The construction and completion of the mishkan (tabernacle) in this week’s double parsha offers us an opportunity to consider our own relationship to work (and to rest).
Multiplicity and Overwhelm
There are a lot of different parts to the mishkan, a lot of details and objects and measurements and materials and types of artisanship. So much to do. We can start there, start with the sense of overwhelm that can sometimes take us over in the face of so much work. Our lives, too, are filled with details and competing demands so that we have a tendency to feel fragmented and scattered and overwhelmed, running from place to place like a chicken with its head cut off. Or perhaps better, like a serpent with seven heads, each going in a different direction at the same time, causing in us a sense of restlessness and anxiety and fragmentation, no peace.
Moving Toward Integration and Wholeness
Maybe the mishkan offers us a way of navigating this overwhelm, this fragmentation. In the face of all that multiplicity, there is, at the very heart of the mishkan, also a sense of unity, of oneness, of wholeness. There is a gathering energy right from the start of this double parsha, as the first word, vayakhel, means “he gathered or brought together,” formed them into a kahal, a congregation, a joined unit. Indeed, the word ehad or ahat, “one,” is a leitwort in these parshiyot, used in Parashat Vayakhel 35 times, more than any other parsha in the Torah. Right alongside the multiplicity, then, we have a sense of integration and oneness. Vayehaber et hayeriyot ahat el ahat. “he coupled the curtains one to the other” and then, vayehi hamishkan ehad, “the mishkan became one (Exodus 36:13).” Out of the fragmentation emerges an integrated whole.
What is it that unifies the multiplicity of the mishkan? God’s presence. The mishkan’s very purpose is to become a dwelling place for the presence of the ultimate One. When all the different parts of the mishkan are infused with this mission, then they too share in the unity, become unified by its singular spirit.
Coming back to ourselves, when we, too, are focused on a singular mission, then all the fragments in us are unified and integrated and we, too, become whole. And the ultimate joining purpose, the one for which we are born, is precisely to become a mishkan ourselves, to become a dwelling place for the One, to sit together with the One and thereby ourselves acquire some of that oneness.
The One Desire that Unifies
Ahat sha’alt me’et Hashem – one thing I ask of Hashem (Psalm 27:4). Maybe what I ask of God is ahat, is oneness, what I ask is to be integrated and whole, to share in this quality of divine oneness. And I do this by shivti beveit Hashem, dwelling in God’s house, or, in an inside-outside reversal that is paradoxically somehow the same, instead of my dwelling in God’s house, I ask God to dwell in mine, I turn myself into a sanctuary for God, an act which, as in the mishkan, joins all my fragmented parts in a joyous unitary mission.
But it is important that the ahat that joins my parts be truly the singular desire of my heart. We can continually check inside to find this yearning, to see how it is manifesting right now – perhaps as a desire for connection, for presence, for peace – going deep, uncovering layer upon layer of our wantings, starting with what seems superficial and insignificant and even unholy, like a desire for recognition or attention, trusting it all, and moving inward until we get to the core animating longing of our soul. Machshavah ahat tehorah, the Piascetzner Rebbe calls it, “a single pure thought,” our most basic quest for the divine.
This core desire, this single focused mission, this one pure thought, has the power to heal our fragmentation, radiating out its light and clarity and energy to all corners of ourselves and the earth, and also receiving back from all that multiplicity a mirroring knowledge that yes, for this purpose we were created.
This shared knowledge unifies. Where before we were fragmented, one part wanting to go in this direction, another in that, now the parts join hands to form a circle, stepping back together to open a space in the middle where the divine can flow. The serpent with seven heads, each pulling a different way, that serpent now turns into seven separate serpents, each one bringing its energy to the whole, joining the circle, seven separate links that make the whole stronger. These different parts of us still have disparate talents and functions, like your different organs, the stomach and the heart and the lungs, and like the various vessels of the mishkan, the ark and the menorah and the altar, all different essential functions, but they are linked now, working in concert for one common purpose, and that brings a sense of purity and relief and focus. Vayehi hamishkan ehad. The mishkan – and each of us – becomes one, becomes whole.
The Whole Point is Rest
Maybe in the past the parts have been fighting with each other, climbing over each other, calling each other names and shaming each other, but now a spirit of calm pervades from some higher source. There is rest here. We have arrived at the rest of Shabbat. It is no accident that these parshiyot about the mishkan actually begin with instructions about Shabbat. Shabbat is the animating force behind the mishkan, its raison d’etre. When we arrive at the center of the mishkan, we also arrive at the center of Shabbat because the two are deeply intertwined, one spatial, the other temporal, both expressing the same ultimate goal, to provide a space/time for God and humans to be together.
All that work in the mishkan and also in the world, the whole point of it is to create a space to rest in God. As with the six days of creation, where Shabbat was the tachlit, the ultimate purpose, of all the work of creation, so, too, here, with the mishkan, the point of all that melakhah, of all that labor, of all those busy parts running in a thousand directions, is actually to create a resting place for God to dwell inside you. Knowing this, our parts can begin to relax and rest a little, not be quite so frenetic; the point of the work is peace.
You Are More Important than the Work
It turns out that this rest, God doesn’t want to do it alone. The point is not just rest, but resting together, resting with us. We matter in this scheme; we matter very much. Here is something that maybe your frantic fragmented parts don’t realize – you are more important than the work.
This is something we get confused about easily, giving ourselves over to the work, turning the work into an idol, a master. But the work has to stop for shabbat – even the holiest of work like the building of the mishkan, even that work has to stop for shabbat, because the work itself is not the most important thing. You are, your divinely granted self is. You are more important than the work. Which is why, even though the work has to stop for shabbat, if you are in any danger at all, if a precious human being is in danger, then shabbat yields to this greater good, your sacred human life. The work of the mishkan is not docheh shabbat, does not push off the shabbat laws, but pikuah nefesh docheh shabbat, saving your life does. We are a part of this divine project of rest. It’s not just rest per se, but resting with us, God and us, resting together in the mishkan.
Love and Oneness
The message, then, is ultimately one of love, and it is love which will calm and eventually heal our struggling overwhelmed parts, to know that they matter, that they can let go of their frantic searching labors and rest in God, return to that oneness, to that belonging. The gematria (numerical value of Hebrew letters) of the word ehad, “one” is the same as the gematria of the word ahavah, “love.” (Note that the Shma, too, links these two concepts, oneness and love). Love is the fire that burns in the middle of that circle, making us whole, joining all our parts into a coherent unit, joining us to one another, uniting above and below, divine and human, in the sacred resting place of Shabbat and the mishkan.
Infusing Our Work with Shabbat
It’s not only on Shabbat that we can feel this wholeness, this peace, this love. If the point of the work, if the tachlit of breshit and of the mishkan is actually Shabbat, is actually this coming to rest with God, then the work itself always contains at its center this restful core. We can work from this resting place inside us, let that be the place from which our actions in the world radiate, so that the work itself becomes infused with the spirit of Shabbat at all times, infused with what matters, infused with presence and calm and trust and grace and love, already whole in some way. Even in our work, we can be resting in God.
Photo by Any Lane at Pexels
