05 Mar VAYAKHEL: G-D DWELLS IN THE GULF BETWEEN YOUR DREAMS AND YOUR REALITY

Preserving a
Letter
There is something
very intriguing about
these parshios
Vayakhel & Pekudei.
Anybody even slightly
familiar with the Torah is aware of its
unique conciseness. Complete sagas, rich,
complex, and profound, are often depicted
in a few short torah verses. Each word in the
Torah literally contains layers upon layers
of interpretation. For the chachamim and
rabbis over the past 3,000 years, it was clear
that there is nary a superfluous word or
letter in the Torah, and large sections of the
Talmud are based on this premise. If a verse
is lyrically repetitive, if two words are used
where one would suffice or a longer word is
used when a shorter word would suffice,
there is a message here, a new concept,
another law. It is thus astonishing to observe
that two entire sections in the Torah are
seemingly superfluous! These are the final
two sections of Sefer Shemos—Vayakhel
and Pekudei —telling the story of how the
Jewish people constructed the Mishkan that
would accompany them during their 40-
year journey in the desert.
In the previous parshios, Terumah, and
Tetzaveh, the Torah gives a detailed account
of G-d’s instructions to Moshe regarding
the construction of the Sanctuary. With
meticulous description, G-d lays out to
Moshe every detail of the Mishkan—every
piece of furniture, item, article, and vessel
that should become part of the Sanctuary.
Nothing is left out, from the Aron Hakodesh,
the Menorah and the Mizbaeach to the
pillars, wall panels, curtains, ropes, bars,
hooks, and pegs, all specified with their
exact shapes and dimensions. In these
parshios, G-d also presents Moshe with the
exact instructions of how to weave the
priestly garments—down to the last tassel—
worn by those who would perform the
service in the Sanctuary. Then, a few
perakim later in Vayakhel and Pekudei, in
the story of how the Jewish people carried
out these instructions, the previous two
parshios are repeated almost verbatim. The
Torah records, once again, every nook and
cranny of the Sanctuary and tells of the
actual building, carving, and weaving of
every pillar, wall-panel, peg, hook, bar,
tapestry, piece of furniture and vessel that
comprised the Sanctuary. For a second time,
we are informed of every decorative form
and artistic design sculpted in each article
of the Mishkan and every single shape,
design, and dimension of each and every
article. Now, a single sentence, something
like “The Jewish people made the Sanctuary

exactly as G-d had commanded Moshe,”
would have spared the Torah more than a
thousand words! Why the need for hundreds
of sentences that are purely repetitive of
facts that have been stated earlier? One of
the worst mistakes a speaker or writer can
make is to be repetitive. “You made your
point,” the crowd says to itself. “Time to
move on.” This is true in regard to anybody
who speaks or writes. How much more so,
concerning the Torah, a divine document
well known for its extraordinary briefness.
Yet, in this instance, the Torah apparently
shows not even the slightest attempt to
avoid repeating itself hundreds of times!
Two Sanctuaries
The truth of the matter is that the Torah is
not repeating itself at all; it is discussing
two distinct sanctuaries: a heavenly model
and a terrestrial edifice. The first two
parshios outline the structure and
composition of the Sanctuary as it was
transmitted from G-d to Moshe. This was a
conceptual, celestial Mishkan; it was a
heavenly blueprint, a divine map for a home
to be built in the future. In His instructions
to Moshe on how to construct the Sanctuary,
G-d says, “You shall erect the Mishkan
according to its laws, as you have been
shown on the mountain.” In other words, on
the summit of Har Sinai Moshe was shown
an image, a vision, of the home in which
G-d desired to dwell. This image was,
obviously, ethereal and sublime; it was a
home created in heaven, by G-d himself and
presented to one of the most spiritual men in
history, Moshe. In contrast to this first
celestial Sanctuary come the last two
parshios of Shemos, in which Moshe
descends from the glory of Sinai and
presents the people of Israel with a mission
of fashioning a physical home for G-d in a
sandy desert. Here the Jewish people are
called upon to translate a transcendental
vision of a spiritual home into a physical
structure comprised of mundane cedar and
gold, which are, by their very definition,
limited and flawed. This second Sanctuary
that the Jews built may have resembled, in
every detail, the spiritual model described
several perakim earlier, but in its very
essence, it was a completely different
Sanctuary. One was “built” by an infinite
and absolute G-d; the other by mortals of
flesh and blood. One consisted entirely of
nebulous spirit, the other of gross matter.
One was designed in heaven, the other on
earth. One was perfect, the other was
flawed. In our personal lives, these two
Sanctuaries reflect the two lives most of us
must deal with throughout our years. Each
of us owns his or her heavenly “Sanctuary,”
envisioned atop a summit of spiritual and

psychological serenity and
representing a vision and dream
for a life and marriage aglow
with love, passion, and endless
joy. This is the ideal home, the
ideal family, the ideal marriage.
Then we have our earthly
Sanctuary, a life often filled with
trials, challenges, battles, and
setbacks, and yet one in which
we attempt to create a space for
G-d amidst a tumultuous heart
and a stressful life.
G-d’s Choice
Astonishingly, at the end of this week’s
parsha, we are told that it was only in the
second Sanctuary that the divine presence
came to reside. He wished to express His
truth and eternity within the physical abode
created by mortal and fragmented human
beings on barren soil, not in the spiritual
Sanctuary atop Har Sinai. In which one of
these two did G-d choose to dwell? In the
physical Sanctuary! If the Torah had not
repeated the story of the Sanctuary, just
leaving it at “The Jewish people made the
Sanctuary exactly as G-d had commanded
Moshe,” we might have entertained the
notion that our Sanctuary below is valuable
insofar as it resembles the Sanctuary above.
The primary Sanctuary, we may have
thought, is the perfect one designed by G-d
in the spiritual realms and that the beauty of
the earthly abode depends on how much it is
capable of mirroring the heavenly abode. It
is this notion that the Torah was attempting
to banish by repeating the entire Sanctuary
story a second time. G-d did not desire a
duplication of the spiritual Sanctuary on
earth. The value of the earthly abode was
not in how much it mirrored its heavenly
twin. The Torah is, in its own inimitable
fashion, teaching us that G-d wished for a
second, distinct Sanctuary, one that would
mirror the design of the spiritual one but
would remain distinct and unique in its
purpose; to fashion a dwelling place for the
divine in a coarse universe, to light a candle
of truth in a world of lies, to search for the
spark of truth in a broken heart. It is in this
struggle-filled abode where G-d allows
Himself to be found! So if the Torah had not
repeated the story of the Sanctuary, it would
have saved itself hundreds of sentences but
robbed us of perhaps its most powerful
message: that man, in living his or her

ordinary, flawed, and fragmented day-to-
day life permeated with the morality and

spirituality of the Torah and its mitzvos, can
create heaven on earth.
“You Were Never As Beautiful”
A story:

A young Chassidic boy and girl from
Krakow were engaged and deeply in love
when the transports to Auschwitz began.
Their entire families were decimated and

they both assumed that their life’s partner-
to-be was also dead. One night, close to the

end of the war, the groom saw his bride
standing on the women’s side of the fence.
When the Russians came and liberated
them, they met and went for a stroll. They
entered a vacant home, where they spent,
for the first time in years, some moments
together. Suddenly, the young woman came
upon a mirror and saw herself for the first
time in years. A dazzling beauty had turned
into a skeleton. She had no hair, her face
was full of scars, her teeth were knocked
out and she was thin as a rail. She cried out
to him, “Woe, what has become of me? I
look like the Angel of Death himself! Would
you still marry such an ugly person?” “You
never looked more beautiful to me than
right at this moment,” was his response.
Two Types of Beauty
Which beauty was this young man
referring to? It was not the external
attractive beauty of a healthy and shapely
body. It was the internal, sacred, and deep
beauty emerging from human dignity and
courage, from a spirit who faced the devil
himself and still chose to live and love.
Perhaps this is why G-d chose the second,
and not the first, Sanctuary as His abode. On
the surface, the Sanctuary in heaven is far
more beautiful and perfect than the
Sanctuary on earth. The truth is, however,
that beauty and depth exist in our attempt to
introduce a spark of idealism in a spiritual
wasteland that a palace built in heaven can
never duplicate. When G-d sees a physical
human being, filled with struggle and
anxiety, stretching out his hand to help a
person in need or engaging in a mitzvah,
G-d turns to the billions of angels filling the
heavens, and says: “Have you ever seen
anything more beautiful than that?”
(This essay is based on an address
delivered by the Lubavitcher Rebbe,
Shabbas Vayakhel-Pekudei 5718, March
15, 1958.)