Finally, after weeks of discussing plans and blueprints, the building of the Mishkan (Temple) has been set into motion! Moshe made the announcement to the nation that construction was to begin and that donations were needed, and within moments, the camp was a flurry of excitement to get started: artisans, metalworkers, woodcutters -- everyone wanted to be involved. The Torah records an account of a stunt they did for Opening Day of Mishkan Building that was so grand, spectacular and over-the-top that it makes Barnum & Bailey and the Cirque de Soleil look like a Jewish day school musical: hundreds of thousands of Jewish wives walked out towards Moshe with their husbands balancing on their shoulders!!!
You don't believe me? Read for yourself:
וַיָּבֹאוּ הָאֲנָשִׁים עַל הַנָּשִׁים
...כֹּל נְדִיב לֵב הֵבִיאוּ חָח וָנֶזֶם וְטַבַּעַת וְכוּמָז כָּל-כְּלִי זָהָב
"The men came [to Moshe] on the women;
every generous heart brought bracelets,
nose rings, [finger] rings and kumaz..." (Shemot 35:22)
Spectacular, but obviously not what the verse means if one would just think about it for a few seconds. Sorry -- at least it captured your imaginations!
Which begs the question: what does it mean?
Which begs the question: what does it mean?
Our first stop is Rashi:
" 'On the women' [means that the men came] 'with the women' and relying on them."Rashi is of course not satisfied with just fudging the על "on" with an עם "with;" for some reason, the Alm!ghty chose to write that the men came to give their donations with the women in a way which could be described as "on" the women. Otherwise, write "with!" Why risk us thinking it was a circus act!?!
The Ramban expounds even further:
"The reason [it says] that 'the men came on the women' is in order [to express] that the generosity to give their jewelry was more prevalent among the women -- they all had jewelry [as did the men], [but the women] immediately took off their nose rings and [finger] rings, and came [forward] first...the reason it says 'on' is because the women who were first [are considered primary in this case] and the men secondary to them."
[The Ramban goes on to bring proofs from the rest of Tanakh of other similar uses of על 'on' meaning 'first and primary.']It turns out that figuratively speaking, our original circus image was not so far off -- the men's generosity was ignited by the enthusiastic gifts of the women -- the men's greatness was great, but "on the shoulders of giants (i.e. the women)."
They too were part of the miracle!
The Talmud in Pesachim 108a says that even though women are normally exempt from time-dependent positive mitzvot, they are obligated as surely as men are to drink the four cups of wine at the Pesach seder. Why make an exception to the usual rule?
שאף הן היו באותו הנם
"They too were part of that miracle!" (108b)Rashi, always there to lend a helping hand, explains by way of a gemara from Sotah 11b:
"As a reward for the righteous women that were in that generation were [the Jewish people] redeemed [from Egypt]."So too in every major redemption of our people from national danger, the women played the primary role -- whether it be Esther in Purim or Yael in Channukah.
The Tosofot on the spot jump on Rashi -- it does not seem, they claim, that women played a primary role from the words of the gemara. The gemara's carefully chosen words read: "they too were part of the miracle," implying that their participation was minor but sufficient to obligate them in the mitzva of 4 cups that commemorate the 4 stages of redemption.
I want to suggest a defense on behalf of Rashi.
Let's zoom into three of the acts of greatness that were performed by the Jewish women in Egypt in order to perhaps understand better why the gemara phrased it שאף הן היו באותו הנם "they too..."
1) At the root of our suffering in Egypt we find the root of our future redemption. Pharoah had commanded the Jewish midwives to kill all Jewish male newborns; the midwives quietly yet heroically resisted the king's decree. Two of these women were singled out: שפרה Shifra and פועה Puah. שפרה is so named because she would not only refuse to let the children die, she would משפר meshaper them, beautify them, making sure that they were physically tended to, healthy and clean. The Torah calls the second one "Puah" because she would woo "pu pu" to the infants, cooing and speaking to them to take care of their emotional needs. All of this was somehow accomplished under the terrifying magnifying glass of the Egyptian government. Even though that by the end of the 10 plagues, the dramatic confrontations of Moshe & Aaron with Pharoah, and the epic splitting of the sea, this episode has long since faded into the background of our memories, if we flip back to the beginning of it all, we find that the Torah highlighted this act of quiet heroism, choosing to open the Book of Shemot with it (1:15, see also Sotah 11b).
2) For fear of being the indirect cause of the death of Jewish boys who would be slaughtered by Egyptian soldiers after birth, the men divorced their wives so that they would not get pregnant. Miriam, the daughter of Amram, the leader of the generation, convinced her father that to do so was worse than Pharaoh -- not having children at all would be a decree against the males and the females, dooming the Jewish nation to disappear entirely. Amram was so moved by her appeal, that he issued the mandate for every man to remarry his wife (Sotah 12a). Moshe, who of course grew up to redeem the nation, was born from Amram's re-marriage to his wife Yochebed (2:1-2).
So too, we find that it was a unified movement by all the women to fight the oppressive decrees of the Egyptians by keeping themselves looking beautiful and arousing their tired, battered husbands into creating and keeping life going despite the holocaust around them (Rashi Shemot 38:8).
3) Lastly (naturally, these are just 3 examples of many), we find the following at the splitting of the sea, just after the men sang:
וַתִּקַּח מִרְיָם הַנְּבִיאָה אֲחוֹת אַהֲרֹן, אֶת-הַתֹּף--בְּיָדָהּ; וַתֵּצֶאןָ כָל-הַנָּשִׁים אַחֲרֶיהָ, בְּתֻפִּים וּבִמְחֹלֹת
"Miriam the prophetess, Aaron's sister, took the drum in her hand, and all the women went out after her with drums and dances" (Shemot 15:20).
The Midrash Mechilta asks the obvious question:
Where did they get drums from in the [middle of the] desert?!?
...rather, these righteous women had total faith, and knew that the Alm!ghty would do miracles and powerful acts for them, and when the time came to leave Egypt, they took drums with them.
It was the women whose faith was so vibrant and tangible that it was obvious to them that you can't follow G!d into the desert without instruments! How are you going to rejoice and celebrate properly when the time comes without them?Small is Big
John Gray, in his popular book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus writes:
A man thinks he scores high with a woman when he does something very big for her, like buying her a new car or taking her on a vacation. He assumes he scores less when he does something small, like opening the car door, buying her a flower, or giving her a hug. Based on this kind of score keeping, he believes he will fulfill her best by focusing his time, energy, and attention into doing something large for her. This formula, however, doesn't work because women keep score differently. When a woman keeps score, no matter how big or small a gift of love is, it scores one point; each gift has equal value. Its size doesn't matter; it gets a point. A man, however, thinks he scores one point for one small gift and thirty points for a big gift. Since he doesn't understand that women keep score differently, he naturally focuses his energies into one or two big gifts.
A man doesn't realize that to a woman the little things are just as important as the big things. In other words, to a woman, a single rose gets as many points as paying the rent on time. Without understanding this basic difference in score keeping, men and women are continually frustrated and disappointed in their relationships (Chapter 10).Hashem, Who fills and encompasses the world with His infinite light looks at small things exactly the way women do. Held in the light of the infinite, what is the quantitative difference between big and small? Indeed, we would propose that the number one quality that women most look for in their spouse is for him to "thoughtful" -- to think about the small things as much as the "big" things: to leave her love notes, to wash the dishes without her asking, to surprise her from time to time with a fun outing. For a woman, the BIG emotions and BIG thoughts of Love and Commitment and Appreciation are only valuable if they express themselves all the way into the nooks and crannies of everyday life.
Moreover, anything BIG can only become BIG if it is made up of small parts. A national revolution can only be ignited by the small mini-revolutions of individuals. This is something only a mother can deeply understand. Only a mother watches her son at his college graduation sheds tears as she simultaneously remembers how many times she cleaned his tush as a baby, while the father is usually busy thinking about who he is going to become.
We now can understand that it was the women who started the cascading domino effect of donations and participation at the building of the Mishkan. When the opportunity arose to take action for Hashem albeit with the tiny earrings in their ears, the women jumped first. The men, still wishing they had been picked to be the architect of the project, had to be overwhelmed by the large-scale demonstration of commitment of the women in order to be moved to follow suit.
We now see that this was just another example of the women being the driving force -- the igniting force of the Jewish people's burning desire for life to persevere in the face of death. From wiping Jewish babies behind their ears, to inspiring their husbands to keep having children, to remembering to bring instruments into the barren desert -- from beginning to end, the women were there.
This is what Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi means when he says,
שאף הן היו באותו הנם
"They too were part of that miracle!"
Remember, he's speaking to men. He is turning our natural tendency on it's head. We, who may have only paid attention to the large-scale public activism of Moshe and Aaron and all the other adult Jewish men, must realize that "the women as well were part of that miracle!" As Rashi explained, their role was equally primary, and in some sense, more primary in that throughout, the women were the spark plug for the men to take action!
This is some of the appreciation for the נשים צדקניות the righteous women of our people in the writings of the Ramban and Rashi, writing 1,000 years ago, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, almost 2,000 years ago, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu writing before the creation of the universe. It is an appreciation that hopefully we can integrate towards our wives, mothers, sisters and daughters and every small thing they do for the greater good.
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