Making sense of the sedra: Vayakhel
The synagogue has uses extending beyond ritual alone
Vayakhel, the word signalling ‘gathering’ the people, launches the assembly of the Tabernacle in the desert with a short paragraph on keeping the Shabbat day holy. Part of this includes six days of labour and earning one’s keep, which gives meaning to resting. Only work gives meaning to rest. Conversely, rest is a function of work. An esteemed senior lecturer at Manchester University, Dr Alexander Samely, told me in 2012 that it is necessary to also take time to do nothing; that is also doing something and is necessary to be productive. At risk of workaholism and consequent burnout, I have spent the last 12 years since his wise words to me applying them to being more effective and productive at what I do.
Vayakhel mentions the Aron Kodesh – the Holy Ark. Nowadays we use the term Aron Kodesh to denote the Ark in which we place the holiest objects we have – the Torah scrolls. Sephardim refer to the Aron Kodesh as the heychal, which means sanctuary or palace. The gathering of Israel to address the holiness of Shabbat and refraining from creative work was a necessary precursor to advancing the building of the mishkan, the Divine place, or residence on earth. The mishkan in the desert was, unintentionally, the forerunner of our modern synagogues. When we gather in synagogues in honour of Shabbat we will read that when Moses gathered with the Israelites, he did so not only so that he could tell them about how to keep Shabbat at home, but how the Mishkan – the synagogue community – would need to be built by them as a communal project. Our challenge is to look ahead and see how to build for the future.
Are synagogues primarily places of prayer or centres for wider communal activity? Clearly without the centrality of the religious aspect, a synagogue loses its raison d’être. However, social activity is the lifeblood of a Jewish community. In Hebrew, a synagogue is known as a Bet Knesset, a place of assembly: a sacred space, with uses extending beyond ritual alone.
The supplementary reading of Shekalim, read only last week in Ki Tissa, registers the interest of every Israelite to contribute to the future construction of Israel’s central sacred space. Former Dayan of the Manchester Beth Din, Dayan Weiss, pointed out that whereas members of the community under the age of bar/bat mitzvah age cannot validly transfer ownership in commercial matters, their contribution of the half-shekel, although not incumbent upon them to make, was accepted as valid. Perhaps this is to demonstrate that all our youth, as soon as they are ready, are needed in the effort to act for the community in respect of charitable work, and as advocates and ambassadors to the rest of the world.
At times as challenging as these, with the huge spike in antisemitism in the West and accompanying adversity in politics and public life, we need to summon every potential we have to counter ignorance and extremism.
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