Usually when Moshe taught the mitzvos he received from G-d to the Jewish people, he imparted them to Aharon, who passed them on to the elders of Israel, who in turn passed them on to the rest of the people.
Here in Vayakhel, however, when teaching the laws of Shabbos (Shemos 35:1-3), Moshe addresses all of Israel directly and individually, “Vayakhel Moshe es kol adas Bnei Yisrael – and Moshe assembled all the people of Israel.”
Why do the laws of Shabbos need to be addressed personally to each Jew?
It is because the experience of keeping Shabbos and refraining from work on that holy day is each person’s testimony to the existence of G-d, to His creation of the world and to His continuing involvement in one’s life.
The word “adas” comes from the word “eidus,” which means testimony.
Each individual is able to offer his own personal testimony of how Shabbos has demonstrated the existence of G-d in his or her own life. From the Jewish employee who got fired for refusing to work on Shabbos and had to live off the meager earnings from selling rags off a pushcart on the Lower East Side and who then went on to become the owner of a national chain of textile stores, to the Jew who outlived the partners in his firm who burned themselves out from incessant 24/7 work, while he laid down his tools of trade once a week, every person who dares to defy the deity of economics has his own personal, miraculous story of survival to tell.
People were created to be in permanent, restless motion. “Od kol yemey ha’aretz, zerah, vekatzir, vekor, vechom, vekayitz, vechoref, veyom, veliyla lo yishbosu” (Bereishis 8:22) – people are destined to work for their living tirelessly, in summer and in winter, by day and by night.” But the Jews were given a reprieve. One day of rest a week. More than the Jews have kept the Shabbos, the Shabbos has kept the Jews.
How, we are often asked, do we manage to sit idle for 24 hours on Shabbos without going stir crazy? Is it not human nature to be workaholics? The answer is that on Shabbos G-d lends us a second soul, a neshamah yeseirah, which allows us to be serene, even as we are “unproductive.”
That is why Moshe assembled each and every Jew to teach them the laws of Shabbos, in the same way as he did in Parshas Kedoshim, when he taught them the laws of how to behave kindly to one another, laws which are the root of and are the lifeblood of society (see Rashi to Vayikra 19:1).
“Sheishes yamin te’oseh melachah, uveyom hashevi’i yiyeh lachem shabbas shabbason lashem – Six days shall work be done but on the seventh day there should be to you a holy day, a Sabbath of rest to G-d” (Shemos 35:2).
Significantly, in describing our work during the week, the Torah does not say “ta’aseh melachah,” you shall work, but “te’aseh melachah,” work should be done.
The message is that we should work each day of the week with Shabbos in mind.
What can we do during the week, we should ask ourselves, to make it possible to usher in Shabbos on Friday afternoon on time? Like an important guest welcomed into a household with everything already in place. Like a stage set after the curtains have been closed on all the busy preparations that came before. By the time Shabbos arrives, your work should be done, te’aseh, so that you can enter the Shabbos with peace of mind. That is the physical explanation of the word te’aseh.
But there is also a psychological explanation of the word te’aseh.
After all, our work is not done just because Shabbos arrived. It is never done. That is the point. We must learn to live with the fact that our work is never done and will be never done. One day, we will all die in the middle of our work. We will have no control over the timing. But during our lifetime we do have control. Every week, we must show that we, while we live, are in control of when our work stops. We stop it. Not death. The only way we can do this is to say to ourselves on Friday afternoon that our work is done for now, at least until after Shabbos. That is not easy to do. But we are shown the way by G-d himself. “Ki vo shavas mikol melachto asher barah Elokim la’asos – G-d rested from all the work of the six days, so that we can continue His work after the seventh day” (Bereishis 2:3).
In keeping Shabbos, we try to see G-d in our physical world. His existence is not proven to us black on white during our lifetime. “Ki lo yirani adam vachai – you cannot see G-d and live” (Shemos 33:21). Seeing G-d is a privilege reserved for the next life, not this one.
In this world, it is not for G-d to prove His existence to us. It is for us to prove His existence to ourselves. We call this belief. We must take the leap of faith and believe that even if we do not work on Shabbos, G-d will take care of us. That is the first and most difficult challenge of Shabbos. We might even be ridiculed for believing such an illogical thing. But if we give G-d the benefit of the doubt and bank on His promise, that if we cease work on Friday, G-d will take care of us on Shabbos (Shemos 16:5), we will be rewarded by His visible presence in the Mishkan. We will be able to point and say “Ze hadavar – there it is” (35:4), this Being we believed in, and Whom we now see. There, in the Mishkan, any doubt about His existence will be dispelled by the ten miracles on display for all doubters to witness (Avos 5:5). That is why the laws of Shabbos precede the laws of the Mishkan. The gateway to proof is belief.
Interestingly, in introducing the Shabbos to us, out of all the 39 prohibited acts G-d could have mentioned, he chose to mention the act of lighting fire. This takes us back to the challenge of having control over our workaholic tendencies. Shabbos comes in when it begins to get dark. During the week we extend the daylight hours of work into night by lighting a fire, by turning on the lights. How tempting would it be to do the same on Friday afternoon. Extend the working day by turning on the lights, so that we can cram in as much work as possible up to the last minute before Shabbos comes in. Let’s steal time from Shabbos. We are warned, therefore, to stop work while it is still light and not to light a fire to delay the onset of Shabbos.
“Vechol ish asher nimtza ito techeles veragaman … heiviyu – And every man with whom was found turquoise, purple and scarlet wool…brought them and donated them to the building of the Mishkan” (35:23). The terminology the Torah uses “asher nimtza ito” (who happens to have with him) is deliberate.
As a matter of fact, nobody in the desert owned any such valuables. We are told that these valuable items rained down from heaven for the lucky ones, together with the daily manna. They did not earn these valuables by the sweat of their brow. They were given them by the grace of G-d. And they were taught that these gifts were not theirs alone to enjoy. Rather, they were deposited with them in safe keeping, so that they should act as G-d’s payment agent and dedicate them to the Mishkan, for the communal good.
We all know that our success does not come from us. As a matter of fact, we invest as much effort in our failures as we do in our successes. But if we are fortunate enough to be successful in business, we are just custodians of His money, which “happens to be found with us,” in order to share it with the less fortunate. Rabbi Akiva was once asked by a heretic: If G-d loves the poor so much, why does he not feed them Himself? And he answered that G-d wants to educate us to feed the poor just like the father who gives his small child a coin to put in the charity box, rather than putting it in himself.
The same is true of any gift a person is graced with, whether it is wealth, intelligence, or the gift of creating art. And so, we are told that those who were graced by G-d with the talent of artisans were to contribute their efforts to the Mishkan. “Vechol ish chacham lev asher nasan Hashem chochmah utevunah baheima – and every wise-hearted man in whom G-d put wisdom and understanding to know how to create all manner of work for the sanctuary” (36:1). The word “baheima” really means “bahem” (in them). So why is it spelled in this unusual way? It is to tell us, that left to our own devices, without the talents given to us by G-d, we are no different from a beheimah, an animal, and therefore we are to use these talents in His service, not in ours.
