Volume 26 Issue 8 24 Mar 2017 26 Adar 5777

From the Head of Jewish Life

         

Rabbi Daniel Siegel

                         MakerSpace

In our seeking to best provide for the education of our students by preparing them for the quickly evolving world which they will enter, one of our 2017 Staff Focus Groups is exploring the development of a MakerSpace.

If you were to ‘google’ the term ‘MakerSpace’, you would find variations of the following entry:

“A place where people come together to learn, design and make”.

Beyond staff discussion as to how we might maximise our students’ opportunities for enterprising learning and creative production, a dedicated physical MakerSpace will soon be a reality with the construction of our new building.

While MakerSpace is described (Google) as ‘a relatively recent phenomenon that’s fast gaining popularity around the world’, as this week’s parashah attests, it is an integral element of the ancient wisdom of our Jewish tradition.

Parashat VaYakhel (‘gathering together’ the entire Israelite community) describes how the making of the Mishkan (the portable sanctuary) was a MakerSpace in which every Israelite was encouraged to participate.

One term used repeatedly in our parashah for all those who would engage in the creative work of this MakerSpace is chacham lev (חכם לב-literally, ‘wise of heart’). Thus, Moses says to ‘the whole community of Israel’: ‘Let all those among you who are chacham lev come and make’.

While some translate chacham lev as ‘skilled’, others retain the literal and perhaps more expansive meaning of ‘wise-hearted’ or ‘wise of heart’. The word ‘lev’ in the Ancient Near East was most often a cognate for ‘mind’, and so in our school motto we translate be-khol levavkha as ‘with all your mind’.

A non-physical entity, lev chacham connotes a wisdom that is creative and capable of translating theory, through experiment and application, into a physical product. A chacham lev is a ‘maker’, and the Mishkan was the prime space in which he could excel.

Along with chacham lev, the other term repeatedly appearing in our parashah is ‘nediv lev’– ‘generous of heart’.

The Mishkan, the Divine dwelling place, could only be created through the efforts of the wise-hearted and the generous-hearted.

In our world of advancing robotics and 3D printing, we now read of teens creating functional prosthetics, altering the world of the physically limited, expanding the realm of possibility as we perceive it and transforming our reality.

 As we plan for our MakerSpace here at Emanuel, may we seek to foster an enterprise in which our endeavours are of a heart both wise and generous so, like the Mishkan, our school will be the dwelling place for the Divine by virtue of our students contributing to and benefiting each other and our larger community in what they choose to make.