Moses convoked the entire community of the Israelites and said to them, "These are the things that Adonai has commanded you to do: For six days you will do your work, but on the seventh day you will have the holiness of a complete Shabbat day of rest for Adonai. Anyone who does work on it shall be put to death. Do not kindle fire in any of your settlements on the day of Shabbat." (Exodus 35:1-3)

Traditionally, the mention of Shabbat here, before the completion of the Mikshkan, is interpreted as a sign of the precedence of Shabbat over the building of the Mishkan. Based on this, the ancient rabbis derived the thirty-nine categories of work prohibited on Shabbat. Any work that could be connected to a large building project—from planting crops to carrying objects from one place to another—is forbidden on Shabbat because, as we learn from this week's portion, Shabbat takes precedence over the building the Mishkan.

There is another lesson, though, that we might take from the strange and repetitious appearance of the Shabbat restrictions at the beginning of this week's portion. It is not just that the commandment of Shabbat rest overrides the commandment to build, it is also that the very idea of rest should take precedence over the impetus to work.

Sigmund Freud wrote that human beings require two things to remain human: love and work. We need to love and to be loved. We need to have something to do that gives us a feeling that we are useful and have a purpose. Torah, though, suggests one more thing that we need—rest. We need to have time to sit and reflect on our lives. We need a time when our purpose is not to do, but to consider what all of that work means. This is what Shabbat is.

The odd thing, though, is that our tradition teaches that Shabbat rest actually comes before work. Before we even begin to work, we must take the time to reflect on our labors. It may not make logical sense—why take a break before the work is begun?—but it does make spiritual sense. 

Before we lift the hammer, plow the field, or start typing at the keyboard, we need to know what that work means. We need to understand why it matters. We need to reflect on how our struggles in life fit into the larger puzzle of a universe that is a mystery to us.

It can seem like human beings are the only animals that do not understand instinctively the need for rest. Every other creature appears to balance work and rest—like breathing in and out. We are the only animals who are in any danger of intentionally working ourselves to death. And we do it all the time.

When I see the way that people's work takes over their lives in our society, I worry. I see so many people who put work first—their number one priority. If our work life takes such a priority over every other aspect of our humanity, how can we be sure that we will ever rest long enough or deeply enough to ask the question, "What we are working for?"

Shabbat needs to come first—not just in time, and not just in law—but in our hearts. Shabbat, this beautiful gift of deep and spiritual rest, needs to be the touchstone of our lives. Shabbat is not just a break that allows us to catch our breath, it is the first of all of our holy days that allows us to find holiness in every other day.


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Letting Go

Rabbi Nachum Twerski of Chernobyl, the 18th century Chasidic master known as the Me'or Eynayim, compared the Mishkan to a person's soul, another "dwelling place" for God. Like the Mishkan, there is something pure about the human soul that makes it a fitting place for God to dwell. But our souls do not stay pure in this world. Once we are born, our souls become sullied by our imperfections and failings. How then will God dwell within us?

To answer this, the Me'or Eynayim looks to a famous passage from the Talmud that says that we learned the entire Torah in the womb, only to have it slapped out of us in the moment before we were born:

A light burns above the head of an embryo in the womb and it looks and sees from one end of the world to the other… There is no time in which a person enjoys greater happiness than in those days, for it is said, “O that I were as in months gone by, in the days when God watched over me” (Job 29:2).… The embryo is taught all the Torah from beginning to end… As soon as it sees the light, an angel approaches, slaps it on its mouth and causes it to forget all the Torah completely. (Babylonian Talmud, Niddah 30b)

The Me'or Eynayim observes from this passage that we had the merit to learn the Torah while we were in the womb because, at that time, we were a proper dwelling-place for God, pure and perfect. As we were exposed to the world beyond the womb, though, we had to forget. The angel who slapped us on the lips anticipated the reality of this world. Purity is not so easily achieved in a world of shadows and uncertainty. 

Why did God bother to make the world this way? Why make us with the purity needed to be a vessel for Torah only to take it away from us? Me'or Eynayim answers that it was so we would have the free will to learn Torah painstakingly for ourselves. It was so that we could choose to heed the Torah and earn reward, or ignore the Torah and deserve punishment. Torah cannot work in this world if it is just planted in our brains to direct us like an automaton. We have to choose—and choosing contains the possibility of failing. 

But, in this case, failure is not all bad. Failure offers with it the possibility of repentance, t'shuvah. We do t'shuvah to bring God and Torah back into us, just as it was when we were in the womb. Ironically, we can be even better here than we were in the womb—better in this world of imperfection because here we get to choose Torah. 

We are, like the Mishkan, created to be dwelling places for God. However, being a God-vessel is not easy and it is not automatic for beings that have to contend with the realities of this world. We have to work for it. We have to strive for it. We have to fail and apologize and forgive ourselves over and over again. 

Yet, we do have within ourselves a memory of a time when God and Torah were as easy for us as receiving breath and sustenance through the umbilical cord. We can vaguely recollect the time when God was right there with us, hovering over the Mishkah, a light over our heads, so that we can remember what it is we are striving and struggling to remember.  

When we make our souls into a dwelling place for God, we are actually choosing the choice that was once all we knew.


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You are What You Choose to Be
Pekudei: A Love Letter

“Within, it was decked with love.”
-Song of Songs 3:10

The rabbis of antiquity wondered why God needed the Mishkan (the Tabernacle in which God's presence rested). God's presence fills all the world, so what is the Mishkan for? We ask the same question when we ask questions like, "What do we need a synagogue for? Why do we need any kind of religious institution to find God? Isn't God everywhere?" One answer comes from a midrash on Song of Songs (Shir HaShirim Rabba 3:20):

Rabbi Yehoshua of Siknin said in the name of Rabbi Levi: To what can the Ohel Mo’ed be compared? To a cave adjoining the sea, which the sea overflows when it becomes rough. Though the cave is filled, the sea loses nothing. So the tent of meeting was filled with the glory of the divine presence, and yet the world lost nothing of the Shechinah [God's felt presence].

There is nothing intrinsically special about the Mishkan (called the Ohel Mo'ed, "Tent of Meeting," in this passage), just as there is nothing intrinsically special about a synagogue. God doesn't need a special place. We do. We need a place to notice God, like we notice the sea filling a cave on the craggy shores of the sea. The sea is always there, but we fail to notice. We fail to notice God in our lives until we set aside a place that we make special for the purpose of experiencing wonder.

[In this week's Torah portion, Parashat Pekudei, Moses records the materials used in the Tabernacle (the portable temple that the Israelites carry in the wilderness). Betzalel and Oholiab make the special garments for the Hight Priest—the ephod (apron), the breastplate, the robe and the headpiece. Moses erects the Tabernacle and arranges and sanctifies the instruments of sacrificial worship within it. When Moses completes the Tabernacle, the cloud of God's Presence fills it.]


I opened the door for my beloved...
—Song of Songs 5:6

Beloved,

That little house was the first home of our love—our secret refuge of joy. How long did you spend arranging all our treasures in those cramped rooms? The chandelier sprouting arms like tree branches, the table made from ancient wood, the dishes from your mother's cabinets—I see them sparkle and shine with the far-away colors of remembered light. 

I picture you arrayed in old-fashioned finery—clothes that seemed comically grown-up, gaudy jewels that sparkled on your breast, a gown that flowed like moonbeams to the floor. A shudder takes me as I remember how your sight thrilled me.

We dined in that house on meager meals with the aroma of feasts. The spice of our love drifted through the rooms so thick that we would be sated licking air. On the day we moved in, we looked at each other and no other moment could exist.

In years since, we have lived in many rooms and travelled continents. I have known your sighs in the night, and I have been comforted by the song of your voice in my sorrow. Yet, that little house, the one in the middle of the wilderness of hope and discovery, will always be our best. It was the place where I opened the door to let you in—radiant, young, beautiful—and collapsed with you onto the couches of ecstasy.