. Moses assembles the community and reminds them of Shabbat: “Six days you shall work, and the seventh day shall be for you a holy Sabbath. Whoever does work on it shall die” (Ex. 35:2). Moses is communicating in the mode of Sinai, in which law is paramount. Yet Moses then moves into the second mode, that of the mishkan. He says, “These are the things God has commanded: Take from among you a gift for the Eternal. All those whose hearts are willing shall bring a gift for the Eternal” (Ex. 35:5). The Tabernacle cannot be built only according to law. It must be built by those whose hearts are willing. The people immediately respond to this plea. “Everyone whose heart lifted him up, and everyone who was moved by a spirit of generosity, came bringing the gift of the Eternal for the work of the Tent of Meeting, for its service, and for the sacred vestments: men and women, all who were generous of heart” (Ex. 35:21–22). Notice that the genders, so carefully separated by Torah law, come together to create the sacred shrine. There is no division between man and woman. All desire to be part of the building of the Tabernacle. The Israelites respond, not out of obedience, as they did at Sinai, but because their hearts speak to them. (In the Biblical conception, lev, “heart,” refers to the thoughts of the mind as well as the emotions.)1 In fact, their hearts respond to them with very specific wisdom: the men who work the metal and gold are called chacham lev, “wise-hearted,” and the women who spin the wool are named as nasa liban otana bechochmah: “those whose hearts lifted them up in wisdom.” An inner sacred truth is 114 Jill Hammer coming out of the people through acts of creation. As the Tabernacle grows in beauty, every single Israelite becomes part of the process of putting it together. There is a spiritual model that teaches us to distrust the heart, mind, and body and trust only the wisdom of sacred text. This spiritual model sees the perceptions of the self as deceptive and encourages the believer to ignore inner thoughts, emotions, and sensations, accepting only those truths that come from an outside, transcendent source. People with this kind of spiritual model often see LGBT people as deluded, because they claim that LGBT people are listening only to their inner sense of identity and not to Scripture. A true believer, these people imply, would not pay attention to “false” notions that come from the self. Yet the Torah tells us that the Tabernacle cannot be built without the wisdom of the heart. The yarn cannot be spun, the jewels cannot be set, the sockets cannot be fit together without the inner knowing of individual people. The beauty of the mishkan comes from the beauty of the generous-spirited hearts that design and build it. So, too, we can only build sacred community when the wisdom of the individual heart has a recognized place alongside the sacred text. The Talmud makes this very point in a midrash about the chief artist of the mishkan . The Bible describes this artist, Betzalel, as “endowed with a Divine spirit of wisdom , understanding, and knowledge” (Ex. 31:2). The Talmud relates, Betzalel’s name reflected his wisdom. God said to Moses, “Tell Betzalel to make the Tabernacle , the Ark, and the vessels.” Yet when Moses relayed the message to Betzalel, Moses changed...

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