While it is important to teach our children that individual leaders can make an enormous impact on communities, it is also important to teach them that communities are most successful when individuals at the grassroots level choose to use their talents to benefit a cause greater than themselves. Emphasizing this point, Shirley Sagawa and Deborah Jospin write in The Charismatic Organization that organizations can develop “charisma” by utilizing social capital in their day-to-day work:
“...certain qualities of organizations are more important than charismatic leaders. Charismatic organizations attract people by achieving powerful results and building a community that others want to join. In other words, they build strong social capital. Social capital refers to a network of relationships that yield benefits to those who are part of the network. These benefits flow from trust, norms of reciprocity, information flow, and cooperation embedded in these relationships...These networks lead to other essential forms of capital—financial, human, and political—that allows the organization to increase its impact and influence even more, beginning a continuing cycle of impact growth” (Shirley Sagawa and Deborah Jospin, The Charismatic Organization, page 4).
Sagawa and Jospin, each of whom work in organizations in the social sector, argue that any communal organization that wants to achieve maximal success cannot rely on money alone, but must actualize the talents of every person in the community, and make each person feel compelled to give of their time and energy to advance the organization’s mission, a vision echoed in this week’s parasha.
Close readers of Parashat Pekudei will notice that the Torah’s description of the completion of the Mishkan parallels the description of the completion of God’s creation in Sefer Bereishit:
- Shemot 39:32: Thus was completed all work of the Mishkan, the Ohel Moed, and the Israelites did according to all the Lord commanded and Moses completed the work.
- Bereishit 2:1-2: Thus were completed the heavens and earth and all their host and God completed on the seventh day His work which He had done.
Upon reading these two texts for the first time, one immediately notices how these passages use similar language to describe the moment when an incredible act of creation and construction came to a close. However, when we look at the passage from Parashat Pekudei, we see the Torah tell us that the Israelites did “all the Lord commanded,” but “Moses completed the work,” leading the reader to the question of what it means to say that the Israelites “did” what God commanded.
Taking a general approach, Rabbi Obadiah Seforno, an early modern Italian commentator, argues that all Israelites made some kind of contribution to the building of the Mishkan, even if that contribution was not directly described in the Torah itself. He writes:
“And the Israelites did”: “the work in its totality was attributed to all the people of Israel seeing that each one of them had a direct or indirect share in it, whether by contributing material, labor, or skill” (Seforno on Shemot 39:32).
Even though the Torah describes specific responsibilities to individual Israelites, the Torah also makes clear that the entire nation was responsible for bringing donations and materials essential to the building of the Mishkan itself. As a result, when the Torah says that the Israelites did the work, the text is referencing all kinds of contributions, both large and small.
Taking a halahkic approach, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, other known as the Netziv, writes that the work completed by the Israelites was purely halakhic in-nature, and the Torah wants to make clear that the Mishkan was constructed “by the book.” The Netziv writes:
“Knowing the intense desire of the Israelites for the Divine Presence to reside in their midst, as I have noted...we might have imagined that to achieve this they want beyond what was required. On this account the text observed “they did as the Lord commanded-so they did”- not a jot more” (Ha-Emek Davar on Shemot 39:32).
For the Netziv, a major construction project for the purpose of creating a sanctuary to God required meticulous preparation and execution on the part of the Israelites, thereby explaining why the Torah devotes so much detail as to how each object in the Mishkan must be constructed. As such, the Netziv argues that when the Torah describes the completion of the Mishkan’s construction, it wants to indicate that the Israelites did the work exactly as God proscribed it, following the instructions necessary to create a divine sanctuary.
Finally, taking an educational approach, Rabbi Hayyim ibn Attar, also known as the Or Ha-Hayyim, argues that the Torah wants to remind us that the Mishkan was a collective endeavor on the part of the Israelites, and although certain people had greater responsibilities than others, each Israelite fulfilled a unique role. The Or Ha-Hayyim argues that,
“...the text wished to indicate the mutual, interlocking character of Torah observance, by means of which the children of Israel brought reciprocal benefits on each other. The Torah was given to be collectively observed by Israel as a whole. Each individual would contribute his best to their mutual benefit…[However,] The Almighty gave us 613 precepts and it is impossible for one man to observe them all. There are, for example, Priests, Levites and Israelite men and women. Some precepts apply only to priests, others can only be fulfilled by Israelites, and others only by women. In what way is it feasible for the individual to observe all the precepts, attaining the complete perfection symbolized in the correspondence between the number of precepts, negative and positive, and the 248 limbs and 365 sinews respectively of the human body? The answer must be that the Torah can only be observed collectively, by the people as a whole, each individual deriving benefit from the observance of his neighbor and each individual’s performance complementing that of the other” (Or Ha-Hayyim on Shemot 39:32).
In this expansive commentary, the Or Ha-Hayyim makes the point that the Mishkan could not be constructed without the shared efforts of the entire Israelite nation, with each person making a contribution that uniquely suited his or her talents and capabilities. As a result, when the Torah concludes the construction of the Mishkan, it wants to make clear that the construction was completed by a people united in purpose, a charismatic nation capable of great things.
From the first time a parent, student, faculty or staff member walks into the doors of Schechter, we have a responsibility to remind them that a Jewish organization only thrives when people feel able to give a piece of themselves that reflects their unique talents and strengths. Just as the Mishkan required a little piece of each of the Israelites, whether direct or indirect, whether financial, physical, or artistic, a school requires a little piece of each of member of our community. When we succeed doing in this, we make our school a Mikdash M’at, a little sanctuary that could only be built through the efforts of a charismatic community.
Shabbat Shalom!
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