Buying ready-made cloth was not an option for the women in the time of the Mishkan. They needed to take the raw material and spin it and make it into linen. Then, pasuk 26 says: “All the women whose hearts inspired them with wisdom spun the goat hair.” This is a very similar pasuk. The first pasuk says they spun it and the second pasuk says they took the goat hair and spun it.
There is a difference regarding how this spinning is articulated by the two pesukim. Pasuk 25 says, “Every wise-hearted woman spun with her hands”. Pasuk 26 says, “All the women whose hearts inspired them with wisdom spun the goat hair.” Why the difference in language?
Rashi interprets this second pasuk based on a Gemara in Shabbos, that this is speaking about an amazing skill. Rashi explains that the women had a unique talent in that they spun the goat hair while it was still attached to the goats! Try that at home! I can’t even imagine how you would do that. The question is why does Rashi interpret the pasuk this way? In fact, in Parshas Terumah, when the Torah says that they brought the goat-hair, Rashi does not mention this idea. Rashi just says there that they brought the hairs of goats! Why does Rashi mention this strange idea here? Granted, this is based on a Gemara in Shabbos (74b) – but why did they do that?
The Seforno says that the purpose of this was to provide the spun goats-hair with an extra special sheen (zohar nosaf). Apparently spinning the goats-hair while it is still attached to the goat creates a shinier end product.
The Maskil L’Dovid writes that the reason is that it keeps the woven cloth cleaner. Since the goats-hair was not colored or dyed like certain other cloths, it had a tendency to get dirty, so they left it on the backs of the goats in order that it wouldn’t drag on the ground and get dirty.
Rav Yonosan Eibschutz gives a third reason in his sefer Tiferes Yonoson: By leaving it on the goats, it was not mekabel tumah (because since it was attached to a living creature, it was not susceptible to tumah impurity).
Nonetheless, despite all the interpretations, it remains strange that they would spin this yarn while it was still attached to the goats.
We can ask yet another question: Pasuk 25 speaks of “every wise-hearted woman” (singular) while Pasuk 26 speaks of “women whose hearts inspired them with wisdom” (plural). Why the change from individual women in the first pasuk to all women – lashon rabim – in the second pasuk?
The Tolner Rebbe cites a Gemara and a story to address these questions. I too have a story to relate to this matter.
The Tolner Rebbe tells the story of a young chossid in the Ger community in Warsaw. This young man was very poor. He had a baby boy and he made a Shalom Zachor. The son of the Gerer Rebbe (i.e. – the son of the Imrei Emes, named Rav Meir Alter, who unfortunately was later killed in the Holocaust) came to the Shalom Zachor because he knew this young father. Unfortunately, he arrived late and by the time he came to the Shalom Zachor, there was nothing left. No beer. No arbes [chickpeas]. No cake. Nothing.
In comes the Rebbe’s son and there is nothing left to eat at the Shalom Zachor. Now if this would happen today in America, there would be no problem. You go to the pantry and take out a bag of potato chips or popcorn or cookies. No problem. In Ger at that time, there was literally nothing left in the house. Imagine the situation – the Rebbe’s son comes to the simcha and there is nothing to serve him.
The father searched high and low throughout the house and he finally found an onion. He took the raw onion and put in on a plate and brought it to Rav Meir Alter and said “Ahh! A tzibbele far de Rebbe’s zun” (An onion for the Rebbe’s son!). The Tolner Rebbe comments: If you were there and saw the derech eretz and the enthusiasm and honor with which this father presented the onion to the Rebbe’s son, you would think he was presenting him pheasant under glass! He was so touched by the fact that the Rebbe’s son came. The baal simcha wanted to honor the Rebbe’s son so much that he honored him with a raw onion. The way he honored the Rebbe’s son was as if he was serving him the greatest delicacy.
Today, there is a word for this. When I was growing up, either I never heard of this concept or was not aware of it. But when you go to a fancy meal, it is no longer sufficient for the food to taste good. Now there is the presentation. When those of you who are from my generation were growing up, did you ever hear anything about presentation? You would put the chicken and the piece of kugel on the plate, v’nomar amen!
This story is about the presentation of an onion. Because if all you have is an onion, but you give it with such derech eretz and kavod, you can turn an onion into a delicacy.
The Tolner Rebbe also brings the famous Gemara (Kiddushin 32a) “A person can feed his father great delicacies and be deserving of being chased out of the world.”
What does the Gemara mean? Someone can feed his father delicacies, but if he does it in a disrespectful fashion, he can lose his Olam Habah for that act. On the other hand, someone can force his father to grind at the millstone and thereby earn his Olam Habah. (Tosfos explains the case where the father was drafted into the army and the son volunteered to go in place of the father to do the harder work in the army, while the father was left behind to do the grinding that the son would have otherwise done himself). It is literally “the thought that counts” – the presentation that counts!
I remember many years ago when I was in Kollel. We did not have much money in those days. My mother-in-law, ob”m, had a birthday. We didn’t have the money to go out and buy her a nice gift. So my wife made her a quilt. My wife bought the material and made her mother a quilt. It wasn’t even a big quilt. It was the same story as the Gerer chossid with the Rebbe’s son. We didn’t have the money. We wanted to give a present. So my wife put her personal love and effort into the quilt, and her mother greatly appreciated that because she knew what kind of effort was put into it.
If you don’t have the expensive goods, there is a way to compensate for that. This idea explains our pasuk in Vayakhel. The women (mentioned in pasuk 25) who were wealthier and could afford the techeiles or the argaman (expensive cloths) went ahead, wove it and dyed it and presented it. However, these other women (mentioned in pasuk 26) were the women who had nothing. All they had was goat-hair. Of all the contents that were contributed to the Mishkan – gold, silver, brass, techeiles, argaman, etc., etc. – the last item on the totem pole was goat hair. What kind of gift for the Mishkan is goat-hair? The answer is “We are going to make it special. How are we going to make it special? We are going to weave it in a way that takes an amazing amount of effort. We are going to spin it on the backs of the goats!”
Now, who cares about that? Once it was made into cloth, no one was going to know that. As a matter of fact, these goat-cloths were covered up. No one even saw the finished product. So for whom are they doing this? The answer is, they were doing this for the Ribbono Shel Olam. The Ribbono Shel Olam knows the effort that these women put into this. “I want to make it special. I don’t have the money. I don’t have the dyes. All I have is goat hairs.” How does a person make goat hair significant? The answer is by using a special skill (the Gemara calls it a chochma yeseira) to be able to do this.
That is why pasuk 26 says “v’chol hanashim” (and all the women). I will ask a question: Have you ever tried petting a goat? Have you ever tried grabbing a goat? Whenever I go to the zoo with my grandchildren and we are in the petting area, I try to grab onto a goat’s little horns. It takes about two seconds until the goat jerks his head away and I can’t hold on anymore. Can you imagine taking a goat onto your lap and then starting to spin the goat hairs? What do you think the goat would say about all this?
The pasuk says “and all the women” because no one could do this job alone. It is like branding a cow. It takes three big cowboys to pin down the cow and brand it. The first pasuk speaks of “Every woman” (singular) because it was no big deal. An individual woman takes the material. She dyes it. She donates it to the Mishkan. Finished! But when you want to do this special act of spinning while the hair is still on the back of the goats – in order to elevate the quality of the gift – you need many women to do it. That is why the two pesukim use different language. The first pasuk did not require any special motivation, but the second pasuk refers to women who wanted to compensate for their “non-glamorous donation” so it says “all the women asher nasan leebana osana” (in plural). This means they were inspired to do this and it took several women at a time to do it. That is why Rashi brings the Gemara in Shabbos here about this special skill. The change of language of nasa leeban teaches us that this is something special. Not special in value, but special in effort!
This is the old message of “rachmana leeba ba’ee“. At the end of the day, the Ribbono Shel Olam wants our hearts. A person may only be able to bring a very inexpensive gift. But if that is all he can do and yet he does it with his heart and soul, it can be even more significant than a more expensive and glamorous contribution. (R’ Frand)
