Building...

The following sermon will be delivered this evening at Temple Shaaray Tefila in Manhattan.

Is there any part of the Torah that’s more boring than this one? For five weeks in a row, we’ve been slaving away at the same repetitive topic: how the Israelites built the Tabernacle—their portable sanctuary. At first it was exciting. But by the time we make it to this week’s Torah portion, we’ll have already heard about it FIVE TIMES. The tedious, technical detail—verse after verse of architectural blueprints and lists of materials, precise measurements and lengthy construction protocols—it’s unrelenting! The Israelites must have been as bored of building it as we are of reading about it.

Can you imagine the Israelites’ frustration? “Avadim hayinu,” they shout, “We were slaves in Egypt for more than 400 years.” And immediately upon being granted their freedom, they’re stuck with yet another construction project. What kind of freedom is that, if you have to work all day? They feel as if they are still avadim—as if they are still slaves, burdened with a task that they never signed up for in the first place.

The work—the avodah—is seemingly endless. That’s the trick about building a portable sanctuary: the work is never actually done. As soon as they finish building it, it will be only a matter of time before they have to carefully take it down, pack it up, load it onto wagons, haul it to the next campsite, unpack it, and carefully rebuild it there. All that avodah sounds like a lot of busy work, to me.

And so, faced with the prospect of endless avodah, the Israelites feel as if they are still avadim, as if they are still slaves. They’re sunburned. They’re tired. They break their backs week-in and week-out. The task is great, and the workers are sluggish. The day is long and the Boss is pressing.

Finally, the avodah is drawing to a close. After five weeks of waking up early, of sweating through their lunch breaks, of coming too late, too many nights, the Tabernacle is nearly complete. Complete, that is, until they have to break the whole thing down and move it. But at least for now, the Israelites have responded to every email in their inbox.

And now, here comes Moses to inspect their work. He takes a careful look:

The incense altar? Perfect. It smells as sweet as havdallah spice box.

The High Priest’s robe? Perfect. It glimmers and gleams, jingles and jangles like a Torah scroll being taken from the ark.

The Menorah Lamp? Perfect. Its glow softens the night, like the last blue sliver of flame, flickering from a pair of Shabbas candlesticks.

Moses is impressed. He’s proud of the Israelites. Who knew that these former avadim could do such holy work? He blesses them for a job well done.

But then, a strange thing happens—or rather, it is strange that something does not happen. Moses blesses the Israelites, but he doesn’t acknowledge their avodah. They slaved away for all this time, and Moses doesn’t even mention it. Here Moses is so proud of what they’ve accomplished that he’s moved to bless them, and yet, in his blessing, he doesn’t even mention all the hard work put in. What kind of blessing is that?

It’s the kind of blessing that helps us find new meaning in what was previously overlooked. Because the essence of Moses’s blessing lies precisely in the fact that he doesn’t mention their avodah. He knows that it took five weeks. He knows that they broke their backs. He knows that they got home late. But this hard work wasn’t avodah, because they weren’t avadim. They were free people. Free to build for themselves a sanctuary, so that they might have a relationship with the divine. Free to wake up in the morning and find that their lives had purpose. Free to show their children and their children’s children and even us sitting here today the value of hard work towards a common goal in the company of like-minded people. And in this good work, the Israelites were transformed from a generation of former slaves—from avadim­—to a generation of change-agents—to m’lachim. And for this reason, Moses blesses their work not as avodah, but for what it truly is: m’lachah. Good work. Meaningful work. The work that changes the world.

And for the first time, the Israelites saw the beauty in the work that they’d done. For the first time, the Israelites realized that they hadn’t just made an incense altar, or a priest’s robe, or a menorah lamp. Sure these were the tasks—this was the avodah. But what was the real work? What was the m’lachah? The m’lachah was building a sanctuary. The m’lachah was to be close to God.

We may no longer have a Tabernacle, but we still have our m’lachah. The pages upon pages of paperwork that help a young family start a college fund. The hundreds of phone calls and emails that make the day of community volunteering possible. The hours spent in the laboratory, so that new cures can be found for diseases. The early mornings, the long train rides, the short lunch breaks, so that somewhere, someone can live a better life. This is our m’lachah. This is our good work.

Suddenly, the Israelites felt that all their sweat was worth it. Their work wasn’t to finish the Tabernacle, but actually to build it. And then to deconstruct it, and move it, and build it again. And again. And again.

And this is part of what it means to be a Jew—to discover our real work, and to keep at it day after day. And this is why, for five weeks in a row we read about the building of the Tabernacle. Because we can finish our avodah—but our real work, our m’lachah, is never fully done. And so we return to the same book year after year. And we light our Shabbas candles week after week. And we exercise our tzedakah muscle every day. And we imagine that we ourselves came out of Egypt generation after generation. The task is great, and the workers are sluggish. The day is long and the Boss is pressing. But the reward is exceedingly great. The Tabernacle is always being constructed. And you and I and all of us are responsible for doing the work.