Skill fade to Snow White (Shabbat Vayakheil 22.03.2025)
You can listen to Rabbi Eleanor's sermon here or read it below.
Yesterday Disney released its live action version of Snow White, starring Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen who needs to know that she is the fairest of them all. Remaking an eighty-year-old film has proved somewhat challenging in the 2020s; yet the much older fairy tale on which it is based has survived for centuries, in many versions, across many countries. It’s a familiar story, which goes something like this: a young princess named Snow White escapes her jealous stepmother by running away and living with a group of dwarfs; when that stepmother (the Evil Queen) tracks her down and tries to kill her, eventually with a poisoned apple, she falls into a kind of coma; she is finally revived by a prince – perhaps by a kiss, perhaps by a jolt that dislodges the apple choking her – before the story ends with a happily ever after, at least for Snow White.
One of the only original 1937 Disney songs still in this new version is one that the dwarfs sing joyfully on their way to and from work in the mine: “Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go…” This is the world of Disney, so the mine is clean and sparkling and they can sing, “We dig up diamonds by the score / a thousand rubies, sometimes more”. It’s an idealised vision of work that I imagine too few of us really recognise today – but it might resonate with the Israelite experience of building the Tabernacle, where the holiness of the work makes it a joy. After weeks of instructions for how to build the Tabernacle, this week we read finally about all those sparkling gems and precious metals, all the wood and the fabrics, being put together. Just like in Disney, the creation of the tent and everything that’s needed for serving God within it seems to go exactly to plan – which is primarily because of the people leading the project.
In Parashat Vayakheil we’re reminded that this work is led by Bezalel (ben Uri ben Hur, of the tribe of Judah). Both in the instructions and here, when the work is being carried out, Bezalel is described as having been singled out by God and filled “with a divine spirit בְּחׇכְמָ֛ה בִּתְבוּנָ֥ה וּבְדַ֖עַת וּבְכׇל־מְלָאכָֽה of skill, ability and knowledge in every kind of craftwork” (Exodus 35:31).
Perhaps unsurprisingly with such an extravagant description of Bezalel’s talent, this verse catches the eye of several traditional commentators. Some of them seek specifically to understand the different skill implied by each word of חׇכְמָה תְבוּנָה דַעַת, differentiating between knowledge we learn from others, things we discover for ourselves and even divine inspiration (Rashi). The (late 15th-century Portuguese) commentator Abarbanel sees something else extraordinary in this description of Bezalel having all three qualities: for him, it’s miraculous that Bezalel had both intellectual and practical wisdom, which made him able to design and to do the work, in more than one craft. Usually, says Abarbanel, advanced intellectuals lack practical knowledge and scholars are fools regarding politics; master craftsmen don’t usually have theoretical knowledge or mastery of more than one craft.
That Bezalel has all this must therefore be miraculous – which means we should not expect to find this total expertise in anyone else. This is one reason that in running anything beyond a small organisation, we involve multiple people: the idea of things like our synagogue council is that each person brings slightly different but complementary expertise. It’s why consultation about the new Progressive Judaism movement needs multiple people each to bring their own area of expertise and concern to conversations about its creation. Expecting our leaders to be like Bezalel, having perfect knowledge of every area of theory and practice, is expecting a miracle, which is at best unwise.
Yet (the 13th-century Catalonian commentator) Nachmanides brings one more perspective on what’s so extraordinary about Bezalel. Nachmanides zooms out to consider the context and explains that with the Israelites so ground down by hard labour in Egypt, it was a miracle that God found anyone among them who knew all the things that Bezalel did: he explains that in slavery, with their hands continually engaged in lime and mud for the daily grind of making bricks, even those who used to have the same skills had lost the ability to use their hands for such delicate artistic work. The miracle of Bezalel is not that he had so much wisdom and skill: it’s that he managed to hold onto it through the years of slavery when he had no chance to use his talents; he defied what we might today call ‘skill fade’, like learning to play an instrument as a child but forgetting it in the decades that follow.
It isn’t only Egyptian slavery that can make us lose skills through lack of use; it can be anything that metaphorically keeps our hands busy with lime and mud, from relentlessly busy work lives to communal trauma. When dealing with the daily grind of survival in an ongoing time of tragedy, it can be alarmingly easy to forget how to be tender, supportive or creative; when navigating an increasingly polarised world of black or white positions, the ability to disagree constructively may wither a little. Even when times improve, most of us aren’t like Snow White: we can’t just wake up from sleep and find everything just falls perfectly back into place. Regaining unused skills takes time and is rarely easy enough that we sing jolly songs while we do it; yet these fine, delicate skills might still be indicative of the difference between being enslaved and being free.
Next weekend we’ll begin the month of Nisan, which means we’re just a few weeks from Pesach/Passover. On Seder night we pause from the lime-and-mud brick-making of our lives and tell once again our collective story of moving from Egyptian slavery to freedom. We could tell the story in a single sentence, or give a blunt summary in a minute or two, yet the Haggadah encourages us to take much longer. It’s perhaps the prospect of that length, the time that it means spending with family members, some of whom we may love, but from whom we may think very differently, that may have some of us feeling a little anxious about Seder night. While I can’t entirely solve that anxiety, I can ask a question: if we were to approach the Seder as an invitation to engage with curiosity, an invitation to help our minds regain some of the skills that may get lost in the daily grind - how different might our experience be?
At its best, the Seder models a finer way of thinking. It invites us to consider a story from many angles: not just one child, but four; not just one symbol, but multiple symbols from salt water to a sweet fruit mixture (charoset); and delving into different parts to help us reach a deeper understanding. The Seder does not expect one single person to create one single answer that fits everyone; even the most traditional Haggadah brings different voices and approaches, and moves the story beyond a simplistic fairytale. The very structure of the Seder exercises the mental muscles that let us grapple with complexity; it invites us to re-sensitise our minds and our hearts; and above all, instead of making assumptions, it encourages us to keep asking questions. This approach, this intention to learn and understand, rather than to convince, may be just what the world needs right now; and the Seder table may be a perfect place to practice. May we all find a seat at such a table.
