By Marco Del Monte
The parashot of Vayakhel and Pekudei close the Book of Exodus with a meticulousness that might appear purely technical. Yet, behind the detailed balance sheet of every material used for the Mishkan lies a treatise on spiritual psychology regarding the nature of human judgment.
The text informs us that Moses presented a complete accounting of what was collected; an act that, according to the Midrash, was made necessary by the murmurs of the people who projected their own unresolved greed onto him. This suspicion illustrates the Talmudic principle: "Kol haposel, bemumò posel" — whoever disqualifies (constantly) does so by projecting their own defect (Kiddushin 70a).
This projective dynamic finds a fascinating parallel in the root of the verb to disqualify (posel), which is identical to that of idol or statue (pesel). When we categorically judge someone, we transform them into a static and motionless image, just like Lot's wife, perpetually motionless in the contemplation of the "destructive" scene, who became a "pillar of salt". Here salt takes on an ambivalent meaning. In ritual practice, salt serves to extract blood from meat, since "the blood is the life, the soul". If used in judgment, salt "takes life" away from the other, depriving them of dynamism and soul, leaving behind only an inanimate pesel-image, a spiritless label. This is what Daniel Kahneman would call a bias, a heuristic, meaning a mental shortcut that immobilises the other in a fixed definition to save cognitive resources: it is much easier to define a person once and for all, than to continually question their image every moment; we could say it is a strategy against the possibility of change, an "Anti-Teshuvah".
However, there is a static nature of the opposite sign. Upon the altar, salt was compulsory for every sacrifice as a sign of the "Eternal Covenant of Salt”. If in human judgment salt creates a negative static nature that denies change, in our relationship with G-d it represents a positive static nature: the stability, loyalty and eternity of the covenant that never changes. The great Tzaddikim experience the projective dialectic in a very elevated way. The prophet Isaiah, seeing the spiritual suffering of his generation, exclaimed: "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips". We might think that here the Tzaddik, seeing the fault of the people, does not want to blame them as sinners, but performs an act of self-criticism: he sees the evil in the people as if it were his own projection and decides to take responsibility for it. Tradition teaches that Isaiah was later struck precisely upon the lips during the martyrdom ordered by Menashe (Yevamot 49b). Far from being a simple punishment, this, perhaps, was his Tikkun (repair) upon his own skin, for the sake of others. As Rav Mordechai Eliyahu Z”L said when he warned of danger to Israel: "Let him pay who can pay" (though this is another chapter of another Tzaddik).
The true spiritual challenge is therefore to distinguish between these two forms of "firmness": we must be static and unshakeable in our values and in our covenant with the Divine, but extremely dynamic and fluid in how we look at our fellow human being.
The Baal Shem Tov teaches that the defect we see in the other is a lesson from Heaven for our own correction, almost as if to say that we encounter our alter-ego in the people who cross our path.
Returning to the Parashah, Moses, responding to suspicions with the transparency of Pekudei, does not transform the people into a statue of guilt, but re-establishes the Covenant. To build a Sanctuary, an Altar, in our lives, we must therefore stop using "salt" to take away the life of others through immobilising labels, and begin to use it to seal our eternal commitment to truth.
This final transformation is enclosed within the mystical-grammatical bond between three words that share the same letters: Melach (salt), Lechem (bread) and Lacham (to fight). Life often confronts us with the temptation of Lochem, of warfare stemming from judgment. But the Torah teaches us to transform this instinct into Lechem, the bread of peace. In the Mishkan, the Lechem Hapanim consisted of twelve loaves representing the union and harmony among the twelve tribes of Israel before G-d. Just as Moses opened the Parashah by gathering the people (Vayakhel), so today we unite the details of Pekudei with the unifying spirit of Vayakhel: we transform the static nature of judgment into the stability of the Covenant, and the war of suspicion into the bread of brotherhood. Who knows, perhaps all of this is encompassed in the gesture of uniting salt in the Berachah of the Bread, upon the altar today called the "Table", particularly in the realm of Peace called Shabbat.
Shabbat Shalom
Translated from the Italian with Google Gemini. The Italian text is the original.