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My maternal grandfather, Henry Bornstein z”l, was a man of modest means – and, fortunately, modest tastes. Among his favorite foods were liverwurst and lox wings. He credited the day-old bread he ate for having strong teeth well into old age. I don’t believe he ever drove a new car in his life.
Yet for all of this, he was happy because he observed that both rich and poor go out alike. This isn’t universally true, but among traditionally-observant Jews, it’s pretty close. We are all buried in a shroud, for example, following the lead of the first century CE sage Rabban Gamaliel (yes, the same one in the Passover Haggadah) as related in the Babylonian Talmud (Moed Katan 27b). In a similar vein, we are all interred in a plain pine box.
Are there other examples of Jewish “democratization”? We could cite the example of the half-shekel tax, a subject covered in last week’s maftir for Shabbat Shekalim. Or we could cite the fact that everyone was required to participate in the Passover seder, including the consumption of matzah, wine, bitter herbs and the paschal lamb. This week’s portion, P’kudei, provides yet another example, this one subtler.
The chief architect of the desert Tabernacle was a man named Bezalel, who was from the tribe of Judah. You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to know that Judah was the most prestigious tribe, and indeed the current word Jew (Hebrew, Yehudi) is closely related to the tribal name (Yehuda). Naturally, a man from this tribe would be chosen for this sacred task.
The Torah tells us, however, that Bezalel had an assistant named Oholiab. In contrast to Bezalel, Oholiab was a member of the tribe of Dan, the least prestigious tribe. In fact, only one famous Biblical figure is from the tribe of Dan – Samson, the judge who defeated the Philistines and saved Israel. Thus the Tabernacle was constructed by representatives of both the most prestigious and the least prestigious tribes, as the 9th century Midrash Tanchuma (Ki Tisa 13:5) notes:
R. Hanina the son of Pazzi said: No tribe was greater than Judah, and none was more modest than Dan. Jacob’s son Dan descended from one of the maidservants, Bilhah. The Holy One, blessed be He, declared: Let him come and join with Judah so that no tribe might become arrogant, for both the great and the lowly are equal in the sight of the Holy One, blessed be He. Rabbi Hanina maintained: No man should become arrogant because of the honors bestowed upon him. The Tabernacle and the Sanctuary were erected by these two tribes, for Solomon was of the tribe of Judah, and Hiram was of the tribe of Dan.
In other words, one of the greatest achievements of Jewish history was the product of collaboration between the great and the small. I suspect somewhere my grandfather Henry is smiling today.
- Rabbi Scott Hoffman
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