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Have you ever stood at the brink of a busy week, longing for a respite that rejuvenates not just the body but also the soul? Join us as we journey through the rich tapestry of Parsha Vayakeil, unwrapping its layers to reveal how the sacred observance of Shabbos can transform our lives. In the latest episode, we delve into the communal spirit that thrived as the Israelites built the tabernacle, and how this mirrors our modern quest for connection and meaning. The sanctity of rest is not merely a day off; it's a divine embrace that we explore through the lens of the 39 Melachot, weaving together the acts of creation, service, and worship.
As the week hastens forward, the anticipation for Shabbos grows, a time when families and communities unite in a symphony of tranquility and reflection. We tackle the modern challenges of holding onto these time-honored traditions, finding solace in the rhythms that have sustained our people through the ages. Discover how the essence of Shabbos, the gift of peace and blessing, can extend far beyond the day itself, infusing our everyday with a sense of the divine. Let's carry the serenity of Shabbos with us, turning every moment into an opportunity for spiritual rejuvenation and closeness to Hashem. Tune in for an episode that promises to enrich your understanding of Shabbos and its pivotal role in our week, our worship, and our lives.
This episode (Ep 6.22) of the Parsha Review Podcast by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe on Parshas Vayakheil is dedicated in Honor of our dear daughter Meira & Shimon Prupas on their engagement & in honor of our Holy Soldiers in the Battlefield and our Torah Scholars in the Study Halls who are fighting for the safety of our nation!
Recorded in the TORCH Centre - Studio B to a live audience on March 5, 2024, in Houston, Texas.
Released as Podcast on March 6, 2024
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DONATE to TORCH: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!
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SUBSCRIBE and LISTEN to other podcasts by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe:
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Please visit www.torchweb.org to see a full listing of our outreach and educational resources available in the Greater Houston area!
★ Support this podcast ★Thank you, Rabbi. I understand there's a fundraiser going on. Why would listeners want to
donate to torch versus other organizations? So very, very good question, very valid question.
I want to tell you something like this, okay? Torch is here for one reason. Torches here to share
the word of Torah with the world. Any one of you listeners out there listening on a podcast,
listening in a video, last year alone, our videos grew, our video exposure grew 295%.
If I told you that there was an investment in the stock market that is going to grow 295%,
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You are listening to Rabbi Arya will be of torch in Houston, Texas.
This is the Parshah Review Podcast. All right, welcome back everybody. It is so wonderful to see
everyone. It really is special. This week's Parshah is Parshah's Vajakil. Vajakil
refers to the assembling of the Jewish people, bringing them together. And as we mentioned,
the first two portions after Mishbatim were to Ruma Titsava. That was talking about the design
of the Tabernacle and all of its parts, the design of the garments of the Cohen,
then we had the sin of the golden calf last week. And now the next two portions
is going to be the actual construction of the Tabernacle and the construction and assembly of the
garments of the priest, of the high priest and the regular priests. So we know the Torah
doesn't just randomly say things and the Torah doesn't randomly repeat things and the
Torah doesn't randomly place things exactly where they are. Hashem in this divine document,
every single thing that is written in the Torah is placed exactly where God wanted it to be.
So now we're going to, we just finished talking about Moshe, came back and the Jewish people
received forgiveness. This is Yom Kippur, that's the day of which was designated from that point
on because it became a day of forgiveness from Hashem, that forever this is a day of atonement
and the Jewish people now have their day where all of their sins, if they ask for forgiveness,
they will receive it. That's Yom Kippur. The day after Yom Kippur, what happens is the day that we're
talking about in this week's parasha where Moshe says, okay, we talked about giving gifts now
is the time to actually do it. So God is commanding every person to give the gifts towards what is
going to be a two-day fundraiser that Moshe has to say, stop, stop, stop, no more donations.
You'll all have an opportunity next week. We have our annual torch fundraiser and I look forward
to making the sending out that email, please stop. We have too much donations. We have too much
donations. I look forward to an organization. Hopefully torch will be the first. We'll say,
the fundraiser is closed. Please don't send any more money because we have enough for the next year.
That would be special, right? I think people would say, people would say, you know what? I'm
going to give more money now because of, because you did that, right? But maybe it's a good tactic.
But either way, so we begin this parasha with chapter 35 in the book of Exodus and it says,
as follows, by Yachel Moshe's call out the Aspenese role and Moshe assembled the entire assembly
of the children of Israel by Yom Aralem and Moshe says to them, Eilah Hadevore Mashahti Vah Hashem
These are the things that Hashem commanded to do them. Now, what are we going to be talking about?
What did we say about the actual construction of the Tabernacle? Wrong.
Sheshes Yomim Tasekomalach for six days. Do all of your work.
Yom Hashvi Yelachem on the seventh day shall be for you, Kodash, should be holy, Shabas, Shabason,
Lah Hashem, a complete rest to Hashem, Kala Osabomalach humas, and anyone who does any work, any creative
labor on that day shall be put to death. Lose of our age, you shall not kindle a fire,
Bechol Moshe Hasekom in any of your dwellings, be Yom Hashabas on the day of Shabas.
Now, Moshe says, oh, by the way, about the gifts and about putting together all of the
necessary work that was required for the assembly and construction of the Tabernacle,
and that's the rest of the parasha talks about that. So Hashem, in his infinite wisdom,
decides that right before we're going to actually be talking about the Tabernacle,
let's just slip in a little line over there about Shabas, about the importance of the observance of
Shabas. I want to just share with you, there's a magnificent book I want to introduce everyone to.
Here, this is an amazing book, it looks like a children's book, but it's not a children's book.
This is a book that talks about Shabas, and it's the most magnificent book because it really gives
the full background, the full story of Shabas. So let me just show you here.
The 39 Avut Malachot of Shabas is the 39, let's call the parent principles of Shabas.
It means you have the children and you have the parent. The parent is the main structures,
the main systems, and then you have the things that are derived from it.
So, six days of creation, we have light in the dark, the splitting of the waters, the heaven and the
earth, right? You have the land, masses, and the vegetation. You have the constellations.
Therefore, day five is all the birds, all of the sea creatures, and then you have the
six day, which is the creation of Adam and Eve, and all of the animals, and then you have Shabas.
Shabas is the day of rest, that's the six day. So what is Shabas? What are the principles of Shabas?
So here you have the tabernacle. This is what the tabernacle looked like.
And you have each one of these is telling us all the different labors that were necessary
for the construction and deconstruction of the tabernacle. Every time they traveled,
it needed to be deconstructed. Every time they read, they camped, they reconstructed it.
There was a system that was down, they knew exactly what needed to be done.
Everyone had a task, everyone had a job, total organization. So let me give you an example.
Okay, so we know that they had these beautiful drapes. What were these drapes made out of?
Leather. Leather drapes. How do you make leather?
Leather. Leather comes from hide. So in the process of catching that animal,
slaughtering that animal, taking off its its hide is trapping, slaughtering,
skinning, tanning, smoothing, marking, cutting, all of those are forbidden on Shabas.
Because that was a task that was necessary for the tabernacle. Give me another example.
Building and demolishing was necessary for the construction of the tabernacle.
To build and take apart the mishkan, the tabernacle, when they were traveling,
building and and demolishing prohibited on Shabas. To rebuild the mishkan properly,
letters were written on the pillars to identify their position because every pillar was in the
exact spot every single time. You couldn't have, oh, this is right six. I'm going to put on left six.
Right six was on right six. How did they do it? They wrote two letters.
They wrote aliph and aliph so you know that these two were together. Then they had on the next
side of it, they had bet and bet and those two were next to each other. Gimmel, Gimmel. So they
knew the aliph and aliph were always together, the bet bet and that's the way it was constructed.
So letters were often erased and rewritten. They erased it once it was put together,
they'd make it all nice and then when they take it apart, before they took it apart, they would
write the letters again. So writing and erasing are both prohibited on Shabas, writing and or
erasing. I'll give you one more example. Now another thing is to grow and process plants were needed
to make dyes to color the wool and skins and to prepare the loaves of bread for the show bread.
So therefore plowing and planting and harvesting, gathering, threshing, winnowing, selecting, grinding,
sifting, needing baking, all prohibited on Shabas. To prepare the wools and weave it into curtains,
there were some curtains that were leather, some that were wool. It required shearing and bleaching
and combing and dyeing and spinning, threading loom, threading harness, weaving, separating thread,
tying, untying, sewing and tearing, all of that prohibited on Shabas. So you're going to be asking
yourself, I don't do that really ever. Let me share with you just a quick example. Anybody ever
take out the garbage? Take out the garbage, right? What do you do with the garbage bag? You tie it,
make a knot, prohibited on Shabas, you can't make a knot. You can make a bow because a bow with one
pole, it unties. That you can do. So on Shabas, and I practice doing it during the week as well,
because I one time realized on Shabas, it was just like autopilot, I take out the garbage and I made
a knot. I'm like, steak. So I started practicing even during the week to make a bow. So that way,
on Shabas, I shouldn't make that mistake and make a knot. Again, that is a biblical prohibition.
Someone does it by mistake or out of ignorance, they don't know. It's not going to be as punishable
as if someone does it intentionally. The goal, obviously, is for each and every one of us to learn
and to grow in our Judaism every day and take something, add something to our Shabas and we'll see
in a minute why. And that's the topic of today's partial review in focus. But before we go ahead,
I want to just share with you in this book that it has every one of the 39 laws and it goes for
example, Horace, which is plowing. And it says exactly what it was preparing the earth for planting.
And it gives all of the examples of what would and would not qualify as a subsidiary of that law.
It actually means not to take a shovel and dig up earth. That's what's prohibited. But there
are many derivatives of that. And that's what we learned. This book goes through all of those things.
It is amazing. If you have children, if you have grandchildren, so I highly recommend that everyone
get a copy of this book. I have multiple copies of this in my house. Not only for my kids, for myself,
I learn a tremendous amount from this book. And I urge you all, go out there, make it the most
popular book on Amazon. It's by rabbi, baruch, chate, and illustrated beautifully by Yoni
Gerstein. And it is, it's magnificent, really, really, really tremendous. So now let's go back to our
question. Why does God slip in when we're about to talk about the tabernacle? He says, Oh, by the way,
keep my shovis, protect my shovis. So my dear friends, we need to know something fundamental.
And that is, our sages teach us that the source of all blessing is shovis.
The source for all blessing is shovis. You want to know the blessing that's going to be required
in your own lives, in your own lives, every single aspect of your life is blessed through shovis.
You know the blessing for your children, and you know the blessing for your livelihood,
and you know the blessing for you and your family, it's shovis. That's why it's a prerequisite.
You want to start building the tabernacle? There's one prerequisite and that's shovis.
Because shovis is the blessing that everything, everything derives from the blessing of shovis.
This is why it's the tonight. It's the condition with which you want to go forward
in building the tabernacle. You're going to need to have shovis.
Shovis is the basic condition. According to our sages, the reason why shovis is the last day of
creation is the day of rest. God could have just created the world in six days and leave it six days.
No, no, no. There's a very strong emphasis on the seventh day. What's the seventh day?
No creation. For what? Because that's the battery. It's like before you put together the entire
car. It's a beautiful car. Everything is ready to go, but now you've got to put in gas.
It's the gasoline. Without gasoline, you can have the most beautiful car in the world. It's not
going to go anywhere. Even if you have a Tesla, if you don't charge that battery, it's not going
to work. That is shovis. Shovis is the charger. Shovis is the gasoline. Shovis is what gets everything
going. So the vessel could be there. That's the six days of creation. But if you want to give it
the spiritual life, you want to give it the energy that it can shoot up to the heavens.
That's shovis. And we see that all of the blessing of the weak is dependent on shovis.
According to some of our sages, shovis is really not the last day of the week, but rather the first
day of the week. It's the first day of the week where our sages tell us the blessing that comes
the following week is based on the previous shovis. So shovis, according to our sages, it's an
interesting thing. We've done this many, many times. We have Tuesday night classes. And what I always
tried to say after every one of our Tuesday night classes is, wish you a good shovis. One second,
it's Tuesday night. What's going on? Because our sages tell us that the first three days of the
week still have strong influence of the previous shovis. So that Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Tuesday night
is already Wednesday in the Jewish calendar, right? The night, the night is the beginning of the day.
So therefore Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, it has already the blessing of the coming shovis.
So you can already, the Halaqah says, you can already greet someone with a good shovis
from Tuesday night. Because already the influence, the blessing is already coming in to our lives
already from Tuesday night. But we see, and that's according to a different opinion, that
shovis is the middle of the week, that the week really begins Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
shovis being in the middle and then Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. So shovis has the influence on both
sides. And this is why it's a precondition to the building of the temple. You build the temple,
you want blessing in that, because that's going to be the residence, so to speak, of God. You want
God in your midst, you want God to be there with you. Do you know how you bring God into your midst
every single day of your life, even when there's no tabernacle? Shabbos.
Because although we don't have a tabernacle today here in 2024, March 5th, we don't have a tabernacle
right now. But you know what the Torah says, you should create for me a tabernacle,
and I will reside within them. That doesn't make much sense. You should build a tabernacle,
and I should reside within it. So why within them? I say just tell us, because every person needs
to make themselves into a tabernacle. We need to make ourselves a vessel that is capable
of having godliness within our lives. And that is Shabbos. Shabbos makes us into a worthy,
beneficiary of godliness in our lives every single day. Because by the way, we say, you know what?
I'm letting go. I'm letting go of my feel, my need, my feeling of, I need to control everything.
I'm going to get rid of that feeling. Shabbos is a day where I'm not doing any of those works.
I'm not going to pick up my cleaners. I'm not going to run those errands. I'm not going to do
this no appointments, nothing. Why am I going to get everything done? Shabbos is the source for all
blessing. And that's the amazing part of the entire week that we have. On during those weeks,
during those days of the week, dual of your work, tasek hal malacha, all of your work. It says
in this week's partions, six days to work. Vyomashvi, but on the seventh day, that's a day of
letting all of that hard work shine. At the day of letting go, say, I'm not running anywhere,
I'm not doing anything. I'm just going to bask in my connection with Hashem's glory.
I'm going to allow myself to now take it in. It's like the insanity of people who work and work
and work and work and work and work and work and work and say, when are you going to take a break?
When are you going to enjoy life? Oh, when I retire. Really? When you retire?
That's not a good strategy. We have this opportunity every seven days to be on our
cruise where everything is set. The moment you light those Shabbos candles, ah,
the bliss, the joy, the serenity, the enlightenment, everything shines forth. That's what Shabbos is.
Shabbos gives us an opportunity to just love life, to love our family, to love our spouse,
to love our children, our community. As Echad Haam said, more than the Jews watched over Shabbos,
Shabbos watched over the Jews. We think, oh, we're observing the Shabbos. No, the Shabbos
that we observe is going to protect us and preserve us as a people.
To me, it's the most shocking thing that we don't have community anymore.
There used to be a concept of a Jewish community. The Jewish community lived here and then
they lived here and then they lived here. You know, they moved around even in Houston. In our
not very long history of Jewish people in Houston, they used to be communities where the Jewish
community lived, not no more. Because many have decided that it's okay if people move out to the
rural areas and people move out to the woodlands and to Conroe and to King Wood and Umbal and
Clear Lake and you name the play Pier Land and it's okay as long as they can get to synagogue.
It's a terrible mistake, terrible mistake. Not only there's a prohibition of driving on Shabbos,
there's a different issue is that we lost the fabric of community. And what we used to have
is that people would only move to a place where there was an aerof. An aerof means a boundary
around the community so that you can carry on Shabbos. That means that I need to be close
enough to my neighbors. I need to be close enough to my friends. I need to be within walking
distance to a synagogue. The synagogue is the central place of a community.
And that fabric has been broken and someone's going to have to pay the price for that
because it's devastating what that has done to the Jewish community. The only communities today
that have that still are the Shabbos communities, those that observe Shabbos. And thank God
that community is exploding. Not only in Houston but around the world where you have
there are also the ones having children. So there is a big big challenge that we're facing.
And Shabbos is the solution. Shabbos is not the problem. Shabbos is the solution to all of our
problems. When we realize the observance of Shabbos being the light, the beacon of light that
shines to our entire life and we make it the central part and the focus of our entire week
where we prepared. The Gomorrah says that one of the great Tanex ages would go to the marketplace
every Sunday and it's find a beautiful cut of meat. He's like, oh, this meat for Shabbos.
And then he'd go back to the marketplace on Monday and he'd see a better cut of meat. He's like,
this one for Shabbos. And then Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday,
the same thing happened. Each one superseding the previous one. Then he says, the Gomorrah says,
the Tana would say the entire week became Shabbos because his whole focus was Shabbos.
We can do that. Let's do something special for Shabbos. It's the source for all our blessing.
The source for all our blessing. Everything that we want to accomplish we can
when Shabbos is at the center of everything. Hashem should bless us all that we should maximize
this special gift by the way in the Midrish in this week's parasha. God says to Mosher, by the way,
go tell the Jewish people that I have a very, very, very special gift in my treasure house.
It's the most special thing I have. You know the name of that special gift? Shabbos,
Lake Vahodiyam, let them know. Let them know how special it is. What does that mean? It's a very
odd. Just give it to them. What do you mean? Let you say, take it, take the Shabbos and give it to
them. No, no, no, no. Lake Vahodiyam go and form them because they may not realize
how much of a blessing it is until they start observing it and they see that it becomes the light
that everything shines from. Hashem should bless us all that we shouldn't only merit a Shabbos,
we should merit that our entire week should be infused with the blessing of Shabbos. We should
feel that closeness to Hashem that we're able to attain on Shabbos, not only on Shabbos but throughout
the entire week because this is the source of all blessing. My dear friends, it's not yet
Tuesday night but have a great Shabbos. You've been listening to Rabbi Arya will be on a podcast
produced by Torch, the Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. We need you, we need partners.
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