“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 are more important things then 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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