Dvar Torah on Parshat Vayakhel

The beginning of this week's parsha is one of a number of occasions when the Torah juxtaposes keeping the Shabbat with the building of the Mishkan - the Tabernacle in the desert. In Va'yakhel the connection between the Mishkan and Shabbat goes like this:

"And Moshe assembled the entire congregation of Israel and said to them - these are the words which God commanded to do. Six days work shall be done, and the seventh day will be holy to you, a Sabbath to the Lord, whoever does work on that day will surely die. Do not light fire in all of your dwelling-places on the Sabbath day. And Moshe said to the entire congregation of Israel - this is what God has commanded, saying: take from among you a contribution to the Lord, everyone who is generous of heart shall bring a contribution for God, gold, silver, and brass." Moshe then goes on to describe the materials needed for the Tabernacle, and the details of its construction.

Rashi comments on this juxtaposition of the Sabbath with the building of the Tabernacle and says: "He [Moshe] first gave them the warning about Shabbat before the commandment about the work of the Tabernacle, to tell us that it [the work] does not supersede [and may not be done on] the Shabbat." This same juxtaposition occurs a few times in the Torah, and each time it is understood as a warning to not work on the Mishkan on Shabbat. This juxtaposition is so central to the warning against working on Shabbat that it becomes definitional; the Rabbis learn the extent and nature of the work which is forbidden on Shabbat from the work which was done on the Mishkan. If you need to write in order to construct the Mishkan, then writing is forbidden on Shabbat. If you need to dye material for the Tabernacle, then dyeing is forbidden on Shabbat. If you need to cure animal skins to make the Mishkan, then that is forbidden work on Shabbat, and so on: the 39 categories of work which the Rabbis list as being forbidden on Shabbat are all derived from the work done to construct the Tabernacle.

What are we to make of this relationship, of the connection which the Torah creates, and the Rabbis amplify, between building the Tabernacle and resting on Shabbat? Why is work, which is forbidden on Shabbat, defined as the work that went into making the Mishkan? And why does the Shabbat supersede the building of the Tabernacle, so that none of the holy work may take place on that day?

It seems to me that the Torah here is actually discussing two distinct and classic paths to spirituality, which, in a paradoxical way, mirror each other. The two paths can be described as active and passive. In the one, we do, build, strive, create, in order to construct a holy reality, a sacred communty, a public religious life. In the other, we are more contemplative and inwardly focussed. We study, pray, engage not in doing and making, but in working on an inner spitritual world, a more private one.

The work done in the construction of the Tabernacle is completely physical. The description of the process is a litany of goods and activities; the gold and silver, the precious stones, the animal skins, the weaving, the carpentry, the metal work, all needed, in a concerted communal effort, to create this public, physical yet somehow spiritual space, a space where the individual and the community in some way experience God. It is a physical path "to the Lord".

The Shabbat is precisely the opposite of that. It is not simply resting, simply taking the day off. It is about using the same exact activities and processes, the same 39 categories of labor which go into the building of a physical sanctuary, and, by refraining from them, creating a spiritual time, a private, individual, sacred moment, the road to which is not to be found in physical activity, but, rather, in its opposite; in a refraining from giving, bringing, building, and creating. The work which is forbidden on Shabbat is, precisely, the work that goes into the building of a holy place. The lesson to be learned from this duality, from the fact that sanctity can be created by doing and not doing, by building and not building, is that these two paths, the path of seeking an interaction with God in the physical world and seeking an interaction with Him in the realm of time, reflection, non-activity, and inwardness, are equally valid, equally available to us, and equally demanded of us. Rather than opting for one or the other path to spiritual experience, the Torah equates the two, by defining them as precise mirror images, as essentially the same thing: The exact same work, done or not done, gets you to the exact same place, a place called in both cases "to the Lord".

The radical, paradoxical equation that is being taught to us here - doing this work creates sanctity, not doing this work also creates sanctity, therefore doing this work is ultimately the same as not doing this work - liberates us to follow either path, that of doing, building, creating, and striving on the one hand, or that of refraining, not doing, not creating, but rather contemplating, reflecting, and leaving behind the work of the world, on the other. Both are legitimate. In fact, both are demanded of us! We must build a Temple, we must keep the Shabbat. We must create, and we must refrain from creating. It is in this embracing of the validity, and necessity, of these apparently contradictory spiritual paths, and placing them together, at odds, but inextricably linked - defining one another - that true sanctity, the true path "to the Lord", is to be found.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix