In this week’s Torah portion, Vayakel-Pikudeh, Moses commands the Jewish people to give gold and silver and other materials for the building of the Tabernacle. The Torah tells us that the Jewish people were so enthusiastic that they gave more than was needed. The Midrash (Shemot Rabah) compares this to their donations of gold jewelry for the Golden Calf, for which the Mishkan, according to many commentators, was an atonement:

“Moshe was on the mountain and the people said to Aaron, ‘Make for us a God who can go before us since we don’t know what happened to this man Moses.’ Aaron said to them, ‘Yesterday you said, ‘All that God says we will do,’ and now you declare, ‘Make for us a God”?  Aaron saw that the people killed Chur (who tried to stop them) and so Aaron was afraid. Aaron said to them, ‘Take off your gold rings.’ Immediately all the people did so and gave him their gold ornaments until he said: ‘Enough!’.”

It is similar to the following parable: A young man who came to a city where they were collecting charity, gave until they said, ‘enough.’ He went a bit further and saw they were collecting funds to build a theater and he gave until they said, ‘enough.’ So too the Jewish people gave for the Golden Calf until they said, ‘enough,’ and they gave gold to the Mishkan until they said, ‘enough.’ Thus God said, ‘Let the gold of the Tabernacle come and atone for the gold of the calf.’”

There are several questions which loom large upon reading this Midrash.   First, in the Midrash the charity collection comes first and then the theater.  If this parallels the Golden Calf and the Mishkan, then the charity donations seem to match up with the Golden Calf and the theater with the Mishkan. Shouldn’t it be the opposite? Second, why choose the theater as a metaphor at all?

Perhaps the calf was not just an idol, or a hoped for leader, but a sort of art.   A manifestation of the hopes, desires, and dreams of the people for a God, a leader, for security. Indeed, art is an expression of things, and it can often say that which words can not. In this sense it is compared in the Midrash to charity for it is a giving to facilitate the Godly in the world, albeit, in this case, in a forbidden way.

In fact, a Golden Calf was the most obvious form of Divine image, as we see later in history when Yerovom wishes to convince the Jewish people that they can stay in the northern kingdom to serve God and not go to the Temple in Jerusalem. He gives them Golden Calves in the north in Dan and Bethel, as places of worship. The Midrash even says that the cherubs on the ark in the Tabernacle had heads of calves. Today, the cow is still holy in some countries.

Then God says make a Tabernacle. In this Midrash, the Mishkan is allegorized by a theater. Why? There is a difference between sculpture and theater.   Sculpture is static, it is made by a human and gazed at; such art is-what-it-is, we can try to reflect on it but it is unchanging and beyond us.

Theater on the other hand is dramatic, it represents not that which is above us or beyond us but within us, it is us. One unfamiliar with theater might see it and not know if it is regular lived life or art. In this sense it is life.

Perhaps part of the point of replacing the calf with the Mishkan is a lesson about serving God. For the Jewish people, the Mishkan is the center of their national, live, Divine drama. But for us the goal is the lived life of Torah; in this sense, life itself is the theater. It is time limited, many parts are scripted with expectations, and we know, as my mother used to say, that it will be a tragedy since in the end the hero at the center of the drama (we, ourselves), always dies.

At the same time, the dramatic lived drama of a Torah life brings with it fulfillment, joy, and redemption, even while limited to the stage, time, and script with which we are blessed.