Groundhog Day is a 90’s pop culture movie which portrays a person who is destined to relive the same day over and over again. An aspect of the story relates to the protagonist trying to create meaningful connections as the process of reliving each day makes him feel more and more alone. The success of the movie not withstanding, the film had a significant impact on popular culture as the term Groundhog Day came to mean a repetitive situation, experiencing the same thing over and over again.
This week’s Torah portion is called Vayakhel which means “and he assembled”.
This refers to Moses assembling the Jewish people as he prepares to charge them with building of the Tabernacle.
This might make you pause?
Did we not have an entire portion dedicated (no pun intended) to the details of the building of the Tabernacle?
We also know that every word, even every letter in the Torah is precious, none is redundant.
How could the Torah dedicate an entire portion to the repetition of the details regarding the building of the Tabernacle?
The key to the answer of this question is in the first word of the Parsha.
Vayakhel - and they assembled.
Sivan Rahav Meir, Israeli Torah teacher and media personality explains why it is so important for the Jewish people to recognize the strength in their unity. She relates a story of Abba Kovner, a leader of the partisans during the Holocaust. This man saw the worst of the tragedy of the Shoah, while experiencing the incredible bravery of many of the partisans, especially many young Jewish women who served as couriers on dangerous missions at great risk to their lives. Most did not survive. (Read “The Light of Days” by Judy Battalion for an in depth description of Kovner and his incredible efforts on behalf of the Jewish people).
In a speech he gave in Israel after the war, Kovner shares an incredible experience. He relates that despite the calamities he experienced, all of which could have broken him, he never lost his faith. (I had to read that a few times!)
But, after arriving in Israel, he went to the Western Wall and felt he did not belong, he was part of a different reality. As he stood, suspended in the limbo of estrangement, someone tugged at his sleeve and invited him to join the prayers as part of a minyan, the tenth needed to create a cohort for prayer.
Only then did Kovner feel he had arrived.
“My prayer and hope is always to be one of a group, that my good words will join with the utterances of other Jews”.
He had come home to his people.
This Portion is repeated as it indicates the great significance the Tabernacle will have, it is actually the culmination of Gd’s plan since the creation of the world.
But Gd’s presence will only rest in this House of Gd if there is unity amongst his Children.
This is reminiscent of the giving of the Torah itself. The verse states that the Jewish people encamped at the base of the mountain where the Torah was to be given and uses a singular verb to describe the Jewish people’s sojourn.
As Rashi the 11th century Uber commentary teaches, the entire nation was as one, with one heart and one mind.
This is the only environment in which Torah can be given and it is the only circumstance in which Torah can survive.
When we are one congregation, when we behave as one family.
This is the reason the Sin of the Golden Calf was so deadly. We talk about the sin as an action of idol worship. But it was so much more than that.
The Kli Yakar, 16th century commentator expounds, that what the Jewish people engaged in during the sin is called Avoda Zara, which is commonly translated as idol worship, but is more accurately the worship of the other, or the worship of disconnection and estrangement.
The only way to go forward and create the Tabernacle, the coming home so to speak, of Gd’s presence, is to heal the wound that was created by estrangement of the Golden Calf.
Moses gathered the Jewish people the day after Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is a day when we are all soul. And a soul can easily connect to another soul, our Neshama is unencumbered, the outer trappings which may divide us have fallen away. He knew that was the time the Nation could heal and reconnect to one another and to the Divine.
This portion is the beginning of creating the Tabernacle for real. It is not only the narrative of the actual construction, but it also provides the blueprint for its existence, drawn against the background of a nation in unity.
A family that is ready to come home.
Israeli television recently reported on the highly emotional reunion of a Holocaust survivor with his nephew. 102 year old Eliyahu Pietrusk found out through research at Yad Vashem that his brother had,unbeknownst to him, survived the war and had a son. The nephew was contacted and immediately flew to Israel from Russia. They cried on each other’s shoulders and the uncle told his nephew “you have a big family here in Israel, you won’t ever be alone.”
While this Torah portion may feel like a rerun, deja vu, been there done that, it actually provides the antidote for existential detachment by teaching us the power of community and family to bring unity and Gd into our lives.
That’s worth hearing again!
Shabbat Shalom and so much love.
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