Musar zu Schemot 35:1

ויקהל משה את כל עדת בני ישראל. The Zohar on this verse, Sullam edition Vayakhel page 10, deals at length with the rule that women should not mix with the men during a funeral procession. We are quoting only excerpts. Rabbi Shimon begins by saying that most people do not die before their allotted time unless they did not take care of themselves. The angel of death is present amongst the women during a funeral. At that time he has the opportunity to seduce the women, an ability he has already demonstrated when he seduced the first woman in גן עדן. There is an ancient custom to try and confuse Satan (the angel of death) by blowing the shofar when somebody dies or during a funeral. During the procession permission is granted to Satan to be active and, having examined their faces, to select his victims. The Zohar goes on to explain how to arrange funeral processions so that men and women should not face each other, and so that the men should not walk where the women had walked before, all this so as to neutralise the power of the angel of death. During the episode of the golden calf, the angel of death danced amongst the Jewish people, having a field day. When Moses observed this he assembled all the men by themselves so as to neutralise the power of the angel of death. The men were prohibited from mingling with the women until the donations for the Tabernacle were collected. This is the meaning of 35,22: "The men came with the women." It is significant that the Torah does not say: "The men brought (donations) with the women." The Torah wanted to point out that from the episode of the golden calf until the building of the Tabernacle the men were kept aloof from the women. Only then did the angel of death depart from the camp.

ויקהל משה את כל עדת בני ישראל. Why are all the members of the nation included here, whereas when the donations are discussed in chapter 25 Moses was content to receive gifts from כל איש, every man? The Zohar Sullam edition Vayakhel page 3 asks and adds a further question. Why did Moses describe the donations for the building of the Tabernacle (35,5) as קחו מאתכם, "take from you," whereas when Moses was commanded about this in Exodus 25,2 G–d described the donations ויקחו לי תרומה, as "a donation for Me?" The answer given is that Moses first received this commandment prior to the sin of the golden calf. At that time G–d included the mixed multitude in the list of people from whom He would accept these donations, hence the emphasis on מאת כל איש, from everybody. Moses relayed this instruction to the Jewish people on the morrow of the Day of Atonement, after the episode of the golden calf. That whole episode was caused by the mixed multitude. This is why the Torah emphasised that Moses assembled "the whole congregation of the Children of Israel," thereby excluding those converts who were not descended from Jacob. In order to emphasise this further, Moses instructed: "take from you, not from the mixed multitude."

To get back to our main subject, that of "they shall take for Me," i.e. for My Name, which we described earlier as being a reference to G–d in His capacity as His Essence. This holds true for the instructions given by G–d to Moses. When Moses relayed these instructions to the Jewish people in Exodus 35,1 where he assembled the whole nation, he used somewhat different language. The words כל עדת בני ישראל, were an allusion to the concept of כנסת ישראל. Since G–d had told Moses that He wanted the contributions to be dedicated to His Ineffable Name, and that in that capacity He remains concealed, the only way a union between the people's gifts and G–d in His capacity as His Essence could be achieved was by interposing the כנסת ישראל. This concept was represented by the word ויקהל, alluding as it does to the verse from Psalms 68,27 the meaning of which we have discussed earlier.