This week’s Torah portion is Vayakhel, and it describes in great detail the building of the Tabernacle and all its vessels.
If this seems highly familiar to you, you are correct.
You are not experiencing deja vu!
This is actually happening in real time.
The Torah, which prizes every word and is famous for its brevity now repeats the entire story again.
All the details which had been written regarding the dimensions of the Tabernacle are now repeated.
It’s quite puzzling.
The Sages answer that the first rendition refers to the instruction to build and the second one describes when it actually took place.
Rabbi Aaron Lichtenstein shares an interesting take to explain this unusually verbose text.
He gave an allegory of a bride and groom who went shopping together for their new home. They spent hours deliberating over each piece and imagining the loving life they would live around those physical objects.
Each decision was a labor of love.
Then something horrifying happened.
One of the couple betrayed the other.
The upcoming nuptials dissolved into bitterness and anger.
After many months of hurt and suffering, the one who had betrayed the other reached out to try and repair the relationship.
And so began agonizing months of therapy and work to try to repair the fractured relationship.
And then the wedding was rescheduled.
If you are pragmatic, you might wonder whatever happened to that furniture that was so lovingly chosen.
Someone had returned it all.
As the couple prepared to reunite, the furniture selection loomed before them. This time however, they bought things quickly as the memories of the first time still remained as a painful reminder of a different time. They had moved on, their relationship was at a new level, but innocence was lost.
Rabbi Lichtenstein writes that human beings can forgive each other, but it is not easy to remove the scars of past wounds. A healthy relationship will require looking careful at those wounds and finding the tools to address them.
But Gd is different.
Gd says that when we repent, even if we have committed the most egregious of sins, we can return to the former level of our relationship.
The Jewish people had sinned with the Golden Calf, a sin which is likened to one of a couple betraying the other under the chuppah, the marriage canopy.
The relationship almost floundered.
Gd was going to destroy them.
But through the intervention of Moses and repentance, Gd forgave the people.
And once Gd forgave, it is a complete forgiveness.
So when we are ready to discuss the details of building the Tabernacle, Gd is once again sharing all the details to show in the words of Rabbi Taragin who shares this piece from Rabbi Lichtenstein, Gd’s excitement, so to speak.
“The details matter to Him now, just as they did before.”
An important insight into the relationship we have with our Creator. The circumstances do not effect our relationship, just our intentions.
If we repent.
All is truly and completely forgiven.

Lessons from the war.
Today in the Jerusalem Post there was an article written by a marriage therapist.
She described the complications that couples are facing as the reservists are returning from four months of fighting.
Obviously this is not a situation of betrayal.
But it is a recalibration of a relationship which cannot return to the way it was “before”.
The returning warrior is suffering from the horrors he has witnessed, the stories he cannot tell and the PTSD he is experiencing. The soldier returns home to his beloved family and sees he has missed milestones and misery.
His beloved companion has her own PTSD, having covered the home front through illness, managing children and work, even losing jobs over the formentioned, while being worried to distraction over the safety of her mate.
“There is a vast chasm between these two members of the most intimate of relationships; they need to find a way back to each other. I take that back: They need to pave a whole new road based on the old one, with the trust and confidence that was there in the past infused with a lot of patience and understanding regarding the magnitude of the experience that this country has gone through and is still going through” Keren Hadad Taub
The portion is teaching us about sacred relationships.
When we make the effort to grow and repair, we can arrive at a level where the excitement and connection is reestablished, and leads to an even closer connection.
May our fierce warriors, the ones in the field and the ones on the home front, be strengthened and supported so that their relationships will reach higher levels of commitment.
And for those of us who are dealing with our own battles and traumas, each valid, may we too find the strength needed to overcome and rebuild.
As long as our heart is in it, we can prevail.
That is really an eternal lesson.
Shabbat Shalom and so much love from Jerusalem.