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Visionary Mirrors, Lipstick of Resistance & the Copper Wash Basin

Vayakhel 5776/ 5 March 2016 Co-written by Rabbi Annie Lewis

March 7, 2016

Zainab Salbi grew up in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, which lasted eight years. She remembers waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of heavy explosions and to the room shaking. She remembers living with the colors and sounds of war. And she remembers the puppet shows her mother would put on for Zainab and her siblings at night amidst the air raid sirens. How, in that moment of fear, her mother did what she could to keep life going, to find the beauty and to help the children feel they were safe. On TV, Zainab saw images of men fighting. Meanwhile, Zainab witnessed women, at home, at school, in the grocery stores, keeping life going in the midst of war.

When she grew up and left Iraq, Zainab started an organization that works with women in war zones. The women she has met have taught her how to celebrate life and beauty, despite the circumstances. She tells a story about women in Bosnia during the days of the siege of Sarajevo. She asked the women what they wanted her to bring the next time she returned.” “Lipstick,” they said. “Lipstick!?” she responded.

“What about vitamins?” “We want lipstick!” they told her. “Why?” Zainab asked. “It’s the smallest thing – we put it on every day and we feel that we are beautiful. And that’s how we are resisting. They want us to feel that we are dead, that we are ugly. I put on lipstick before I leave the house because I want that sniper to know, before he shoots me, that he is killing a beautiful woman.” For those women, lipstick was more than cosmetic, it was a symbol of maintaining agency in their lives. It was emblematic of how they kept beauty, joy, laughter, song and life going under oppression. With a little lipstick they showed their courage, resistance and resilience in the darkest of circumstances.

Lieutenant Colonel Mervyn W. Gonen, a medical officer, was one of the first British soldiers who entered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after its liberation.  In April of 1945, he arrived at the camp to find thousands of Jews, murdered, in need of burial. And he and his unit found 40,000 surviving Jews that were at risk of dying of starvation and disease. They got to work caring for the people- offering food and clothing, and treating their ailments. And they saw some boost in their morale. Many supplies were brought in for the survivors at the camp.

Among these, someone had ordered a large consignment of lipstick that was being given freely to the women at the camp to use if they so desired. Colonel Gonen reports in his diary that when they put on the lipstick, many of the female inmates almost miraculously had a remarkable boost in their morale and resilience. To Colonel Gonen’s surprise, he found that lipstick made the difference between life and death for some women. He writes, “I believe nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie, but with scarlet lips. You saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet lips. . . That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.”

Like the stories of Zainab Salbi and Colonel Gonen, our parsha, Vayakhel, offers a teaching on the resilience of women in the darkest of circumstances. We can find it when we zoom in on one verse, on one particular type of object donated to the mishkan – copper mirrors.

Parashat Vayakhel details the building of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. It describes all of the materials used to craft the tent, the poles, the ark, the altar, the washstand. We learn that the materials are donated by the people, but the Torah tells us very little about who gave which materials for the project. Then, we read about the kior, the large copper laver, or washstand, in the mishkan, where the priests would wash their hands and feet before entering into service in the Mishkan. The description here of the washstand stands out. The specific materials donated for the Mishkan were all described in earlier parshiot, expect for the copper for the laver. Also, the Torah adds a surprising detail here about where the copper is sourced from:

Exodus 38:8

ח  וַיַּעַשׂ, אֵת הַכִּיּוֹר נְחֹשֶׁת, וְאֵת, כַּנּוֹ נְחֹשֶׁת–בְּמַרְאֹת, הַצֹּבְאֹת, אֲשֶׁר צָבְאוּ, פֶּתַח אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד.

8 And he made the washstand of copper, and the base of copper, of the mirrors of the serving women that did service at the door of the tent of meeting.

Who were these women who served at the Tent of Meeting? Why does the Torah choose to tell us that they donated the cooper for the washstand? And what is so significant about their mirrors?

Rashi offers the following story:

The women of Israel had with them in the wilderness mirrors that they would look in when they were doing their makeup, and even these – they didn’t hold back from bringing to the Tabernacle. But Moses rejected these donations, saying they were made for evil temptations.

God said to him: Take them! For these mirrors are dearer to me than anything else! Because through them, these women were able to sustain their people in Egypt.

When their husbands would be exhausted after the backbreaking slave-labor in the fields, they would go to them, bring them food and drink, and feed them there. And then they would take their mirrors and each one would view herself next to her husband in the mirror, and would encourage and entice him with words, saying, ‘I am lovelier than you!’

And so they would arouse their husbands, and they would sleep with them, and then conceive and give birth right there in the fields – as it is written in Song of Songs, “Under the apple tree I awakened you.”

While Moses initially wants to reject the donation of the mirrors of the women as too frivolous or sacrilegious for inclusion in the holy Tabernacle, God reprimands him. “These mirrors are dearer to me than anything else!” God asserts.

The Israelites in Egypt were overburdened in body and spirit by the relentless demeaning labor and servitude. But the spark of life within them was indomitable. This is what the women knew within themselves. According to the midrash that Rashi retells, the women of Israel would put on their makeup, go out to into the fields where their husbands were laboring and- literally and figuratively- they would show their families an image of themselves full of life.

Rashi tells a story of courageous women, who in the midst of the oppression and dehumanization of slavery, acted with resistance, and resilience. They exercised agency. They took on the work of reaffirming life, for the entire people.

They insisted on continuity. They looked in the mirrors and saw their humanity. They reminded others of their humanity. They held onto a vision for the future. Like the women in Bergen-Belsen, like Zainab Salbi’s mother in Iraq, like the women of Bosnia and countless other war-zones.

The Israelites enter the wilderness after experiencing unspeakable horrors and dehumanization. They know nothing but servitude. They were born into slavery, as were their parents, and their parents’ parents. They were asked to build the Mishkan mere months after leaving Egypt. The mindset and the trauma of slavery is deeply ingrained in them and will be passed on through generations. And God wants them to know that, while others may have tried to strip them of their humanity, tried to erase from their hearts the truth that they are made in the image of God, they are beautiful.  They are worthy of life. They are worthy of dignity.

We know nothing specific about the service of the women in the Mishkan mentioned in the verse about the kior, the washstand. But in this brief and enigmatic reference, the Torah lifts up the Israelite women and their enduring audacity of hope. In the kior their message is melded into the very material of the Mishkan. The copper washstand will serve as a reminder of their courage and spirit every time a priest prepares for service. The Israelite women, with their mirrors and lipstick of resistance, will be an example for the nation for each generation to come.

How precious is the vision of the women in the fields of Egypt! How dear and holy their resilience! How miraculous is the possibility for life and thriving and humanity despite the most bleak and dire of circumstances.

This Shabbat, I invite all of us to take a moment to honor our beauty and humanity and the beauty and humanity of those around us. Maybe it’s putting on lipstick or singing out loud or taking time to laugh or to cry or to do an act of kindness for another person.  

May this Shabbat lead us to a week of action as we work to create a community, a country and a world where the beauty and dignity of each human being is seen, known and honored.

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