Menachem Mirski
Thoughts on Parashat Pekudei
The impossible happened in the city of Chełm. The body of a young man was found. The rabbis and elders of the city conducted an investigation and determined that the young man had been murdered, and the motive was rivalry for the hand of a certain young woman. According to Jewish law, murder is punishable by death. The culprit was found – it was a local tailor. However, the rabbis and elders of the city decided to sentence the local shoemaker to death. Why? There were two shoemakers in Chełm, but there was only one tailor.
Our parasha for this week talks about an issue seemingly unrelated to the joke above – building and the completion of Mishkan – Tabernacle. The whole process is described in a very detailed way, and includes, besides the specific of the construction of the Tabernacle, also the details of the priestly garments. The Israelites were obligated to do this Divine work so that God himself would inhabit and commune with them. There was, however, one important caveat, expressed at the beginning of the whole story, in the previous Torah portion, namely – all this work had to be done on the days of the week and not on Shabbat:
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. (Exodus 35:2)
Our medieval commentators – Rashi and Sforno – don’t address directly the issue of the death penalty here. According to Rashi it is just to express the idea that reference to the Sabbath before the command about the building of the Tabernacle in order to intimate that it does not set aside (supersede) the Sabbath. Similarly Sforno writes that:
You may not violate the Sabbath even in order to complete the Tabernacle sooner, although the work on the Tabernacle is also a sacred task.
Building the Temple did not supersede the rules of Shabbat. However, in the ancient times, the Temple cult did supersede some laws of Shabbat – i.e a fire was lit in the Temple, animals were slaughtered and they were burned as sacrifices.Shabbat and the Temple/Mishkan were directly interconnected with each other. While the Israelites did in the Temple things which were not allowed on Shabbat outside of the Temple, the construction of the Temple itself can not be done on Shabbat. One of the purposes of Shabbat is the Temple, and one of the purposes of the Temple is Shabbat (one of the names for the Temple is the Beit Menucha – The House of Rest)
Why is the connection between Shabbat and the Temple that is so important? Both are the pinnacle of the world’s creation, and the defining thing which teaches us about the concept of Kodesh. Shabbat is the first thing that is called Kodesh in the Torah. The Temple is the only thing called Kodesh Kodashim. Therefore, some rabbis argued that the completion of the creation of the world was not completed until the Mishkan was built.
The conclusion we can draw from it – and many traditional Jews do draw such a conclusion – is that because there is no Temple in Jerusalem the world we live in is not complete. The Conservative movement is generally split in terms of whether the Temple should be rebuilt or not. The Reform movement is predominantly against this very idea. But in the non-orthodox Jewish community there is generally an agreement that the Temple should not be rebuilt at all costs. I would, however, shift the conversation here from Temple to the State of Israel and bring the following argument: as long as the State of Israel and our people living there suffer from these extremely barbaric and deadly attacks the world we live in is incomplete – it means that historic justice has not been served yet. What was taken from us, unjustly, in an equally barbaric way by the Romans – supposedly the highest culture in the world at that time – has not been returned to us yet. Interestingly, in Hebrew the words completion and peace share the same root: shalom – peace; hashlama – completion; acceptance, reconciliation.
Therefore, the world we live in is not complete until full historic justice is served and until peace is brought. Both must prevail without harming each other, only then can the transformation be lasting.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Menachem Mirski
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