Parashat Vayekhel: Looking Forward From Shabbat

In last week’s parsha, the commandment to keep Shabbat began with an Akh, a “but.” Yes, build the Mishkan but stop building to keep my Sabbaths.

There Shabbat was a stopping point, a pulling of the brakes. Here, though, in this week’s parsha, Shabbat appears again, and here, Shabbat is not an end, but a beginning. Here the parsha begins with Shabbat. Here it appears before the Mishkan, before Moshe passes on the Mishkan instructions to the people. Here Shabbat is not so much a resting point from work as it is an energizer before the work actually begins.

That is the way Shabbat functions. It looks backward to the week that just passed, but it also looks forward to the coming week. Indeed, the Talmud says that the days up until Wednesday belong to the previous Shabbat, whereas from Wednesday on the days belong to the next Shabbat. Shabbat is both an end-point and a starting-point.

In the story of creation, God is said to bless the seventh day because on that day He rested mikol melakhto asher bara Elokim la’asot, literally, “from all the work that God had created to do.” A famous midrashic reading understands this strange locution to refer to the future work left for mankind to do. Even the first Shabbat’s rest led inexorably into the next week’s work, this time the work of humans.

The Esh Kodesh, the Rebbe of the Warsaw ghetto, writes that the kedushah, the holiness, of Shabbat spreads outward to all the days around it, before and after. Usually, we speak of the contrast between Shabbat and the 6 work-days, but instead he suggests thinking of the connections between them, of how Shabbat’s overwhelming holiness can spill over into the week.

What is it that spills over? The experience of Shabbat teaches not just how to rest but also how to work. The Israelites, on the cusp of their first big work project in the world, needed to experience Shabbat before they could begin work. What did they learn? First, Shabbat teaches about God, that He, not we, created the world. This lesson is first learned through resting on Shabbat, but it is ultimately translated – during the week -- into work that is leshem shamayim, “for the sake of heaven.” The building of God’s house, the Mishkan, stands as a classic example of such work.

Second, the lesson of Shabbat is community. It is no accident that our parsha begins Vayakhel Moshe et kol adat Benei Yisrael, “And Moshe gathered the whole congregation of Israel together into a kehillah, a community.” He gathered them together in order to instruct them first concerning Shabbat and then concerning the Mishkan. Shabbat creates community. People stop their individual busy lives and come together to pray, to eat, to sing, to hang out at the park.

The Israelites needed this message in order to build the Mishkan together. Indeed, the verses which follow emphasize the widespread participation of the people in this project. Again and again the Torah tells us that “all the people” came, using the word kol, “all,” no less than 8 times here to refer to the people. They came ha’anashim al hanashim, literally “men on top of women,” meaning everyone, all running in a jumble to participate. The lesson of Shabbat was well-learned; the building of the Mishkan would be a truly communal project.

Where do our Shabbatot lead us? They led the Israelites to the creation of a space for God to dwell on earth, among them, as a community. Shabbat is not just an end but a beginning. Rashi says that Moshe came down from Mount Sinai and delivered this message right after Yom Kippur. The building of the Mishkan, suggests the Sefat Emet, was like our building of Sukkot right after Yom Kippur. We take the energy of Yom Kippur and channel it into a building project. Every Shabbat needs to be, for us, like a little Yom Kippur, an experience that energizes us to carry Shabbat’s messages into our weekday lives and work.