Mar 17/07 — Parashat Vayakhel / Pekudei

Commentary by Rabbi Alan Green

“These are the things that the Lord has commanded you to do: On six days work may be done, but on the seventh day, you shall have a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire throughout your settlements on the Sabbath day.”

Exodus 35:1-3

This reiteration of the command to observe the Sabbath seems not to be in place. We have just finished with the incident of the Golden Calf, and God’s near desertion of His people. The Golden Calf narrative itself constitutes a break in the relevant action: the instructions for and execution of the Mishkan—the portable desert sanctuary, the Israelites’ primary connection with God until the construction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem around 1000 BCE.

In today’s Parashah, we are about to resume the discussion about the Mishkan. But first, we have this seemingly incongruous appearance of some of the basic rules of Shabbat observance. The Torah text is begging us to ask the question: Why this passage, in this place?

The rabbis were aware of the force of this question, and they answered it in a brilliant way. According to the rabbis, the subsequent description of the construction of the Mishkan is a commentary on the laws of Shabbat, except that we infer those laws by negative example.

In other words, whatever labour is required to build the Mishkan, that exact labour is forbidden on Shabbat. By carefully examining the various types of labour described in this week’s Parashah, the rabbis were able to derive thirty-nine categories of activity, the performance of which would constitute a violation of Shabbat.

For information’s sake, these categories are: carrying, burning, extinguishing, finishing, writing, erasing, cooking, washing, sewing, tearing, knotting, untying, shaping, plowing, planting, reaping, harvesting, threshing, winnowing, selecting, sifting, grinding, kneading, combing, spinning, dyeing, chain-stitching, warping, weaving, unraveling, building, demolishing, trapping, shearing, slaughtering, skinning, tanning, smoothing, and marking. A simple, clear explanation of each category can be found at www.ou.org/chagim/shabbat/thirtynine.htm.

The rabbis characterized their derivation of the laws of Shabbat as “mountains hanging by hairs.” The paragraph with which we began is typical of the descriptions of Shabbat in the Torah. Precise definitions of Shabbat observance are not the province of the Torah. A few enticing “hairs” is all to which we’re entitled.

At the same time, the later development of Jewish law never shied away from creating “mountains” of ritual minutiae when it came to fleshing out a Jewish practice. The rabbis read the Torah’s very imprecision as a call to delve deeply into every phrase, every word, every letter, and every vowel point, in order to recover the immense stores of truth encoded within it.

Moreover, Jewish law has never been satisfied with generalities or abstract philosophical principles. In Judaism, everything abstract must be rooted in something concrete. This goes a long way towards explaining how Judaism has managed to maintain itself in the world for so many centuries. The light of God’s presence must somehow be contained, to be successfully passed down through the generations.

It’s similar to the way milk must be contained—in many different kinds of vessels—to get from the cow to our refrigerator without spoiling. Therefore, the masters of our tradition could never have been satisfied with the paragraph describing Shabbat observance above. General prohibitions against “work” and “fire” would never have been able to pass the test of time, without an extensive refining and defining process.

Therefore, over the course of many generations, Shabbat evolved into the practice with which we are familiar today. Eventually, there were precise starting and ending times, precise practices for the evening, morning, and afternoon, and precise prohibitions. These prohibitions have evolved rapidly over the last couple of centuries, as new technologies like electricity, the internal combustion engine, and computer electronics have raised new questions about what is Shabbosdig, and what isn’t.

What hasn’t changed, however, is the Jewish insistence that it is by defining our terms, and spelling out exactly what we mean, that we have the best chance to create vessels to contain, and preserve the presence of God. With these vessels, may we all succeed in fulfilling God’s will for ourselves, for our people, and for our world, generation after generation.

Shabbat Shalom.