Vayachel-Pekudei
Exodus 35:1-40:38; 12:1-20
Ezekiel 45:16-46:18
by RABBI AMY EILBERG
This week’s Torah portion brings us a description of a community capital campaign, for the purpose of filling the desert mishkan (sanctuary) with things of beauty.
Beneath the details of the mishkan’s interior design lies an extraordinary picture of the possibilities for living with a sense of meaning and purpose.
Toward the end of our double Torah portion, when the work of gathering materials for the mishkan has been completed, we read, “And when Moshe saw that they had performed all the work…Moshe blessed them” (Exodus 39:43). The Midrash, with its fine eye for biblical style, wonders why the description here reads “all the work,” rather than the common phrase, “all the work of the mishkan.” According to the Midrash, Moshe looked at all the work — that is, all of God’s work in creation.
Many commentators have observed that the language and metaphor of this Torah portion parallels that of the Creation story. (Note the parallels in language between this text and the text of Creation in Genesis 1:31-2:3.) That is to say, the creation of the desert sanctuary was an opportunity for people to create something beautiful and sacred, just as God created the world.
But the Sefat Emet takes this idea an enormous step further. Reflecting on the midrashic reading, he writes, “The whole purpose of creating the sanctuary was to repair Creation” (The Language of Truth, The Torah Commentary of the Sefat Emet, P. 135).
Remember, the Chassidim understand that we are to take the building of the mishkan as a spiritual blueprint, a guide for the everyday acts of creation in which we engage in our own lives. Just as God created the world with care, with awe, with inspiration, so too are we to let all of our actions be guided by the goal of repairing the world.
This stunning piece of commentary fairly leapt off the page at me. It brought to mind many people I have spoken with in recent years who have been lost and distressed, cut off from a sense of purpose in their lives.
How many people do you know who have trouble feeling that their lives matter, that their work has meaning, that their family life has significance? In our fragmented and insanely fast-paced times, many suffer from a crisis of meaning. Many people seek out psychotherapy as the cure, or, for that matter, addictions of various kinds. Many more simply live with low-grade depression and feelings of alienation from the self and others.
Suddenly, on the page of commentary, lay the answer to the question: How are we to find meaning in our lives? In all you do, seek to restore the beauty of creation.
By this logic, any area of life can become holy work. Just as surely as the Israelites built the sanctuary in imitation of God’s great act of creation, so it is in our lives. Anything we do — engaging in our work (whatever that may be), building relationships, nurturing families, cultivating community — can be done with the goal of repairing creation, of honoring the life force, expressing gratitude for being alive, seeking to mirror in our own lives the beauty that was created for us.
Any moment of our day — a kind word to a co-worker, the decision to yield the right-of-way to another driver, a moment’s pause to admire the clouds hanging in the sky, and surely, loving words to friends and family — can be our way of honoring creation, of building a sanctuary once again today in our own lives.
It is as simple as choosing for a moment to be generous as we greet another person, to be gracious as we internally comment on another’s motives or our own, to recognize that everything we do is an act of creation. Everything we do can contribute to the building of a dwelling place for the sacred, right here, right now.
This Shabbat, may we see the possibilities for creating sanctuaries in the moments of our own lives and may we add to the beauty of the world we have been given.