From: Netvort@aol.com
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 3:59
AM
To: JoshHoff@aol.com
Subject: Netvort : parshas
Vayakheil-Pekudei, 5766
The
Equalizer
By Rabbi Joshua (egalitarianistically known as The Hoffer)
Hoffman
In parshas Vayakheil, Moshe gathers the people
together in order to command them to make their contributions to the mishkan and
to construct it, under the oversight of Betzalel, whom he appoints for this
task. Before issuing his directives concerning the mishkan, however, Moshe again
commands them to observe the Shabbos. The rabbis derive, from this
juxtaposition, besides the principle already derived from an earlier, similar
juxtaposition, that the construction of the mishkan does not override the
prohibition of doing labor on Shabbos, the further principle that the
thirty-nine types of labor that are prohibited on Shabbos are the same
thirty-nine types of labor that were done in the construction of the mishkan.
Why were these principles of Shabbos mentioned here, when Moshe was about to
call for contributions to the mishkan, appoint Betzalel over its construction,
and command him to proceed with the construction ?
The key to
answering this question lies in the opening word of the parsha, 'Vayakehil,'
which means 'and he gathered.' Rav Ya'akov ben Rabbeinu Asher, in his commentary
Ba'al HaTurim, comments that Shabbos is mentioned in the context of this word to
teach us that Jews should gather on Shabbos to learn Torah as taught by their
leaders. There is, of course, a purely functional reason for Shabbos serving as
day when people gather to hear Torah lessons, since they are free from their
usual weekday duties, and have the time needed to attend such lectures. However,
there is, I believe, a wider function in these gatherings, which is to unite the
people around the study of Torah. While, during the week, each person pursues
his own activities, each one with varying degrees of success and consequent
station in life, on Shabbos, everyone gathers as equals to study Torah together.
These kinds of gatherings may also underscore the notion, as explained by Rabbi
Yosef Dov Soloveitchik based on some passages in the Talmud (see Niddah 30b and
Sanhedrin 7a) that every Jew has a unique part of Torah to reveal, and our
understanding of Torah can only be complete when we recognize this factor, and
enable each Jew to teach us his portion of Torah.
The need for
the kind of unity brought out in the word 'Vayakheil' was especially important
in the aftermath of the sin of the golden calf. Ramban writes that there was a
need to bring the people together, to reconcile them, because they had split
into various factions at the time of the sin. This comment has special
significance in view of the Ramban's approach to the mishkan, which he sees as
an extension of the experience of God's divine presence at Mt. Sinai. The rabbis
tell us that the people were unified when they received the Torah, and, in fact,
this unity was a precondition for receiving it. As Rabbi Gedaliyohu Schorr
explains in his Ohr Gedaliyohu, this is because, as we have mentioned, each
person in the nation contributes to our understanding of the Torah. Since the
mishkan is an extension of the experience at Mt. Sinai, then, there was a need
to reconcile the people with each other and unify them in order for the mishkan
to serve its purpose. We may add that the contributions for the construction of
the mishkan, which included a half-shekel, no more and no less, required of each
person from age twenty, added to this sense of unity that needed to be generated
at this time, and that is why the contributions are again mentioned here by
Moshe.
Rabbi Schorr also mentions that the mishkan, on a
wider scale, represented the entire universe, as created by God. This is why the
midrash tells us that Betzalel knew how to combine the letters through which God
created the universe. The mishkan was, in miniature, a representative of the
universe as a whole, which God created through ten 'ma'amoros,' or utterances,
and just as the world, as created by God, is a reflection of His unity, so, too,
the mishkan, which is a miniature representation of the world, must also reflect
that unity. Betzalel, the grand architect of the mishkan, knew how tocombine the
leters of the aleph-beis in a way that brought out this unity. Rav Shlomo Goren,
in his book Toras HaShabbos VehaMoed, advances the theory that God actually used
thirty-eight of the thirty-nine labors later used in the construction of the
mishkan in creating the universe. The one type of labor, or melacha, that God
did not use in the creation was that of carrying from one domain to the other.
Since God is referred to as 'Makom,' or the location of the world, we cannot
speak of Him as 'carrying' when He created the universe. This factor, according
to Rabbi Goren, is reflected in the fact that 'carrying' is considered, by a
number of medieval Talmudic commentators, as a 'melacha gerua,' or an 'inferior'
type of labor, and this distinction generates, according to them, several
halachic consequences. Resting, on Shabbos, from the types of labor that God
used in creating the universe, and which were later used in building the
mishkan, serves as an acknowledgment that God created the world in six days and
'rested' on the seventh day.
The world, as created by God,
was a reflection of His unity ; and until the Jewish nation worshipped the
golden calf, it reflected the divine unity, as well. By worshipping the eigel
and declaring ‘these are your gods, Israel,’ they shattered that reflection of
unity. Moshe’s task, when he gathered the people together after pleading with
God on their behalf, was to restore their lost unity. The mishkan, made through
use of the thirty-nine categories of melacha, reflected the unity inherent in
the universe created by God, and its construction was therefore a means of
restoring the unity that was lost at the incident of the eigel. Following our
discussion regarding the unifying factor of Torah, we can add that the Torah
actually served as the blueprint of the universe, as the Midrash Rabbah
(Bereishis 1:2) tells us, and, therefore, the labors used in creating the world,
and its miniature representative, the mishkan, are reflections of the Torah
itself. By gathering on Shabbos to learn Torah, we are able to realize the kind
of national reconciliation that is necessary in order to bring down the divine
presence among us, through the vehicle of the mishkan, which, as the Ramban
says, perpetuated the experience the nation had at Mt. Sinai.
Please
address all correspondence to the author (Rabbi Hoffman) with the following
address - JoshHoff @ AOL.com.
To subscribe to Netvort, send a
message with subject line subscribe, to Netvort@aol.com. To
unsubscribe, send message with subject line unsubscribe, to the
same address.