“Moshe assembled the entire congregation of the Children of Israel, and he said to them: These are the things which Hashem has commanded to do. Six days labour shall be done, and the seventh day will be holy for you – a day of complete rest for Hashem” (Exodus 35:1-2).
The Ohr ha-Chayyim (Rabbi Chayyim ben Atar, Morocco and Israel, 1696-1743) notices a peculiarity here: “We must analyse the reason why the Torah had to specify that Moshe assembled them, because this was the standard thing to do every time G-d gave any command. Apparently, because they saw that the skin of his face radiated light [as written the previous verse, the final verse of last week’s Parashah], they were afraid to approach him; therefore he had to call them all to assemble, otherwise some would have stayed away out of fear”.
The Children of Israel indeed had a very real reason to fear Moshe – or at least to be deeply embarrassed to face him: he assembled them here to tell them of G-d’s commands, and the previous time they had assembled, it had been to demand of Moshe’s brother Aaron that he build them a golden calf (Exodus 32:1). The Torah uses the same verb to describe both events: on the inauspicious day that they demanded the golden calf, the Torah says that the nation vayikahel (“assembled”, in the nif’al or reflexive form); and now, the Torah says that Moshe vayak’hel (“assembled”, in the hif’il or non-reflexive form) the nation. There had been no assemblage of the nation from the tragic day of the golden calf until the day that Moshe assembled them, so it was natural for them to feel trepidation.
The timing of Moshe’s assemblage is also significant. Following the Seder Olam (Chapter 6), forty days after receiving the Torah (on the 6thof Sivan) came the sin of the golden calf on the 17thof Tammuz. The next day, Moshe re-ascended Mount Sinai, where he stayed for another forty days and forty nights pleading with G-d to forgive Israel (Deuteronomy 9:18-21), returning to the Israelite camp on the 28thof Av. The next day, the 29thof Av, he ascended Mount Sinai for the third time, where he stayed for another forty days and forty nights with G-d (Exodus 34:28, Deuteronomy 10:10). Thus eighty-one days after the sin of the golden calf, when Moshe returned from Mount Sinai with the second set of the Tablets of Stone, the date was the 10thof Tishrei.
Rashi’s comment is apposite: “‘Moshe assembled the entire congregation’ – this was the day after Yom ha-Kippurim, when he came down from the Mountain”. They knew that that had been the day that G-d had designated for atonement, for forgiveness – but nevertheless, they must have had the uncomfortable (if not frightening) feeling that maybe they did not deserve this forgiveness.
And maybe they were also reminded of another unfortunate lapse of theirs, just five months earlier, when “they travelled from Elim, and they came – the entire congregation of the Children of Israel – to the Sinai Desert…on the fifteenth day of the second month from their Exodus from the land of Egypt. And the entire congregation of the Children of Israel complained against Moshe and against Aaron… The Children of Israel said to them: If only we could have died at Hashem’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by the flesh-pots, when we were eating bread to satiety…” (Exodus 16:1-3). Five times in that episode the Torah refers to them with the slightly cumbersome kol adat b’ney Yisra’el (“the entire congregation of the Children of Israel”), the final time being when they left there (17:1). The next time that the Torah uses this phrase is in our Parashah, when “Moshe assembled the entire congregation of the Children of Israel”.
Immediately after Moshe gave them the commandment of Shabbat, he continued by instructing them to gather and donate the materials needed to construct the Tabernacle (35:4-19), whereupon “the entire congregation of the Children of Israel departed from Moshe’s presence” (v. 20) – and they demonstrated their repentance and their love for G-d by donating their talents and their most precious possessions for the Tabernacle. And perhaps the Ark in the Tabernacle symbolised their G-d-granted atonement.
Bezalel (“In the Shadow of G-d”) made the Ark of acacia wood and its cover of pure gold, and crowned it with two Cherubim of pure gold at the cover’s two ends (37:1-9). There is a peculiarity in the text here: in the Torah, the word ketzotav (“its ends”) is deliberately mis-spelt, with an extra vav and a missing yud (all printed editions of the Torah have a Masoretic note pointing this out, either in the margin or as a footnote, in some editions in the body of the text itself).
I suggest that this deliberate mis-spelling could be a very subtle allusion to the Israelites’ complaints in the Sinai Desert five months earlier. There, the word vayillonu (“and they complained”) in Exodus 16:2 is also deliberately mis-spelt, with a yud instead of the second vav (again, all printed editions of the Torah have a Masoretic note pointing this out). And when Moshe and Aaron said “What are we, that you complain against us?” (v. 7), the word tallinu (“you complain”) is also deliberately mis-spelt, with a vav instead of a yud. It seems to me that the two words vayillonu and tallinu mirror each other, the one with a yud instead of a vav, the other with a vav instead of a yud. And both are reflected in the word ketzotav, with its extra vav and missing yud.
The day that the entire congregation of the Children of Israel donated their resources to the Tabernacle was the day after their sins were atoned for.
That was the day when Bezalel began fashioning the accoutrements for the Tabernacle.
And that was the day when the entire congregation of the Children of Israel saw that their sins – not only the immediately preceding sin of the golden calf, but their sins of the previous year – could be forgiven.
This is the lesson and the comfort that we take with us from the Tabernacle, and later from the Holy Temple; and this is the lesson and the comfort that we derive every year on the anniversary of this day, Yom ha-Kippurim. We always have the opportunity to repent, G-d’s forgiveness is eternally available. It is ours for the asking.