“See, I have called by name, Betzalel son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Yehuda. I have filled him with ruach Elohim (Godly spirit), with chachma, tevuna, da’at, u’b’chol-melacha (wisdom, insight, and knowledge, and with every craft). To weave designs, to work with gold, silver, and copper, stone-cutting, and wood-carving – to perform every craft.”
- Shemot 31:3-4
In this week’s parsha, God designated Betzalel as the head artist and craftsman in the Temple. It is his job to build the Tent of Meeting, the Art of the Covenant, tables and altars, utensils, garments, clothing of the Kohanim, and more. Immediately following this appointment God seems to switch to an unrelated topic, commanding Israel to “observe My Sabbaths, for it is a sign between Me and you for your generations, to know that I am Hashem, Who makes you holy. You shall observe the Sabbath, for it is holy to you” (12-13). And then the Torah returns to Moshe on Mt. Sinai receiving the Torah form God, and we learn of the sin of the golden calf.
Why this sequence? What do we learn from the Torah’s juxtaposition of the Sabbath with Betzalel, of the Golden Calf with the Sabbath?
I think that, surprisingly enough, we can find a two-fold answer by looking at the words of (1) Senator Joe Liberman and (2) Rabbi Heschel. The senator, in the Kabbalat Shabbat section of his book The Gift of Rest, writes of how Shabbat gives us the chance to recognize that we are not the center of the universe. We, the majority of people, tend to get caught up in our own in-dispensability. We feel as if our job cannot be put on hold, sports cannot wait, our friends cannot survive without us…we are so important that a 25 hour break from any of our activities is just not possible. But in truth, that is exactly what we need. The Sabbath gives us this break, this opportunity to step back and realize that, no, we are not the center of the world; and yes, there is something greater out there. There is more important things than whatever we have going on during the week: there is our soul. We begin a day where we focus on this spiritual side of ourselves with the beginning of the Kabbalat Shabbat service on Friday nights. Through this day we become holy.
In line with this thought, Rabbi Heschel writes: “What would be the value of proving that...keeping the Sabbath is conducive to happiness? It is not utility that we seek in religion but eternity.” Our focus on Shabbat is beyond ourselves. Yes, we my think at a base level that we indulge ourselves by eating big meals and resting. But our focus is on what is beyond us. Our focus, the reason behind Shabbat, is on our Creator and our desire to become closer to Him and fulfill His will.
And this is why our parsha has placed Betzalel, Shabbat, and the Golden Calf together. With Betzalel, we are told of the Godly gifts that God has endowed Betzalel with. This particular gift is specific to one man, but every person is endowed with their own gifts, every person is their own world (Pirkei Avot). No matter what our gift, we must recognize that we are blessed with this gift by God. We must take time out of our week – take a break from utilizing our gift – to observe the Sabbath and develop a relationship with our God. We must not fall prey to our own ego and deny God in the use of our gift. We must not commit the Sin of the Golden Calf, the sin of denying the origin of our talents. Through this week’s parsha we see the destruction that can result from misuse of our gifts. We are given our gifts, but we are also given a framework of mitzvoth in which to use them. The framework is not a box that contains us, but a blueprint for making the most of both our gift and our relationship with God. When we step outside of that framework, we are susceptible to losing a part of ourselves and weakening our relationship with God, as happened to our ancestors when they built the Golden Calf.
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