by Avi Feldblum (posted by Ephrayim J. Naiman)
Avi Feldblum was one of the pioneers of Jewish religious life on early Usenet. Working from pruxa, a site that connected to the AT&T backbone, he began posting weekly Dvar Torah in early 1985 — coordinating with a small group of contributors to ensure that net.religion.jewish received Torah commentary each week. Because his own site (pruxa!ayf) could not post directly to the network, he worked through friends who could, asking readers not to reply directly to their addresses. This March 1985 Dvar Torah on Vayak'hel-Pekudei — the double parasha covering the building of the Tabernacle — was his third weekly posting.
The question he takes up is ancient and subtle: why, when the entire nation has been commanded to build the Mishkan as a dwelling for God's Presence, does Moses interrupt to repeat the commandment of Shabbos? And why twice — once here, once in Ki Tissa? Feldblum's answer draws on the Abravanel to articulate a theology of holiness: the Torah distinguishes three types of kadosh (holy) — holiness in time (Shabbos, the first), holiness in people (Bnei Yisrael, the second), and holiness in space or object (the Mishkan, the third). Time came first, ordained directly by God at Creation. The Mishkan came last, and came at human insistence, after the Golden Calf. The first holiness takes precedence over the last.
This is the third week I am posting a dvar torah on the parshah. For those who missed my first posting last month, I am planning to post a dvar torah every week on the parshah. To be more accurate, I am trying to coordinate a multi-person effort to see that at least one dvar torah is posted each week. There are about four people who have contacted me who are interested in helping out, and their postings should start appearing in the next month. This brings me to my next point.
I am Avi Feldblum. My site is currently not posting to the net, although we do get the netnews and I read it. Therefore, my submissions are posted by friends for me. Therefore — please — do not reply using r or some other method that accesses the poster's address. They are nice enough to post for me, don't make them forward messages back to me as well. My address is: {allegra,ihnp4}!pruxa!ayf. Most major backbone sites talk to either allegra or ihnp4. If you are not sure how to get to them, pruxa talks to whoever posts for me, so just strip off his name and add pruxa!ayf. Sorry for the longwindedness, but I'd like to invite responses from those reading these dvar torahs or anyone interested in submitting, and have it get to me. Now on to the purpose of this posting.
Shabbos and the Mishkan
This week's parshah, Vayak'hel-Pekudei, begins with Moshe assembling all of Bnei Yisrael, to command them about the work of the Mishkan — Tabernacle. However, instead of starting right with the instructions for the mishkan, Moshe first says:
These are the words which the Lord has commanded you to do. Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord.
Only in verse 4 does Moshe return to the main theme of these two parsheot, the building of the Mishkan. Before beginning the work on the Mishkan, Moshe reminds Bnei Yisrael to observe the Shabbos. This is the second time the Shabbos is connected to the building of the mishkan. The first was in last week's parsha, Ki Tissa (31:12–17). In both cases the commentaries explain that the building of the mishkan does not override the observance of the Shabbos. To understand why this had to be emphasized, we need to look at the concepts of Shabbos and Mishkan.
The mishkan and all that went with it symbolized man's communion with God, and God's resting of His Presence on the nation of Israel. Shabbos symbolizes that God created the world and that his presence exists among us (the connection between Shabbos and leaving Egypt). The Abravanel explains that man always considers action to be more perfect than inaction. What we have here then, is a choice between a sacred and sublime performance of building the mishkan as a witness of faith versus the cessation from work of observing the Shabbos as a witness of faith. Which is the more powerful? It would be easy to argue that the positive active choice should be performed. Thus Moshe had to repeat twice, that the building of the mishkan does not override the commandment of observing the Shabbos.
The Three Holinesses
While we now understand why we would have thought that it does override the Shabbos, why now are we wrong? Why is the Shabbos the winner over the mishkan? The answer lies in the perspective of Kadosh — holy. Man tends to attach importance to things. This thing is bigger than that thing, this thing is more important than that thing, leading to this thing is holy, sacred, etc. This is the path of all the early idol-worshipping religions — these things-idols are holy. If, however, we look in the Torah for the first mention of the word Kadosh — holy, we find it at the end of the creation story:
And God blessed the seventh day and he made it holy. (Gen. 2:3)
God has just established the heaven and earth. He does not then create a holy place. He defines a holiness in time — the Shabbos, the seventh day. Much later in history, a second holiness is established, a holiness in man, as it is written:
Thou shalt be unto me a holy people.
The third holiness, that of space or thing, comes with the mishkan. According to the Midrash, it was at the insistence of the Bnei Yisrael, following the sin of the Golden Calf, for a place to worship Hashem with objects designated for that purpose, that God commands for the building of the mishkan. We can see this difference in the way the term kadosh — holy — is applied to each. For Shabbos, we read above (Gen. 2:3) that God himself made it holy, but by the mishkan we read:
And it came to pass that on the day when Moshe finished erecting the Tabernacle that he anointed it and made it holy. (Num. 7:2)
Thus we understand why Shabbos, the holiness proclaimed by God from the beginning of creation, takes precedence over the building of the mishkan, a holiness brought about only through the frailty of man.
Avi Feldblum
uucp: {allegra,ihnp4}!pruxa!ayf
Colophon
Written by Avi Feldblum (pruxa!ayf), posted by Ephrayim J. Naiman ([email protected], AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Lincroft NJ) to net.religion.jewish on 13 March 1985. This was Feldblum's third weekly Dvar Torah in a coordinated effort to maintain weekly Torah commentary on the Usenet. Feldblum's first archived Dvar Torah in this collection is "Parshat Zachor — A Dvar Torah on Amalek" (Feb 1985). Original Message-ID: [email protected].
Preserved from the UTZOO Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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