פרשת ויקהל
This week’s Parsha continues with a description of the intricate planning and construction of the Mishkan. A very skilled team, headed by Betzalel and Oholiav, were charged with carrying out these complicated instructions. I would like to focus on the interesting criterion the Torah uses to describe those suitable for this monumental task. Hashem commanded Moshe to choose people who possess “wisdom of the heart” and then, curiously, promised that He Himself would fill their hearts with wisdom in order to carry out their vital duties. There are a number of obvious difficulties with these verses. First, R’ Chaim Veloshiner points out that this term, “wisdom of the heart” seems strange. Typically, we think of emotion emanating from the heart, and wisdom coming from the mind. What does the Torah want to indicate with this bizarre term? Second, why did Hashem feel the need to fill Betzalel and Oholiav’s hearts with wisdom if they were already wise? Third, why mention that Hashem would be the One filling them with wisdom – from where else does wisdom come if not from Him?
R’ Chaim Smuelevitz and R’ Shach both explain that we see from these verses that “wisdom of the heart” is not conventional wisdom, but rather the desire for wisdom. In other words, Betzalel and Oholiav weren’t necessarily the brightest of people, or the most skilled architects, but because Hashem’s commandments were so dear to them, they pined for wisdom in order to be able to fulfill them perfectly. When Hashem saw their sincere desire, He answered them in spades, the same way He did with King Solomon, who Chazal teach us was permitted to ask one thing of Hashem, and who chose wisdom and became the wisest man in history.
Rabbeinu Yonah in Avos (4:1) goes even further. The Mishnah says, “Who is a wise person, he who learns from every man.” Rabbeinu Yonah explains that a person who has been granted extraordinary intelligence, but chooses to waste his time with idle activities, is called a fool. In contrast, a man who is not necessarily endowed with a superior intellect, but who genuinely desires wisdom so much that he’s seeks it from every person he meets along the way, is considered by Chazal to be wise. According to Rabbeinu Yonah, then, “wisdom of the heart” is the true form of wisdom. On a mundane level, R’ Yerucham points out that we see examples of this every day. R’ Yerucham invites us to take a look around at most of the wealthy people we know. Are all of them extraordinarily intelligent? Certainly not. What then is the defining quality of most of these successful people? They wanted it more. They were willing to persevere in the face of disappointment and difficulty, and they simply kept on pushing. The same is true in the realm of the spiritual. Pure, raw desire is the primary ingredient for success. R’ Shach puts it a little differently when he says that Hashem has no reason to give special assistance to somebody who doesn’t truly seek His wisdom. He compares such a person to a donkey who carries a lot of books, but doesn’t really feel that deeply for what is in them. Such a Jew may not earn great Heavenly aid. On the other hand, a Jew who truly loves the Torah, and yearns to understand it, will be far more eligible for a “Heavenly scholarship.”
There is another word mentioned in the verse describing Betzalel and his peers, and that is “binah.” Rashi explains that binah refers to the specific ability to understand and then to apply that understanding to other matters. R’ Aryeh Finkel expounds further that this Rashi is referring to every Jew’s responsibility never to stagnate in his learning and his service, and always to grow in his depth of understanding. Rabbi Green has said many times that the Gemorah he sees this year isn’t even remotely similar to the Gemorah he saw last year, even though the words are the same. Every Jew needs to be constantly looking for greater depth and greater application for the wisdom he has acquired. When one does this, he is capable of reaching levels he could have never reached on his own. We find in Chazal that Betzalel and Oholiav were able to understand the secrets of creation, simply by building and understanding the Mishkan. This could only be true if their understanding was ever-evolving, and they were perpetually looking for greater depth in each one of the Miskan’s components. Certainly for us, this thought should be very encouraging. The Torah we learn day in and day out, if plumbed deeply, yields more and more profound understanding, and eventually, can even reveal the Universe’s greatest secrets. As Ben Bag Bag said, “Keep churning the Torah because is contains everything!”
Every Jew has to realize that there is no end to his responsibility to desire to further his wisdom. R’ Eliezer Silver was a Torah giant from Europe in the ‘30s, who through a series of quirky events, ended up the Rabbi in Cincinnati, Ohio. Needless to say, there was not much going on in the Torah world in Cincinnati in the ‘30s, but the few Jews who were there knew enough to know that the needed to hire a Rabbi, and Hashem blessed them with R’ Silver. One evening, not long into the Rabbi’s tenure, the president of the Shul was closing up late at night, when he noticed a faint light coming from one of the rooms of the Shul. He realized that somebody was trying to rob the Shul, so he decided to sneak up behind the thief and take him by surprise. You can imagine his surprise when he saw that the “thief” was none other than the new Rabbi trying to get a little learning in during the wee hours of the night. So he asked the Rav, “What are you doing here so late?” R’ Silver explained that he was studying Torah. The president became visibly disappointed and looked ill. The Rabbi asked him what was wrong and if he needed a doctor. The president explained, “Rabbi, I’m so disappointed. We did so much research to determine whether or not you were an expert Rabbi, and everybody told us that you were. Now that I see you still haven’t completed your studies, I realize that the references we had for you must have lied to us!” R’ Eliezer Silver would tell this story over for many years during his tenure in America to demonstrate how far a Jew can drift from a true understanding of what Torah is. In Judaism, a wise man is called a Talmid Chacham which means that he is always a student. This is an immutable truth of Torah, and we need to always keep learning and keep growing until the day we die.
May we always merit to love and seek Torah knowledge all of our days!