10 Mar VAYAKHEL: CREATING OUR GOLDEN IDENTITY

Parashat Vayakhel tells of
the construction of the
Mishkan, the site that
represented Hashem’s
residence among the
people. In the center of this
structure stood the aron, the
ark, and it was from atop the aron that
Hashem would speak to Moshe Rabbenu.
The aron was made from wood, with
gold plating on the interior and the
exterior. Meaning, the aron had three
layers: the gold on the outside, which is
what people saw; the golden interior; and
the wood in the middle.
The Gemara in Masechet Yoma teaches
that the two layers of gold plating convey
to us a crucial lesson – that a Torah
scholar must have the quality of Tocho
K’baro– “his inside is like his outside.”
His interior must match the piety and
religious devotion that he projects
externally. The image that he presents to
the people around him must be an
accurate reflection of who he really is
inside.

But if this is true, then why isn’t the aron
made entirely of gold? If the Torah wants
the aron to represent the quality of Tocho
K’baro, then why doesn’t it require
making the aron pure gold, to symbolize
that a talmid hacham should be “pure
gold,” inside and out?
The answer is, quite simply, that nobody
is perfect.
The aron shows us that we all have “three
layers” to our beings. The first is our
exterior, our appearance, the way we
present ourselves, the way people see us.
The second is the “wood.” This refers to
our embarrassing faults, our mistakes and
our mess-ups, that probably only our
immediate family members know about.
We all have a part of us that isn’t “gold,”
that is flawed and far from perfect. But
the main thing is to ensure that our
interior, the innermost part of our beings,
is truly “gold.” This refers to our core
identity. Yes, we are going to make
mistakes, we are going to mess up from
time to time. But the question is what
kind of person we identify as, how we

define ourselves. It’s ok to have “wood”
– as long as our inner beings are “gold,”
as long as we identify ourselves as
genuinely Torah-committed Jews, and
we strive to live in a way that reflects that
“golden” identity.

It is common to refer to a Torah-
committed boy as a ben Torah – literally,

“son of Torah” – and to a Torah-
committed girl as a bat Torah – literally,

“daughter of Torah.” No matter what a
person does, he cannot ever change the
fact that he or she is his or her parents’
child. Our biological relationship to our
parents is a permanent and unalterable
part of our identity. Similarly, we should
be aspiring to be a “ben Torah” or “bat
Torah,” a “child” of Torah. Our
commitment to Torah must be a core
element of our identity, of who we are,
that will never change, even if we
occasionally slip.
We are going to make mistakes. And,
living in our world, with all the lures and
all the crazy influences all around us, we
are going to be tested. The key to our

success as Torah Jews is maintaining our
core identity, defining ourselves as Torah
Jews. Once we firmly establish that we
are Hashem’s children, that we are
members of His special nation, that we
are the ones who received the Torah,
which offers us the opportunity to live
the most meaningful and beautiful lives
possible, then we can withstand every
challenge, and we can recover from every
failure. The most important thing for us
is to make sure that our interior is “gold,”
that our commitment is genuine and real.