Shabbat Vayakhel Pekudei
The first is this term VaYakhel, which opens the parsha, from which we get the idea of a Kehila, a community, an integral feature of Jewish life. Given the constant factionalism that has torn the Israelites apart throughout our history, it’s hardly surprising that the Torah wants to emphasise this concept of togetherness. Even if so many of us have and continue to struggle with the constraints of community. Here, it signifies gathering everybody together, at regular intervals, to reaffirm our sense of togetherness and our commitment to the Torah, the constitution that binds and defines us.
Notice that the opening words stress that every man, woman, and child should, together as a people, come together to hear Moshe’s words. We are so focused nowadays on individuality that the sense of community is fading fast. Some humans emphasise the worship of individuals and figureheads. Here, repeatedly, the emphasis is on everyone coming together, whether at Sinai or elsewhere, not just male elites coming together and also to reaffirm their commitment to the constitution of the Torah.
The origin of the Hakhel ceremony is specified in Devarim 31:12, where it appears to be a one-off. But by the time of the Mishna (Sotah 7:8), it is a public ceremony held on Succot every seven years. It involved the King reading passages from the Torah in public. The Hakhel was performed throughout the years of the Second Temple era, although there is no record of it happening as a regular feature during the First.
Following on from this gathering comes a further law about the Shabbat. As if to say that public performance, coming together with the community, is important. But even more so is the constant and regular observance by all of us of Shabbat itself. The Torah is sparse about how we define work on Shabbat. As a result, the rabbis used the construction of the Tabernacle, which was halted for Shabbat, as a model of the sorts of activities coming under the rubric of not working on Shabbat. These were then defined as the 40 principles of physical labour.
This week’s reading of the Torah has added a specific, extra command which says that “you shall not burn fire in your habitations on Shabbat” (Shmot 35:3). And nowadays this has now been expanded to cover the use of generating electricity on Shabbat, something that the founders could not have envisaged.
Trying to find explanations for the laws of the Shabbat, is, I think a thankless task. We can speculate, but we have been given no clear answers. The only example in the Torah of giving a reason for a commandment is the case of appointing a king. And a warning that he shouldn’t have too many wives, too much money, or too much power in case they distract him from his duties. King Solomon argued that he was able to overcome these temptations and therefore the laws would not apply to him. And of course, in the end, he was distracted on all counts. So, the rabbis concluded that not giving rational explanations for the laws was another way of saying that, as we can’t know for certain what the reason was, we should not rely exclusively on what appear to us to be rational explanations but accept as acts of faith that will benefit us (Maimonides, Guide Section 3 :26 & 31).
Still, we try. Thousands of years ago, society depended almost entirely on fire for energy to cook, keep warm, and make clothes, and even for making the tools of war. People like to think that making fire in the olden days was very difficult. We imagine cavemen sitting in the dark, smashing flints together to make a spark, and that was hard work. But in fact, by the time we get to the biblical era, fire was relatively easy to find and maintain and to carry around in slow-burning charcoal in metal containers that took no more than the equivalent of a match to light up. The issue was not that it was hard to make fire then, but rather that fire was a symbol of society. A world without fire was to return to the primitive. Today, we are almost totally dependent on electricity, however it’s generated. And today, without fire, electricity or generated power, we couldn’t live in our buildings, cities or drive our cars.
Tradition did not expect us to do without fire, particularly if we’re living in the freezing hills of Judea in winter and the rabbis understood that the idea was to prepare before Shabbat in order to make Shabbat as different as day as possible from the dominant societies around us. Not to ban fire altogether outside of temples as some religions did, but to relate to fire or electricity differently to the way we do during the week. To make Shabbat as different as possible. One of spiritual experience and devotion, rather than carrying on our daily societal routines.
I don’t know if this is what Moshe had in mind when he was handing down the laws of Shabbat. But this is certainly how it makes sense to me.
Rabbi Jeremy Rosen lives in New York. He was born in Manchester. His writings are concerned with religion, culture, history and current affairs – anything he finds interesting or relevant. They are designed to entertain and to stimulate. Disagreement is always welcome.
