Vayakhel-Pekudei (Exodus 35:1-40:38): March 13, 2021/29 Adar 5781

In this week's double-feature parashah, we read about the construction of the Tabernacle. In the last couple of weeks, we heard about God instructing Moses as to what to do, and this week, Moses puts those instructions into action, appointing master artisans to oversee the project. But first, he repeats the command to keep Shabbat. Many commentators understand this juxtaposition as a demonstration of the fact that even the sacred work of building the Tabernacle does not take precedence over Shabbat. Others use this verse to derive the understanding that each of the 39 categories of "labor" prohibited on Shabbat are connected in some way to the tasks surrounding the construction of the Tabernacle. But perhaps there is something to be learned here as well about the role of Shabbat in our lives.

The great theorist of cultural Zionism, Achad Ha'am, famously opined that "more than the Jews have kept the Shabbat, the Shabbat has kept the Jews." While there is room for debate over what exactly it means to mark Shabbat, I think there is something the idea that Achad Ha'am is proposing. Shabbat is more than just an abstention from work/labor/creation, Shabbat is, to quote Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, "a palace in time." Yes, the abstentions are a facet of the day, but even without them, we can still enter into the palace of Shabbat. 

For the great many people whose work week ends on Friday afternoon and resumes again on Monday morning, Shabbat is already a day set apart. They come home, knowing that Saturday will be a day for themselves and their own recreation. For those of us who do have to work over Shabbat, I did not grow up in a household that would be typically called "shomer Shabbat" - we drove, went shopping, used electricity, and did all the normal things that you would expect an American family to do on a Saturday. True, as I begin preparing for my bar mitzvah we started to go to synagogue on Saturday mornings, a practice that continued through my younger brother's bar mitzvah. But Shabbat was still an important part of family life. We sat down to dinner every Friday evening, with candles and wine for kiddush, and challah. And going out on a Friday night was just not something that we did. Even if the day of Shabbat was still more or less mundane, the evening was clearly a sacred space in the week.

Some years ago, I was spending the summer in Israel and, in the time between my arrival in the country and the start of the archaeological dig on which I was there to work, I spent some time seeing family. I went to the house of my great uncle and aunt one Saturday afternoon, and my cousin came to pick me up. While there, we went over to the house of some other cousins who lived nearby. Those cousins were more religious, and as we sat on the patio, a discussion ensued about how to have Shabbat. The secular cousin made the argument that Shabbat is meant for relaxation and "refreshing the soul." For him, it would be far more refreshing and a change from the work week to go to the beach and have hummus with his friends than it would be to sit at home observing Shabbat in the traditional manner. While there is certainly value in scrupulously keeping the laws, we are also supposed to enjoy Shabbat. In fact, there is a specific command to have "oneg Shabbat," delight to in Shabbat. The classical interpretation of this is in specific types of food and having an extra meal, but we have to understand the concept of delight or enjoyment in terms of today and not just through the narrow lens of our sages.

Taking pleasure in Shabbat, making it special relative to the rest of the week, is, in my estimation, what Achad Ha'am was talking about in his well-known quote. Whether we elevate Shabbat out of a desire to sanctify the day in fulfillment of God's Commandments or just want an excuse to go to the beach is, at the start at least, irrelevant. There's an idea expressed in the Talmud that one should always do mitzvot, even if not out of the desire to serve God, because by doing them for other reasons, we eventually come to do them for the right reasons. I think that is the key in understanding Shabbat. It may not be technically correct to celebrate Shabbat by driving to the movies, but by elevating the Shabbat feeling, we are drawn closer to God, and maybe in time we may want to express that closeness in the more traditional-religious manner, but even if we don't, we are participating in the chain of tradition that has kept the Jewish experience alive throughout the ages.