Earlier this year, like many other rabbis, I received emails from congregants asking me about the Shabbos App. “Can we use this, rabbi? Can our kids use it?” For those of you who missed the whole hullabaloo, the Shabbos App purported to be an app that would allow users to text, email and use their smart phones in a halachically acceptable way on Shabbos. My first reaction was “This must be some kind of joke,” and it would seem that my first reaction was probably right as no such app has been forthcoming. There have even been articles arguing that the entire thing was an elaborate hoax. Whether real or not, the news of the Shabbos App was related to and tapped into the angst surrounding the earlier outcry about the phenomenon known as Half-Shabbat or Half-Shabbos, the term used to describe Orthodox teens keeping Shabbos except they text each other. Unlike the Shabbos App, this is decidedly not a hoax, although the numbers of kids actually doing this may be much smaller than initially reported.
In the beginning of Vayakhel Pekudei, Moshe gathers the people to tell them (35:1) the things that Hashem has commanded them to do. At first, Hashem tells them about Shabbos. The message is: don’t do melachah (work). Interestingly, the word melachah is used many times in our parsha in regards to the Mishkan (see Shemos35:21; 35:31; 35:33; 35:35 and 36:1-8). The Gemarain Shabbos (49b) tells us that the labors of Shabbos are derived from the construction of the Mishkan – and that this is drawn from our parsha where the melachah of Shabbos is contrasted with the melachah of the Mishkan.
But why? God could have used another word for work – perhaps avodah. What is the connection between the Mishkan and Shabbos? In Shemos Rabbah (34:1) Moshe asks Hashem why He needs a home at all. Hashem responds, “Not as you think do I think – twenty boards on the north, twenty on the south and eight in the West, moreover I will descend and confine my Shechinah in one square cubit.” Hashem contracts Himself into one amah by one amah. This concept is picked up by the kabbalists who explain that the entire act of creation was actually a contraction by Hashem known as tzimtzum.Namely if Hashem is infinite, how could He create something finite to add to infinity? Thus the kabbalists tell us that Hashem contracted His infinity to allow the world to come into being. G-d restricted Himself during the six days of creation and “rested” on Shabbos, meaning, He went back into “regular mode.” So we see that both in the Mishkan, and in the creation of the world, Hashem held back. That is what we do on Shabbos. We hold back our desire to be creative and restrict our activities.
Is that it? Is Shabbos all about not doing?
No.
The beginning of our parsha says, “These are the things that Hashem has commanded, Laasos Osam – to do them.” The next section of the parsha talks about Shabbos.
How does one do Shabbos?
Rabbeinu Bachaya tells us (31:16) that “Laasos es haShabbos,” means “Litakein Tzorchei Shabbos, to prepare the Shabbos needs,” like Avraham did: “And to the cattle ran Avraham, and he took a calf, tender and good, and he hurried to do it” (Bereishis 18:7).
There are so many things we do to “do” Shabbos: Kiddush, zemiros, learning Torah, dressing up, inviting guests, setting a beautiful table, bentching, going to shul, davening better, etc.