This week’s Torah reading of Vayakhel (Exodus 35:1 – 38:20) competes for the title of the most boring parashah of the year. Not only does it record, in painstaking detail, the making of the tabernacle in the desert, its accoutrements, and the priestly vestments, it does so for the second time. Almost all of the information can be found in the prior readings of T’rumah and T’tsaveh. And yet, when you think about it, the parashah fits beautifully into the narrative arc of the whole second half of Exodus.
That arc, to be sure, is itself maddeningly difficult to follow. From Mishpatim (Exodus 21:21 – 25:18) forward, Exodus vacillates between presenting catalogues of laws and regulations and continuing the story of the Israelites’ eventful visit to Mount Sinai. Thus, the story of the golden calf is pivotally located between the initial lengthy description of the tabernacle and the subsequent recap that occupies our parashah and next week’s, P’kudey. Rather than getting into the debates among medieval commentators over the actual chronology of events, I’ve put the entire narrative together as a sort of screenplay. Looking at it that way, we might better be able to discern the meaning of the whole business of the tabernacle and the role of the priestly caste within it.
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