The opening word of this week’s parasha, Vayakel (And he gathered), is from the Hebrew root which also gives us the words kahal and kehilla, congregation and community. The Torah tells us that the entire people of Israel gather together as they embark on the task of building the Mishkan, the Tabernacle.
Rabbi Avraham of Sochov, in commenting on our opening verse observes,
“Moshe recognizes that the Israelites are still a people divided by tribal affiliation, by trade and
training, by life experiences. Moshe seizes upon the many activities needed to construct the
Mishkan as an opportunity to forge the Israelites into a single people with a shared purpose.”
Moshe understood that the wholeness of the sacred place was ultimately a reflection of the wholeness of the community. We, like our ancient ancestors, reflect a remarkable diversity when we gather as a congregation. Like them, we also share a common purpose in our commitment to fashioning a community which reflects the noblest ideals of our tradition; a community which gathers together to study, worship, and perform of acts of chesed (lovingkindness).
The Mishkan narrative also teaches us that this sacred space is ultimately portable. Our history has shown that as we wander, we pack up and move the Tabernacle with us and erect it anew at each new place where we sojourn. We learn that the sacred “space” is created whenever we gather to fulfill the divine purpose; that the divine presence will continue to be manifest in spaces we create, permanent or temporary, magnificent or merely functional, physical or virtual, knowing that just as “God’s cloud was over the Mishkan by day and fire was over it by night” the Holy One will be with us when we gather as a kehillah kedosha, a sacred community.
Shabbat Shalom –
Rabbi David M. Eligberg
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