When Bezalel, Oholiab and the artisans were building the mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert, they found themselves overwhelmed by all the materials the Israelites were bringing for the construction. The people had taken to heart the command to bring gold, silver, copper, colored yarns, fine linen, goat hair, tanned ram skins, acacia wood, oil, spices, incense and precious stones.
The artisans actually reported to Moses that people were bringing “more than is needed.” Moses replied, ‘‘Let no man or woman make further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary!” and the people stopped. We read that “their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done” (Exodus 36:5-7).
The 15th-century Bible commentator Abarbanel explains that the overabundance was with good intent — the people were not showing off; they were genuinely moved to give all that they could. But the episode raises the question: What is enough? And how do we know when we have given too much?
In the case of the mishkan, there was a limit to how much was needed. Abarbanel’s Italian counterpart Sforno taught that, unlike the temples of Solomon or Herod, which could grow larger, the mishkan was self-limiting — the exact dimensions were fixed by God’s command, as was the amount of required materials. According to Sforno, “enough” meant enough to build what was required without having to cut corners; “enough” meant having what was needed to do the job well.
The Talmud cautions us to be careful about giving too much. We are taught to be reasonable in our giving — even in our giving of charity. We learn in Ketubot 50a not to give more than we are able because it might lead to us needing charity instead; the answer to “what is enough?” is one-fifth of one’s wealth. While having an exact number that tells you when you have done enough is useful, for most things in life, there is no equation that determines when you should say “when.” Just like our ancestors, we sometimes have a hard time knowing when to stop.
Our daily lives can be overwhelming. More and more, we are pushed to go beyond “good enough.” High school students are increasingly overwhelmed by the requirements to get into top colleges, and even straight-A students can be deemed not good enough. We even see it in younger students who are feeling an increased pressure to achieve. And we see it in parents who push their children in sports in hopes of college scholarships or professional play.
We keep pushing ourselves harder and harder, and it seems that we can never be enough. We want more and more — more money, more success, more time, more weekends, more power, more stuff than our neighbors, more vacation photos we can post on social media, children who have more talent — and constantly striving for more can weigh us down.
Brené Brown, best-selling author of “The Gifts of Imperfection,” explained in a 2013 interview in The Guardian that our culture has a strong sense of scarcity: “We wake up in the morning and we say, ‘I didn’t get enough sleep.’ And we hit the pillow saying, ‘I didn’t get enough done.’ We’re never thin enough, extraordinary enough or good enough — until we decide that we are … the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. It’s enough.”
Our culture demands more, but our souls are more satisfied when we realize that we already have enough.
The artisans in the Torah knew when they had too much material to work with, when they were so overwhelmed with supplies and gifts that they could not get any work done. Perhaps this is part of what makes an artist successful: knowing when to stop. An artist in whatever medium must know when to stop — when there is enough paint on the canvas, when to stop adding one more line in a drawing, when to finish the last row with yarn, when to step back and be finished. Bezalel was considered a master craftsman in all kinds of artistic media, and he knew when to say, “Enough.”
We can’t keep going nonstop. In our efforts to give wholeheartedly, it is possible to give too much of ourselves. In our efforts to be more and to do more, it is possible to feel like less and less.
We have to learn when to say enough — when to recognize that who we are is good enough, and that “good enough” is exactly what is needed. By bringing too much, the people actually halted the work on the mishkan; the artisans needed to stop the tasks they were working on to go to Moses and ask for help. They were so overcome with gifts of more and more things that their focus was on dealing with those things instead of creating the holy space for God to dwell.
For us to find that holy space within ourselves, we need to stop focusing on how to get more and how to do more, and instead recognize that we already have enough, that we already are enough. We already have everything within ourselves to become holy — and that is good enough.
Rabbi Shawna Brynjegard-Bialik is a rabbi at Temple Ahavat Shalom in Northridge.
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