Friday, March 12, 2010

A Taste of Torah - Vayakhel-Pekudei

There is a connection in this week's Torah portion, Vayakhel-Pekudei, between the building of the Mishkan, the place where the Israelites worshipped God in the wilderness, and the observance of Shabbat. In the beginning of the double portion, Moses gathers the people and tells them that we are to work for six days, but that the seventh day should be a holy sabbath of complete rest.

Later the portion outlines the 39 categories of work that are forbidden on the Sabbath. Each of these is tied to the type of work that needed to be done in order to build the Mishkan. The question for us as modern Jews is what does it mean not to work on Shabbat and what does it mean to rest? According to one midrash documented in the 18th century Ladino commentary, Me-am Lo'ez, "It is true that tpeople say that the Hebrew word for the Sabbath (Shabbat) can be seen as an acrostic of shenah b'Shabbat ta'anug, Sleep on the Sabbath is a delight." But Me-am Lo'ez teaches us that this only applies to those who study Torah all week long. Only they can rest on Shabbat. If we don't spend our whole week studying, then Shabbat is barely long enough to allow us to study Judaism, let alone to rest.

What does this mean for us today? It means that we must allow Judaism not to be something that happens now and then, on Shabbat and on holidays, but something that is part of our daily lives. We should exist in the world Jewishly during the six days in which we work so that we can truly rest on Shabbat and connect with one another and with God.

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