Parshat Pekudei: The Wise Women's Mirrors

by Rabbanit Dr. Devorah Schoenfeld '19

Mishlei 3:19-20 describes wisdom as a primordial force that existed prior to creation:

The LORD founded the earth by wisdom;

He established the heavens by understanding; 

By His knowledge the depths burst apart,

And the skies distilled dew.

Sefer Mishlei, the Book of Proverbs, personifies wisdom as a woman who “cries aloud in the streets, raises her voice in the squares” (Mishlei 1:20). The valorous woman of Mishlei 3, the eshet chayil who opens her mouth with wisdom (31:25), is honored by her children and husband and laughs at the last day.

Midrash Tanchuma notices that wisdom is also present in the building of the mishkan, when God fills Betzalel with the spirit of wisdom in Shemot 31:3. It then connects the building of the mishkan and the creation of the world to a third kind of creation: the gestation of a human embryo.

The mishkan was equal both to all the world and to a human embryo, which is a world in miniature. How is that so? When the Holy One, blessed be He, created His world, He did so just as a child is born to a woman. A child starts to grow at the navel and then develops in all directions, and the Holy One, blessed be He, began the creation of His world at the foundation stone, and built the world upon it (Midrash Tanchuma 3:3).

The human being is a world in miniature, and the mishkan is like both. The midrash goes on to say that formation of every embryo is in its own way as miraculous as the creation of the world: “What is the meaning of ‘Great things past finding out (Job 9:10)?’ It refers to the great deeds the Holy One, blessed be He, did in the formation of the embryo” (Midrash Tanchuma 3:4).

Later, Midrash Tanchuma makes the connection between pregnancy and the mishkan in another way, through the famous story of the women's mirrors. It explains that, during the time of enslavement in Egypt, men and women were not allowed to live together so that they would not have children. The women were resourceful in response:

R. Simeon the son of Halafta said: What did the Israelite women do? They would go to the Nile to draw water, and the Holy One, blessed be He, would fill their jugs with little fishes. They would (sell some), cook and prepare (the fish), and buy some wine (with the proceeds of the sale), and then bring it to their husbands in the fields, as it is said: In all manner of service in the field (avodah basadeh) (Shemot 1:14). (Tanchuma Pekudei 9:1)

They would then play a flirtatious game involving mirrors:

While the men were eating and drinking, the women would take out their mirrors and glance into them with their husbands. They would say: “I am more attractive than you,” and the men would reply: “I am handsomer than you.” In that way they would arouse their sexual desires and become fruitful and multiply. The Holy One, blessed be He, caused them to conceive on the spot (Ibid.).

Like the wise eshet chayil who laughs at the last day, these women had the resilience and courage to laugh and play games while Pharaoh was separating families and killing children. Because of their insistence on finding a way to connect with their husbands and build families, the Jewish people was able to endure.

In our parsha, Pekudei, the midrash suggests that the copper from the elevation offering in Shemot 38:29 came from those same mirrors:

The women asked themselves: What contribution can we make to the Sanctuary? They arose, took their mirrors, and brought them to Moses. When Moses saw them he became angry with them. He said to the Israelites: Take your canes and beat them on their shoulders. What purpose do these mirrors serve? (Tanchuma Pekudei 9:4)

The women who had to be creative to find a way to do the work of building a family under the threats of Pharaoh now were facing threats by Moses when they wanted to participate in the work of building the mishkan. It was not that women had never been allowed to participate. After all, in Shemot 35:22 women as well as men brought gold to the mishkan, and in 35:25-26 wise-hearted women spun wool.  It was the mirrors themselves that led to such a violent reaction. 

The Torah is very clear in many places that sexuality and childbirth need to be kept separate from the mishkan and later from the Beit Hamikdash. A person who has recently had sexual relations or a woman who has recently given birth both need to wait some time before entering the mishkan. Nevertheless, the women who brought their mirrors to the mishkan had a strong conviction that they were holy objects that needed to be in a sacred space. At the end of the midrash, God agrees with them: “The Holy One, blessed be He, called out to Moses: Moses, do you mistreat them because of these? These very mirrors produced the hosts in Egypt” (Tanchuma Pekudei 9:4).

These women embodied the wisdom of Sefer Mishlei. For them, the rituals of the mishkan and the work of playfully, lovingly, building a family had to be connected. If the mishkan, the world, and the human embryo are all connected, so too are ritual and human life and resilience.  

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Rabbanit Dr. Devorah Schoenfeld is Associate Professor in the Theology department at Loyola University Chicago, where she teaches Judaism, Bible, Comparative Religion, and Jewish-Christian Relations. Her book, Isaac on Jewish and Christian Altars: Genesis 22 in Rashi and in the Glossa Ordinaria, compares medieval Jewish and Chrisitan approaches to the akedah, and she has also written on midrash, comparative theology, and dream interpretation. She is a member of Anshe Shalom Bnai Israel in Chicago. Rabbanit Devorah holds an MA in Comparative Religion from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a PhD from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.