פרשת ויקהל פקודי וענייני אחדות
This week’s Parsha opens with the commandment to keep the Shabbos and to construct the Mishkan. The Torah juxtaposes the building of the Mishkan and the laws of Shabbos in order to teach us that whatever creative acts that were performed in the Mishkan, are the very same acts that are forbidden on Shabbos. It is interesting to note the contradistinction between this commandment and all the other ones. The word “Vayakhel” means, a congregation. All the other commandments in the Torah were given to Moshe, who in turn gave them to Aharon, and so on until they reached the entire nation. Shabbos and Mishkan, on the other hand, were given to the entire nation at one specific time. I would like to explain this anomaly.
If one examines the verse which commands the Jewish people to construct the Mishkan, one notices a strange word. The verse says, “And you shall make for me a Tabernacle, (whatever that word means), and I will dwell in them”. Chazal point out that the correct word would have been, “in it”! But by using the word “them”, the Torah was trying to teach us that Hashem desired to dwell amongst the Jewish people, and not inside of the physical edifice of the Mishkan. However, the only way this can happen, is when there is a “them”, that the Shechina can dwell upon. When there are only individuals, who do not work together as a unit, there can be no dwelling of Hashem’s presence. For this reason, the Torah chose to teach the laws of the Mishkan specifically in the presence of everybody together, in order to convey this crucial message.
The Midrash “Lekach Tov” explains very interestingly that the word “Vayakhel” comes to atone for a different “Vayakhel” in history. We know that when the Jews wanted to sin with the golden calf, they all got together to force Aharon to fashion it for them. In order to atone for that “grouping together” for an evil purpose, Moshe was commanded to have them group together for a positive goal – the construction of the Mishkan. The simple understanding of this Midrash is that we know that just as Hashem always punishes in a way that fits the crime, similarly the atonement has to befit the evil deed. That being said, it becomes clear why the Mishkan could only be effective if the Jews would foster a general feeling of camaraderie when they were constructing it. But there is perhaps a deeper meaning in this Midrash. We know that at Har Sinai, the Jews became a nation as the verse says, “Today, you are a nation”. The reason why they merited such a wonderful title is because they were “One nation with one heart”, and in this merit, they received the Torah and their nationality. When they sinned with the golden calf, they lost that status. The only way to get it back was to perform some monumental event as a people which would reinstate their previous position, and for this reason Hashem commanded them in the construction of the Miskan – in order to return their status as “a nation” through a great act of sanctity performed as brothers.
With this explanation, we can also understand why the laws of Shabbos were also given over to the nation as a whole, as opposed to through Moshe. Just as the Mishkan’s goal was to bring the Shechinah back down to earth to rest upon the Jewish people, Shabbos too shares a similar goal. The Alshich Hakadosh explains that on Shabbos, the Jews receive an extra soul, in which they have increased capability for spirituality and for receiving God’s presence. For this reason the Mishkan’s construction was halted on the Shabbos. Shabbos itself was meant to be a covenant between the Jewish people and Hashem, and there was therefore no need to continue the construction of the Mishkan on Shabbos, since they shared an identical purpose. In fact, he even adds that Shabbos is more effective in bringing down the Shechina to rest upon the Jewish people then the Mishkan was. However one should know that it stands to reason that just as we proved that this resting of the Shechina can only occur when the Jewish people are together, by extension the same principle will be true about Shabbos. The only time that Shabbos and the extra Neshama can be an effective conduit to allow the Shechina to rest upon us, is if peace resides in our midst. However, if there is strife and conflict from amongst us, than the Shechina cannot rest upon us as it is supposed to on every Shabbos.
I would like to explain one of the reasons it is so important that we as the Jewish people foster a sense of harmony between us, and avoid any fragmentation at all costs. The verse says, “There is no righteous man in all the earth that does good and never sins”. This verse means to say that each and every person as an individual has many flaws that will probably never be fully worked out. But the community as a whole has no flaws. Meaning whatever one person is lacking, or is weak in, he will find another person who can compensate for his weakness and cover for him in that area. Only when we stick together as a community can we hope to survive the long and bitter exile, and emerge victorious in the Heavenly courts in which we are judged annually. If we break away, and try to do our own thing, we can never succeed and for this reason, we find such strict laws about how to treat somebody who attempts to break away from the community and do things his own way. In fact according to Onkelos, Korach got to where he got to only because he separated himself from the community.
Truthfully, this trait of togetherness, or lack thereof, is the primary cause for the long exile which we find ourselves in. It stands to reason that if we want to cease be an émigré nation, we need to pull ourselves together as a community, and start displaying a profound love and caring for each other. We reiterate this every day in the Shmone Esrei. We mention that Hashem “Brings the redemption, to their (the Avos) children and grandchildren, for His name’s sake, out of love”. The simple understanding of this phrase is that Hashem does all this for us because He loves us. But the Gaon from Vilna explains this phrase slightly differently. He understands it to be saying that only when there is love between the children, can they be redeemed.
May Hashem help us to come together in every way, and through this, merit in the final redemption!