Rabbi's Sermon 24th March / 24th Adar 5785

VAYAKHEL

You should really learn Hebrew. Translations can be so misleading... Take, for example, the title of this week's Torah portion, Vayakhel. It is the hikhil form (the causative) of the verb , לְהַקְהִיל which means "to congregate".

It is a causative form; therefore, following the proper translation means: "he caused them to assembly, to gather."

Interestingly, the word וַיַקְהֵל appears twice in the Torah. One is this week's Torah portion (Exodus 35:1), in which Moses gathers all the Israelites to build the Mishkan.

There are many assumptions on this topic, so let me explain precisely what Mishkan, or Tabernacle, is. It was a moveable place of worship. The Exodus describes it in detail: an inner shrine, the Holy of Holies, housing the Ark and the Tablets of the Law, and an outer chamber with the six-branch seven-lamp menorah, a table for the showbread, and an altar.

God Himself explains the purpose of the Mishkan: it is a building from which God speaks to the Israelites.

And here's the critical point: God gives Moses the instructions to build the Mishkan after the episode of the Golden Calf.

Here, too, some clarification is needed. The Israelites built the Golden Calf because Moses went to the mountain to receive the Law. It was a very long business. Moses was not returning, so the Israelites felt lost without a leader.

Their minds were still shaped by decades of slavery in Egypt. They were not Egyptians, but they thought like Egyptians; that was the only society they had known! This is the profound psychological reason for the building of the Golden Calf.

A psychological regression to the mind frame of slavery.

In Hollywood Biblical movies, things are different. It seems that the transgressions of the Golden Calf were to dance naked, to drink and (are we all adults, here, right?) to have a lot of sex in front of the idol. But that's wrong,

that was not the point. With all due respect, this is a very American Protestant understanding of the Golden Calf.

When he came back from the mountain, Moses was enraged, not by the debauchery he saw people having fun at the feet of the Golden Calf, but by the fact that they had built an idol. The Israelites were still slaves. They could conceive God only as an idol. They could conceive religion only as a service for an idol. Even if God, the God who stands on the side of justice, had liberated them from slavery and made them free, they could think of God only as an idol—an entity built by human hands to serve and in front of which to prostrate. That is the reason why Moses was so disappointed.

Mishkan and Golden Calf are mirror images of each other; the two are opposites. The Golden Calf is an Egyptian idol that requires blind submission and rewards the powerful when they oppress the weak. The Mishkan is where a God that we cannot see, speaks to the Israelites, liberates human beings, and addresses how to build a just and compassionate society.

The connection between these two episodes is not made up by Rabbis, but rather it is in the text: וַיַקְהֵל Vayakhel.

The construction of the Mishkan and the Golden Calf begins with the word Vayakhel.

How does the episode of the Golden Calf begin? (Exo 32:1) " And when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mount, the people gathered themselves וַיַקְהֵל( (together unto Aaron."

How does this week's Torah portion begin? (Exo 35:1) "And Moses assembled ) וַיַקְהֵל (all the congregation of the children of Israel."

And what happens afterwards? To build the Golden Calf and the Mishkan, the Israelites generously donated earrings, jewellery, nose rings ... and all the gold they had.

These similarities cannot be coincidental. Actually, nothing in the Torah is coincidental, therefore we must learn from these two Vayakhel episodes.

And this is what we learn. When the Israelites rushed to build the Golden Calf, that physical enactment of Egyptian slavery, they did not rest on Shabbat. When they built the Mishkan, the dwelling place for God, they rested on Shabbat. Moses prescribed that they do not work on Shabbat while building the Mishkan.

See the difference between a God who liberates human beings and an idol who enslaves them?

For the non-Jewish world, and to be honest, for many Jews today, the observance of Shabbat is a set of weird rules and funny loopholes. For example, you do not carry the key when you get out of the house, so you wear a Shabbat belt and pretend that the keys are an ornament.

But the principle is noble, and the principle is here, in the account of the building of the Mishkan.

The Rabbis who rebuilt the Jewish civilisation after the destruction of the Temple needed to know how to observe Shabbat. On Shabbat, you are supposed to rest, and they want people to rest, but what is rest and work?

The description of the building of the Mishkan, the dwelling for God, provided a list of activities that were considered work, activities that stopped on Shabbat.

This is the difference. Here, in the juxtaposition of the Golden Calf with the Mishkan, we find the root of the reason why we observe Shabbat, a day when slaves are not slaves, are equal to their masters: quite a substantial innovation in antiquity, and possibly even now.

The juxtaposition of the two episodes of the two Vayakhel, is there to teach something else, something more profound, and particularly relevant in those days.

We may find ourselves in the Vayakhel crowd, trying to mimic the non-Jewish society, following, in other words, the ways of idolatry.

How else do you define the anti-Israel propaganda, we hear on social media, where Palestinians are terrorists turned into victims. These are lies, of course. But it is also idolatry.

Hamas is a cult based on violence and self-immolation. They practice human sacrifices when they use the death of their children for propaganda purposes. The society they want to build is, but a society based on violence and oppression, like Egypt, ruled by Pharaos.

We may not realise it. Still, it can happen that we find ourselves, like the Israelites in the desert, in the middle of such a crowd, worshipping the Golden Calf of Palestinian victimhood.

Their rhetoric is so persuasive! And, after all, do you support killing children? Of course not. And they obsessively repeat: "Children are killed, don't you see? Israel is killing children, is killing nurses, is killing social workers, and is killing journalists". Therefore, you must condemn Israel. You don't have the time to pause to consider that; how strange, according to these people, Israel never kills soldiers.

There seem not to be soldiers in Gazal, but then soldiers come out in forces and in full uniforms to humiliate Jewish hostages in ceremonies orchestrated for the public of Al Jazeera...

We may not realise it, but we often end up with the wrong Vayakhel crowd. Out of good heart, because Palestinian propaganda is so pervasive.

This is not how things should be. There is another Vayakhel, the Vayakhel, that keeps Shabbat and preserves human dignity. The Vayakhel at the basis of a State, the only Jewish State in the world, currently under attack by terrorists and antisemites. And in the Diaspora, there is the Vayakhel of the Jewish community, your community, of this community. In these times, we Jews must build communities where other Jews can feel welcome and not be judged or condemned for the crime of being "Zionist".

And this synagogue must be, and continue to be, one of those communities.

Rabbi Dr. Andrea Zanardo, PhD