[Avodah] Mishkan before or after egel

[Michael Makovi]

The machloket is famous. Anyway, two random thoughts:

(1)

In Nechama Leibowitz's chumash, it is apparent that according to
Shemot Rabbah, the mishkan rectified the egel because it restored the
relationship between us and Hashem. It's not that the Mishkan itself
rectified anything, but rather, the mere fact that Hashem gave us a
command to build one rectified it - I'd compare it to if a son and a
father get into a huge fight, and the son thinks his father doesn't
love him anymore, and the father calls the son and invites him to ice
cream - the ice cream is the mishkan. I.e., it didn't have to be davka
a mishkan; Hashem could have given us a command to wear blue
underwear, and the very fact that He still was giving us mitzvot,
shows He hadn't abandoned us.

By contrast, Tanchuma says that davka building the Mishkan itself, per
se, atoned for us.

(2)

We always want to drink a l'chaim to the hava amina. So if one holds
like Ramban that the mishkan came before the egel, what do we learn
from the two midrashim above? Shemot Rabbah: Well, Hashem gave us the
mitzvah of mishkan, then we did the egel; mahu d'teima that Hashem
doesn't love us anymore, kah mashma lan that we still have the mitzvah
of mishkan, i.e. we didn't lose it (or any other mitzvot). If the
father invites his son to ice cream, then they get into a fight, and
then father calls the son to the ice cream as if the fight didn't
happen. Tanchuma: After the egel, blowing the mitzvah of image-making
big-time, building the mishkan showed Hashem that we did teshuva, that
we were dedicating ourselves to whatever mitzvot He gave us,
especially here, where the mishkan = worshipping Hashem, the opposite
of the egel. I'd compare it to a guy who eats kosher everyday, but ate
a pork chop today but tomorrow, ate kosher again as if the pork chop
had never happened.

Mikha'el Makovi