Rabbi Janine's Messages

This week we are lucky to have another Shabbat message written by our KHN Student Rabbi Miriam Ginsberg. Student Rabbi Miriam will be writing a Shabbat message once a month from now until the end of her internship with us. We are so fortunate to learn from her. I wish you a sweet and joyful Shabbas.

Student Rabbi Miriam will also be leading Shabbat services tonight beginning at 7 p.m. I hope you will come out and celebrate Shabbat with her. 

Shabbat Shalom!
​​​​​​​
Rabbi Janine Jankovitz 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Community,

This Shabbat, we read the parasha Vayakhel, which describes the building of the mishkan, or the Tabernacle. Nearly the entire parasha is dedicated to the mishkan’s creation, but in its opening verses, we have a piece that feels somewhat out of place. Moses gathers all the people and says: “These are the things that יהוה (Hashem) 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 יהוה.”

In his very next breath, a seeming non sequitur, Moses tells the people to bring their gold, silver, linens, and precious gems. He instructs the skilled craftspeople to hammer copper rings and carve wood and weave linens. The rest of the parasha follows in this vein, and Shabbat is not mentioned again. So why do we start with this reminder about keeping Shabbat? 

Perhaps Shabbat is invoked here because it is a reason for building the mishkan – Shabbat is when we join with the Shechinah, the divine presence, and so we must build a house for the Divine to enable Her to dwell among us. While the Israelites had a different way of praying than we do, the mishkan was their version of a synagogue, and it is hard to keep Shabbat without creating some kind of physical space that is marked as special or holy, that we may step into in order to access the sacred. 

However, I think there is another reason that Vayakhel opens with Shabbat. As noted above, after these verses about Shabbat, we immediately launch into a parasha full of work, of the labor of building and creating. These are all different kinds of melacha - the specific types of work that are prohibited on Shabbat. 

To me, this reminder that we are not just allowed but commanded to take one day of complete rest each week is positioned at the beginning of this parasha to teach us that even when we are engaging in holy work, we must stop, and we must rest. 

The holy work of building spiritual community, whether it involves cleaning up after the potluck or setting up the Owl or answering emails, is still work. The holy work of building Ha’Olam HaBa, The World to Come, whether it involves doing a favor for our neighbor or teaching our children or calling our congresspeople, is still work. We can and we must do this work. And, we must rest. 

In his book Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: “To the biblical mind, labor is the means toward an end, and the Sabbath as a day of rest, as a day of abstaining from toil, is not for the purpose of recovering one's lost strength and becoming fit for the forthcoming labor. The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life.”

This Shabbat, may we rest. For while our work is vitally important, so are we.

Shabbat Shalom,
​​​​​​​
Student Rabbi Miriam