Reflection as Resistance

The Holy Power of Seeing and Being Seen

He made the laver of copper and its stand of copper, from the mirrors of the women who congregated [marot zva’ot] at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. (Exodus 38:8)

When the Holy One, blessed be He, told Moses to build the Tabernacle, all the Israelites brought their contributions. Some brought silver, others brought gold or copper or onyx stones or unset stones. They brought everything eagerly. The women asked themselves: What contribution can we make to the Sanctuary? They arose, took their mirrors, and brought them to Moses. When Moses saw them he became angry with them. He said to the Israelites: Take your canes and beat them on their shoulders. What purpose do these mirrors serve? The Holy One, blessed be He, called out to Moses: Moses, do you mistreat them because of these? These very mirrors produced the hosts in Egypt. Take them and make a basin of brass and its base for the priests, that they may sanctify the priests from it, as it is said: And he made the laver of brass, and base thereof of brass, of the mirrors of the serving women that did service (ibid. 38:8), for they had produced all the hosts. (Midrash Tanchuma)

But Moses was reluctant to accept [the mirrors] because they were made to arouse sensual desires. Said the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses: ‘These are dearer to Me than all [other donations], for by means of them the women raised many hosts in Egypt. (Ramban)

OF THE MIRRORS OF THE WOMEN WHO CONGREGATED — The Israelite women possessed mirrors of copper into which they used to look when they adorned themselves. Even these did they not hesitate to bring as a contribution towards the Tabernacle. Now Moses was about to reject them since they were made to pander to their vanity, but the Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, “Accept them; these are dearer to Me than all the other contributions, because through them the women reared those huge hosts in Egypt!” For when their husbands were tired through the crushing labour they used to bring them food and drink and induced them to eat. Then they would take the mirrors, and each gazed at herself in her mirror together with her husband, saying endearingly to him, “See, I am handsomer than you!” Thus they awakened their husbands’ affection and subsequently became the mothers of many children, at it is said, (Song 8:5) “I awakened thy love under the apple-tree”, (referring to the fields where the men worked). This is what it refers to when it states, מראות הצבאת “the mirrors of the women who reared the hosts (צבאות)” (Midrash Tanchuma, Pekudei 9). And it was for this reason that the laver was made of them (the mirrors) — because it served the purpose of promoting peace between man and wife viz., by giving of its waters to be drunk by a woman whose husband had shown himself jealous of her and who nevertheless had associated with another (cf. Numbers ch. V) thus affording her an opportunity to prove her innocence (cf. Sotah 15b). (Rashi)

The mirror stage is formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience. The child, at an age when he is for a time, however short, outdone by the chimpanzee in instrumental intelligence, can nevertheless already recognize as such his own image in a mirror. (Jacques Lacan, Écrits)

The looking-glass self is a psychological concept that suggests our sense of self develops from interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others. We form our self-image based on how we believe others see us—their reactions serve as a mirror. (R.D. Laing, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness)

”The mirror serves as a liminal space, a frontier between the imaginary and the symbolic order…” (Julia Kristeva, “Revolution in Poetic Language”)

In parashat Vayakhel, we read of the various precious goods that each person donated to the construction of the Mishkan. According to the text, women donated their compact mirrors to the Mishkan. Those mirrors were used to construct the wash basin used in purification rituals. While the most likely case is that the mirrors were melted down for their copper, we can imagine a kind of conceptual laver, literary space, in which the mirrors themselves were preserved, so that to purify oneself was to see oneself altered through a looking-glass.

The mirrors, according to Midrashic commentaries, were controversial. Moses initially rejects them as inappropriate until God tells hims that not only are they acceptable, but they are the most sacred of the donations. Some commentaries focus on the virtue of those women who self-sacrificed their own mirrors. How would they be able to beatify themselves if they gave up their mirrors? Others focus on the counter-intuitive joy with which the women enabled the construction of a ritual object that would be used in circumstances of suspicion and judgment. But the core significance of the mirror is historic—these were objects used under duress and persecution to awaken desire, agency, and connection. These were instruments of humanization.

Moses and God, it seems, have a fundamentally distinct attitude to the mirrors. Moses thinks that a mirror is defined by its narcissistic use—to admire oneself and to objectify oneself. God sees in the mirror a scene of two people looking together at their own reflection together; the mirror provides a scene of togetherness. This togetherness then becomes baked into the purification tool, the wash basin. Relatedly, both see the mirror as related to libido; but where Moses sees lewdness, God sees affection.

For Lacan, the mirror stage is a decisive milestone in human development; it is central to identity formation. Moses’s and God’s disagreement about the mirror may correspond to a deeper disagreement about the nature of selfhood. God insists that the ego—an effect of seeing oneself and identifying with one’s reflection—is good, healthy, and holy. Moses, meanwhile, suspects that self-involvement and self-absorption represent obstacles placed in the way of true understanding. Why should the tools of egoism be part of the Mishkan? And yet if we cannot bring our very selves—even if these selves are formed from fantasy and distortion—to the relationship with God what can we bring? God doesn’t want our materials; God wants us.

In R.D. Laing’s view, the mirror was invented long before Narcissus looked in the water at his own reflection. We see ourselves mirrored back in the facial reactions of others. The first mirror is the face of the Other. The physical mirror is itself a surrogate for being seen by an other, a desire for the first mirror. The Israelite women used mirrors to show themselves and their husbands that they could still look at themselves with dignity. They cultivated their own self-recognition, independent of how they were viewed by their Egyptian overlords. Their own mirrors offered them a psychological bulwark against the harsh gaze of a society that sought to trick them into believing they were nothing but slaves. In this sense, the women’s mirrors are indeed the holiest objects—they insist that we should not be taken in by the worst view of ourselves; God made us in the divine image. No social status can take that away.

The connection to the Sotah ritual also becomes clearer now. The purpose of the mirror was for husband and wife to see one another through the gaze of love rather than the gaze of criticism. The mirror that bridges the imaginary and the symbolic (concepts are pretend play for adults) enables husband and wife to see themselves through a shared illusion, a shared symbolism. This is the gaze that brings peace—the higher order purpose of both the Sotah ritual and the priestly function. Aaron is called a pursuer of peace. His job is to hold up the mirror that shows us who we can be, when viewed with generosity and gratitude. We can also see why Moses, a prophetic figure, might be suspicious of cosmetic mirrors that spit back only fantasies: if you want to change you have to use the mirror to look closely at what others cannot see (or won’t tell you).

The mirrors of the Mishkan reveal a theological truth: the sacred includes our human need for recognition. What Moses initially saw as vanity, God elevated as holy. The mirrors that helped preserve human dignity under oppression became vessels for ritual purification. This transformation suggests that our journey toward the divine doesn’t require abandoning our human relationships or self-awareness, but rather sanctifying them.

Shabbat Shalom,

Zohar Atkins

Etz Hasadeh