The Torah makes a deep connection between the building of the Mishkan, the portable Tabernacle, and Shabbat. In fact, this week’s double portion of Vayakhel-Pekudei, despite being almost entirely about the building of the Mishkan, starts out with a reminder to keep Shabbat. It’s a reminder that for 6 days we work, and on the 7th day we rest.
The rabbis of the Talmud used this connection to teach that the 39 types of labor used to build the Mishkan must be the categories of labor prohibited on Shabbat. But the connection between the Mishkan and Shabbat isn’t just about labor and Shabbat observance, it also serves as a reminder to us of the relationship between space and time.
We have to understand the holiness of time first before we can try to understand the holiness of space. Perhaps, it is precisely because of the holiness of time, and how we fill time, that we are able to have holiness in space. And this week, holiness feels different. Our spaces are holy because of what we fill them with. Our synagogue structure is beautiful but it is primarily holy because of how we choose to fill those walls - the people and the sanctity they bring to it.
Judaism has taught us how to navigate this moment, and how we will continue to make our way forward in this pandemic. Shabbat comes to teach us that our physical places are important, but they aren’t paramount to our existence. The Mishkan is a place of doing, it’s a physical place of meeting and offering service to God. We don’t have access to that right now. But we do have access, and we will always have access, to the transcendence that Shabbat asks to cultivate through refraining from labor. While there will be catastrophic damages from the cessation of labor that we witness now, we engage in this distancing practices because we believe it has the power to be life-saving, and of course, that is the most holy non-action there is.
This Shabbat, many of us are going to be staying in our homes just as we’ve been doing the last 6 days, and Shabbat might not feel that different. I invite you to carve time in a way that is different, in a way that feels holy and separate from the rest of the week, especially in this week when time itself has felt dramatically different. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel considers Shabbat to be a palace in time. Despite having the Mishkan, the structure that humans created to serve God, God created Shabbat through holy time. I invite you to think of this Shabbat, even if you are in the same place as you’ve been the last week, as a timeframe that God has built. When we light Shabbat candles tonight, we’ll enter into that palace. Each of us will fill that palace in different ways, and sadly, we won’t be together. Our holy space will be waiting for us to return to fill it with our holy souls, to give it its meaning with the gift of our time.
Wishing you all a Shabbat Shalom, a Shabbat of good health and safety, and a Shabbat of holiness.
Rabbi Sarit
We will NOT be having services at shul this Shabbat. I hope you will join Abe and me for Hachanah l’Shabbat (Preparing for Shabbat at 6:15PM this evening), and for Havdallah(Saturday at 8PM). Click those links to connect on Zoom, or check it out on Facebook.
Please check out our website for some learning resources to engage with over Shabbat.
