Taking Care of Beautiful Things

By Hazzan Jenna Greenberg.

Taking a closer look at some of the materials used for the Mishkan, we learn in parashat Vayakhel that they include items such as precious metals (gold, silver and copper), materials like linen and wool in various colors, animal skins, wood, oil, spices, and precious stones.

The name of one of these materials is rather intriguing. Linen, known as sheish, is a word that to most of us means the number 6. The rabbis teach that sheish meant both of these things. It was linen, and each thread in the sheish yarn was made of six strands.

This is particularly fitting to me as today marks my mother’s 6th yahrzeit and, like our artisan ancestor Betzalel, Mom was an artist too: she was an amateur tailor, creating many Halloween and Purim costumes; a professional potter, who taught pottery classes that I often attended, and we even had a pottery studio with a wheel in our basement!

The importance of art to her is also fitting as the importance of creating and protecting beautiful things in Jewish tradition is rooted in Parshat Vayakhel.

We learn that the Mishkan had three top layers, which were placed on top of each other. Layer #1, made up of sheets of colorful cloth, was on the bottom, and you could see it only if you were inside the Mishkan. Layer #2 was made up of sheets of goats’ hair, creating a protective tent over that first layer, like a raincoat. Even these layers protecting our beautiful Mishkan were beautiful in their own right.

Rashi says that we can learn a lesson from this second covering: “The Torah teaches a rule of life: People should take care of beautiful things.” 

Think of all the ways that we do this today, especially with our beautiful and holy ritual items. We use a beautiful bag to protect our tallitot, and on top of that, many use a plastic covering made for the purpose of protecting that first layer, and ultimately, the tallit within the first bag. We use beautiful mezuzot which are ultimately protective and often artistic cases for the Torah text on the klaf within. Ritual items such as the lulav, etrog and Kiddush cup often have a protective case or box that often serves more than just that protective purpose, if you’ve seen any of the artistic renditions of said items. Even a siddur can have a beautiful, protective cover, as our Kitah Gimel students will receive next week at their special Shabbat service.

Through all of this, I believe that one of the greatest values we learn from this week’s parsha is that of Hiddur Mitzvah: beautifying the mitzvot. We should go above and beyond to take care of the ritual items we use, elevating their purpose and beauty to an even higher level of holiness in the way that we protect and care for them.

As we learned from both our parsha and Rashi’s commentary, not only should we create beautiful things, but we should take care of them as well. By doing so, we honor the artists who create the masterpieces that we admire and use. And when they are no longer with us, we honor their memories by caring for the artistic items they created.