Shabbat Shekalim-P'kudei

Exodus 38:21-40:38; Exodus 30:11-16

God is in the Details

The Torah teaches us to think globally and act locally.

By Rabbi Eliezer Shore; Provided by Canfei Nesharim, providing Torah wisdom about the importance of protecting our environment.

Pekudei is the Torah portion of details.

This short, seemingly redundant parashah does little more than sum up the information presented already twice in the preceding chapters.

In Terumah and Tetzaveh, Moses receives from God the instructions for building the Mishkan, including its utensils and the priestly garments. Vayakhel describes the actual construction of these items. Whereas Pekudei begins with an accounting of all the material that went into the project, and concludes with a further recounting of the Mishkan's parts as they are finally erected into a single structure by Moses.

Considering how incredibly sparing the Torah is with words, it seems strange that this parashah should spend so much time simply summing up what was said before. Why wasn't it enough for the Torah to simply state: "And the people did all that Moses commanded, and Moses assembled the Mishkan." Perhaps the answer lies in the nature and purpose of the Mishkan, and its relationship to the creation.

Revelation & Redemption

According to Nahmanides, the Mishkan was the continuation of the Sinaitic revelation into history. Just as God spoke to Moses from the top of the mountain, so He continued to address him from out of the Mishkan. The Mishkan--and the Temple after it--was a "portable" Mount Sinai. It was a place of continual revelation, where the presence of God could be felt and experienced vividly.

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Vayakhel

Exodus 35:1–38:20

by Rabbi Steven Pik-Nathan for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

Reconstructing the Prohibitions of Shabbat

In this week's parashah, Vayakhel, as we near the conclusion of Shemot (which will take place next Shabbat), we read of Moses relaying God's instructions to the people concerning the building of the Mishkan/Mikdash (Tabernacle). In the earlier part of Shemot God gives Moses detailed instructions concerning the Mishkan/Mikdash which are followed by the commandment to observe Shabbat as a day of rest. This is followed by the incident of the Golden Calf, which is then followed in Vayakhel by a reminder to observe Shabbat, including the prohibition against kindling fire on Shabbat. Moses then transmits the instructions concerning the building of the Mishkan/Mikdash to the people and to Bezalel, the artisan entrusted with the actual construction.

Rashi (12th c. France) comments on the reminder that after six days of working we are required to rest on Shabbat by stating that God "prefaced the instructions about the Mishkan work with the warning about Shabbat, to tell them that the Mishkan does not supercede Shabbat." As Aviva Zornberg then states in her analysis (The Particulars of Rapture, p. 462) "an intimate tension is set up between Shabbat and the Mishkan: before even beginning to speak of the building work, it is necessary to articulate a kind of 'anti-Mishkan' principle. One might indeed have thought that the Mishkan does displace Shabbat, that that the crafts that go to create the holy space would continue through the weekly day of sacred [or holy] time. Therefore Moses speaks of Shabbat before the Mishkan work, to counteract perhaps a natural hypothesis." Furthermore, Zornberg reminds her readers that the beginning of the verses concerning the building of the Mishkan begin with the words 'eileh ha-devarim' (these are the things) the 39 letters of this phrase are viewed by the Sages as pointing to the 39 categories of work involved in the building of the Mishkan which then become the 39 categories of work forbidden on Shabbat.

The Talmud teaches that acts of creation are forbidden on Shabbat, not just destructive acts. For just as God ceased creation on Shabbat in order to enjoy the beauty of the world, so too are we meant to simply revel in God's created world each Shabbat. It would seem, according to Zornberg and others, that the work of the Mishkan, which was also holy, became such an obsession on the part of the people that perhaps God was worried that the people would not cease this creative work on Shabbat. Though it may seem extreme to threaten death for those who desecrate the Shabbat, as the Torah does time and again, perhaps it was necessary in order to emphasize the importance of Shabbat and that it supercedes all other holy activities of creation - no matter how important they might seem. Even the ultimate in holy work, the building of the Mishkan (a holy place/space), is suspended in order to observe holy time, Shabbat.

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Ki Tisa

Exodus 30:11−34:35

by Rabbi Steven Pik-Nathan for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

Two Sides of the Golden Calf

This week's parashah, Ki Tisa, includes the narrative of the Golden Calf. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, according to rabbinic tradition the incident of the calf is contiguous with the giving of the Ten Commandments and precedes the giving of the instructions for the building of the Mishkan/Tabernacle. Sinai and the Golden Calf are inextricably linked to one another. Sinai represents the creation of a relationship between the people of Israel and God. The Golden Calf represents, among other things, their refusal to totally let go of their past and also their inability to maintain their commitment to one concept, symbol or ideal if their patience is tested. In short, Sinai implies trust and the Golden Calf implies its rejection.

Aviva Zornberg discusses the fact that the two sides of the coin that is the Golden Calf may seem to be contradictory, yet are in reality complimentary, or perhaps even symbiotic.

One of the reasons given for the building of the Calf is the fact that the people believed that Moses was late in coming down from the mountain and so they said to Aaron "Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that man Moses, who brought us up from the land of Egypt - we do not know what has happened to him (32:1)." In reading this verse it becomes clear that the idolatry began long before the calf, for the people had already associated Moses with the redemption from slavery and not God. It has been said that idolatry is when people worship a part and confuse it with the whole. If God is the whole - the One of the Universe - then any human being, or any object for that matter, can only be a small part of the whole. But Moses, a mere human, becomes almost deified. According to one Midrash, Satan then shows the people that Moses is either dead or suspended somewhere between heaven and earth. In this mass hallucination, as Zornberg calls it, the people come to see "this man" Moses as no longer with them, and so they must create a new "god" to provide them with a physical representation of that which has no physical representation. They must substitute a new part to worship as a proxy for the whole. The people are unable to face God without Moses, just as they were unable to hear God's voice at Sinai, but instead relied on Moses to relay the message to. The people forget God and God's oneness and instead searched for a new god to worship (even though this new god was still, in reality, a representation of the One God).

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Tetzaveh

Exodus 27:20−30:10 

Eric Mendelsohn for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

This portion is so anti-intellectual and has so little in of interest even to the traditional community, that rabbis have commented that "it is one of the very few in which Moses is not mentioned". What it
consists of is the ordination of Aaron and his descendants as priests and vast descriptions of the vestments that the priest should wear and the law of the half-shekel temple tax. This segment was probably rewritten in King Josiah's time, and again during the exile, and again upon the return to conform to what the priests were wearing at that time. Nothing in this parasha survived the destruction of the Temple in Judaism, even in traditional Judaism. It is important in Christian
Catholic and Orthodox tradition as the vestments of the bishops and the idea that bishops can ordain priests are implicit. As far as I know Apple computer has not announced a device which will allow users to connect to God via the internet for the expiation of sin and called it the E-phod. Jews have chosen to dress the Torah in a mimicry of the priestly vestments.

So two questions arise:

1) What about this process called ordination.

2) How can we revalue the ancient traditions concerning the priesthood

The answer to the first is found and justified in the next parasha where the Talmud concludes one cannot appoint a rabbi without consulting the congregation.

The second question requires to know exactly what rituals the priests had which survived the second temple and how can we revalue them.

Of all the priestly duties only two have survived the destruction of the temple:

The priestly blessing which we have dealt with well and creatively and is leading edge in that others are adopting our customs and the "redeeming of the first born" pidyan haben which I propose we can deal with creatively.

The priestly blessing was transferred to the home as the parental blessing. In the synagogue there are variations. This ceremony is traditionally performed daily in Israel (except in Galilee), and among
most Sephardi Jews worldwide, during the repetition of the Shacharit Amidah. On Sabbath and festivals it is also recited during the repetition of the Musaf prayer. On Yom Kippur the ceremony is
performed during the Neilah service as well. On other fast days it is performed at Mincha, if said in the late afternoon.


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