Exodus Cycle Five Vayakhel

            Vayakhel

                 

                 Some people know this about me. I like to study the parashah from the scroll. I’ve been doing it for about five years. Weekly.

               “Why do you do that?” one rabbi asked me.

               “Because I like to fill myself with it,” I said. I didn’t say there’s more than the words, and the letters within the words, and the history of the letters and the roots and each tiny point that makes a letter. I didn’t say there’s more than the book-print literary take-on-it that we get from any Chumash. I figured he knew what I was talking about. I figured he knew that the particulars and the particulars within the particulars join into one flame rising up from the sacred document and flow  right into your cells and eyes when you’re there for long enough. So, you become filled with it.  He did though give me permission to open the scroll at his temple.

               So just a few days ago I had the scroll open to tekelet (blue) and argamon (purple) and the tapestries and poles and bars and hooks and rings and rams skins and gold that make the mishkan. We weren’t in Terumah, where we get the instructions. We were in Vayakhel where we  enact it, the building of the mishkan,  Betzalel in the lead. It’s a super-exciting moment and a lot of work. In my case, I don’t know all the words for mishkan-building.  So when I come to a word like nails I have to look it up. It isn’t the usual Torah monologue about being brought out of the land of Egypt and observing the Shabbat. It’s particular within the particulars of the particular.

               Anyway, there I was and a member of the congregation approached with a student. In this particular temple some people seem interested in what I’m doing. That’s great actually. There are different particular temples and while each is beautiful, some congregations don’t catch on to Torah-study-from-the-scroll like at others. Studying with the movement of people all around you is a deeper experience. So, the student practiced the Torah blessings and then she looked at the Torah.

               "It’s black fire on white fire and white fire on black fire,” I said.

               Her eyes were big and brown like a doe's. Her stare was blank.

    I better try this again, I thought.

               “You see,” I said, “there’s all the letters but there’s the space between the letters as well. And a lot happens there.”

               “You mean there?” she asked. She pointed.

               “Yeah,” I said.

             “Those things that happen, they’re the less important things, aren’t they?” she asked.

               This got me going.

               “Less important?” I asked.

               She was figuring that the print was the highest we could get. That's the conclusion I was jumping-to in the moment.

               “Yes,” she said. “That white space, that’s where Moses waters his sheep, right?”

                I smiled.

               “Sure,” I said. “That’s where Moses waters his sheep.”

               Little did she know that she had just pinpointed one of the major lessons of Vayekhel and Pekudei.   

                It’s like this: As Rebbe Nachman says, there are particulars and there’s the general picture.  Creation happens when the particulars reflect on themselves like mirrors facing mirrors. The particulars become infinite. The flow of the particulars becomes the general picture. They continue inward for eternity and outward for eternity. They gather and consolidate in Torah in a way that we as humans can access them.  But these particulars aren’t abstract thoughts or emotions. They are the symbols of  the blue dye of the mishkan, the ram’s skins, the poles and pillars and bars and nails. They are the symbols of the rings on the hangings and the exact placement of these same rings.  And God’s will is in each of them. And it’s exquisite. It’s Moses watering his sheep.