Mirrors and Their Meaning
This week’s reading recounts in detail how the Israelites carried out God’s commandment to build a tabernacle (mishkan)—the moveable sanctuary that would serve as a kind of temple during their wanderings in the wilderness. The reading describes how various kinds of colored cloths, precious metals, wooden planks, curtains, and other materials were donated to make the mishkan. A casual glance might see little new in all this repetition, but some elements were indeed mentioned here for the first time and therefore subject to special scrutiny.
One of these was the wash-basin, to be used for cleansing the priests in their service. It had been mentioned earlier, in the instructions given for building the mishkan (Exod 30:28, 31:9, etc.), but this time a new detail was added:
And he (Bezalel, the chief artisan) made the wash-basin of bronze and its base of bronze, from the mirrors of the ministering women who ministered at the door of the Tent of Meeting. (Exod 38:8)
This added detail, that the wash-basin was to be made by melting down the bronze mirrors of the “ministering women,”* attracted the attention of ancient commentators. In recounting this verse, Philo of Alexandria (1st century CE) stressed that the women’s donation of their mirrors was a “truly fitting first-fruit offering of the modesty and chastity in marriage.” Numbers Rabba quotes the women as saying, “God may testify concerning us that we were unsullied when we left Egypt” (9:14). Rashi cites a similar midrashic tradition concerning the moral probity expressed by the women’s gift. While Moses at first refused to accept the mirrors, God told him: “Take them—for they are more pleasing to Me than all the other [donations].”
What’s going on here?
Underlying these remarks was a profound distrust of cosmetics and jewelry in early Judaism (and Christianity) —as well as of the mirrors used for any sort of primping and adorning. In short, women who owned mirrors were morally suspect. Of course, to readers nowadays this must sound a little weird—and perhaps even insulting to modern sensibilities. But to see only this is to miss the whole point of the Torah’s passing remark. To begin with, the fact that the women came forward to donate their mirrors was truly the equivalent of a voluntary, public confession in those days, one that must have required more than a little courage. But beyond this obvious point, there was something a bit more subtle in the very act as described—and in particular, in the midrashic account of the God’s reaction to their donation: “Take the mirrors,” He is reported to have said, “for they are more pleasing to Me than all the other [donations].”
Melting down the mirrors’ bronze to make, specifically, the sanctuary’s wash-basin—the instrument through which Israel’s priests were made pure—must have seemed to be a kind of symbol. Was not this act a physical token of teshuvah, spiritual repentance and renewal, whereby the old material of a human soul could be melted down and refashioned as an instrument of purification? No wonder that this gesture was “more pleasing to Me than all the others.”
Shabbat shalom!
* The translation “ministering” for ha-tsove’ot is just a modern guess; no one is sure what was intended. In fact, the Septuagint translation reflects a different text, ha-tsam’ot, “the fasting women,” which might fit with the overall point as understood by ancient interpreters.