Parshas Vayakhel - A Higher Shabbos

00:00 I heard a story from the great chossid Reb Yoel Kahn, a"h, the Rebbe’s chozer, who would repeat the Rebbe’s teachings from the maamarim and sichos. He had heard it from Rebbetzin Chana, the Rebbe’s mother. She traveled with her husband, the great kabbalist Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, a"h, the Rebbe’s father, after he was arrested and imprisoned and later sentenced to exile. He was exiled to a remote village of non-Jews. He lived there, in a lowly place among non-Jews, a place of exile somewhere in Kazakhstan, a distant land, far from people and far from Jewish life. He went through a difficult time there with tremendous self-sacrifice and suffered greatly, both physically and spiritually. In time, his health suffered as a result; he became ill and passed away prematurely. This was during the war years, between 5700 and 5704. Rebbetzin Chana, his wife, went with him to help him. She was not required to be there and suffer the punishment alongside him, but because her husband was there, she went to accompany him, to be with him, to help him, prepare what he needed, and support him throughout. She suffered greatly there. There is an entire diary, extensive notes in which Rebbetzin Chana tells of it.

01:53 She relates many details there. One of the stories she writes about—but I heard it from Reb Yoel, who heard it from her, and that gives the story more life—is about the terribly difficult times they endured. There were times when they simply had nothing to eat. Entire days could go by without food, because there simply was none. It was terrible. She said she always took care to save something, to make sure they would have food for Shabbos, that she could cook something, that there would be some sort of dish in honor of Shabbos. She related that one time things were very hard, very bitter. Friday afternoon arrived, Shabbos was approaching, and she had absolutely nothing. Nothing was left. All they had was a piece of black bread, which she had carefully saved so he would have something for Shabbos. She tried to find a way to obtain something, but could not get anything, and that was all they had. That Friday she saw how broken and embittered her husband was: the physical hardship, the days of hunger, and all the pain and anguish. She could see his heartbreak and bitterness. As Shabbos approached, she prepared the home. Their home was a small room. She cleaned it and spread a cloth over the table—there was not even a table there, just something they had in the middle of the room that served as a kind of table.

03:35 She covered it, set down the piece of challah and covered it, and that was all. Her husband, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, put on his Shabbos clothes. Shabbos had already begun, and he put on his sirtuk, his kapote, his Shabbos clothes. Then she saw him pacing the room, walking back and forth, deep in thought. His face changed completely; an entirely different appearance came over him. His face became utterly different, and he walked around the room in deep devotion. To himself, in a tune and a rhythm, he hummed the well-known saying of our Sages: “There is one spice, and its name is Shabbos.” He repeated it to himself, humming it many times. For a long time he paced with that rhythm and those words: “There is one spice, and its name is Shabbos.” She sensed that he was an exalted person. Shabbos had begun, and suddenly he had become someone entirely different. And what did he have to live on? This was his experience of Shabbos: walking about and singing to himself, “There is one spice, and its name is Shabbos.” This is the well-known story the Gemara tells about Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi and Antoninus: Antoninus was his guest on Shabbos and ate the dishes, and asked that the very same dishes be prepared for him, cooked with every detail the same. And afterward...

05:17 He said they did not taste the same. A spice was missing. What was missing? Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, Rabbeinu Hakadosh, said, “We have one spice, and its name is Shabbos.” On Shabbos there is that spice, something that enters the food and gives it a flavor that cannot be copied. That was how Reb Leivik experienced Shabbos. There was no food, no minyan, no sefarim, no material comforts—nothing. But what did he live on? “We have one spice, and its name is Shabbos.” That is what a Jew lives on. Reb Yahel Zweiberg[?] told this story to illustrate what a “man of G-d” is: an exalted person, a G-dly person, a Jew who is spiritual. A Jew for whom spirituality is life; he lives in a higher world, in the experience of Shabbos. When we look at our parsha, Parshas Vayakhel, we see that the opening verse begins with Shabbos: “Moshe assembled the entire congregation of the Children of Israel.” Moshe Rabbeinu gathers all the Jews. And what does he tell them? “These are the things that Hashem commanded to be done. For six days work shall be done, and the seventh day shall be holy for you, a Shabbos of complete rest for Hashem.” And then, as it says later, “You shall not kindle a fire in any of your dwellings on the day of Shabbos.” The laws of Shabbos—that is what appears in our parsha. Here the commentators raise many questions. The Torah commentators, the holy Ohr Hachayim, the Kli Yakar, and several of the

06:54 Rishonim ask a number of questions. What needs to be understood? Among the questions they ask is this: What does the wording “For six days work shall be done” mean? Why does it say “shall be done”? “Work shall be done”—what does “shall be done” mean? “Shall be done” implies that it happens as a matter of course. It is not that a person does it himself; rather, it gets done—the work shall be done. Seemingly, the more fitting wording would be “You shall do work,” as it says in several places in the Chumash. But here it says “shall be done.” Second, why does it say that the seventh day is “a Shabbos of complete rest”? The word for rest is doubled. Usually it says “Shabbos,” but here the wording is “Shabbos Shabbason.” Yom Kippur is also called “Shabbos Shabbason,” but here we are speaking about the ordinary Shabbos, about the laws of Shabbos, and the Torah uses this doubled expression: “Shabbos Shabbason.” What is the significance of that? Similarly, we need to understand the verse here in Parshas Vayakhel in general: it is coming to tell them about the work of the Mishkan. The wording is, “These are the things that Hashem commanded to be done.” As the commentators ask, “to be done” refers to work. Shabbos is the opposite: do not do work. One does not work; Shabbos is a time of rest. When it says “to be done,” speaking of action, it implies that the subject will be building the Mishkan. Why does it begin by speaking about Shabbos? Of course, there are Midrashim about this, there is what Rashi says, and there are

08:34 all those explanations: that the laws of Shabbos and the Mishkan are learned from one another, that building the Mishkan does not override Shabbos, and many other points explained according to the plain meaning and according to Midrash. But here we will present how Chassidus explains, in a wonderful way, the entire sequence of verses and the acts mentioned in them. What is the significance of “Moshe assembled”? In particular, there is a well-known general question here: What is the whole point of “Moshe assembled”? Why this wording? [unclear]. Suddenly it says, “Moshe assembled.” What is the significance of this gathering? What was special about it? Rashi says it took place the day after Yom Kippur: “On the day after Yom Kippur,” Moshe assembled them. What is the significance of that? As is known, there are many explanations. As the Kli Yakar says, since this was after Yom Kippur, the Children of Israel were already in a state of teshuvah and unity, so it was easier to gather them together, to bring about the “Moshe assembled.” Similarly, the sefarim explain the significance of “the day after Yom Kippur”: specifically after Yom Kippur, a time of forgiveness and pardon, that forgiveness and pardon must remain. [unclear] Before Yom Kippur, people ask one another for forgiveness. But what happens afterward? For the forgiveness to remain after Yom Kippur too, there needs to be that “day after,”

10:02 [unclear], yes, which in fact was a very quiet period. There are several explanations of this in the sefarim. But in the inner point we are discussing here, there is a wonderful principle. As the Rebbe explains in one of the first maamarim he delivered, the maamar Vayakhel 5712, there is a wonderful principle here that explains the parsha as a whole, and through it all the details we have discussed also become clear. Since the parsha was said on the day after Yom Kippur, as Rashi says, we need to understand its underlying principle and depth, and the lesson the Torah wants to teach us here. The Children of Israel had just come through Yom Kippur; it was the atonement for the sin of the Golden Calf. The sin of the Golden Calf was a terrible sin. It brought back the greatest sin, the sin of the Tree of Knowledge. The sin of the Tree of Knowledge was the first sin. Adam, who had not yet committed that sin, was approached by the primordial serpent, who led him to that first sin—a terrible sin that brought evil, kelipah, and impurity into the entire world. As explained in Chassidus, what was the inner point of the sin of the Tree of Knowledge? The inner point of the sin of the Tree of Knowledge was

11:31 The matter of yeshus, of self-awareness—feeling oneself. Before the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, Adam did not feel himself. He had no sense of himself. He had no independent existence; he was utterly self-effacing. He was completely holy; his entire existence was G-dliness. Even his body, as explained in the sefarim, in the Rambam and elsewhere: the fact that he was naked, without clothing, and the whole matter of modesty—at first, there was nothing to be ashamed of. Every limb, every part of the body, was entirely G-dliness. It was all one G-dliness; no one saw anything there that needed to be concealed or felt ashamed of. That was the state before the sin. But when the primordial serpent came, suddenly the tree was “desirable to look at,” and there was taste and pleasure in it. All those beautiful expressions are used there about the sin, about the Tree of Knowledge. In other words, a sense of self entered, a feeling; suddenly he began to feel himself. Self-awareness appeared. And this is bad, and this is good, and this is chochmah, binah, daas—all from within that awareness. One can take the chochmah, binah, and daas that are there, and suddenly all these arguments arise. What the Tree of Knowledge lacked—that is the point. It is not knowledge of G-dliness. That is what it…

13:03 A feeling, a sensation within the matter that it is something in its own right, that he feels himself within it. And when he feels himself, that is already yeshus, and it is the foundation of all evil. The “I,” as it is called in Chassidus, the “ich”—that is the foundation of kelipah in this matter. It is a subtle form of idol worship, from which outright idol worship later develops. Idol worship means that one has an existence of one’s own. The Rebbe explains in Tanya that the sin of idol worship is a matter of arrogance. Idol worship is when a person does not grasp Hashem’s oneness with him. Because when a person grasps Hashem’s oneness with him, he grasps that nothing exists besides Him—only the Master of the Universe, nothing else. Everything is G-dliness. But when that point is lost, we begin to feel ourselves. That is idol worship in a subtle form; it is the root of idol worship. And from this came the whole matter of the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, the sin of feeling, of feeling oneself. From this later came the sin of Enosh. That was the sin that came afterward. And then, as our Sages say, they began to make it a matter of “then it was begun to call in the name of Hashem.” It began, as the Rambam explains in Hilchos Avodah Zarah, describing how it unfolded, that only what was then, then, then, then, then...

14:26 In the generation of Enosh, they began to say that since the Master of the Universe created ministers and servants, stars and constellations and everything else, at first it was no more than associating other powers with Him—not, G-d forbid, idol worship. Later, people fell into idol worship, until there came a time when almost no one recognized this great principle, as the Rambam explains in Hilchos Avodah Zarah. Then Avraham Avinu came and began to fight idol worship. He smashed all the idols, all those statues, and began to reveal the oneness of Hashem. “And there he called in the name of Hashem, G-d of the world.” That is the Jewish people. Then came Matan Torah. At Matan Torah, “their impurity ceased.” The Master of the Universe revealed Himself, and the Jews saw “I am Hashem your G-d.” And the Jews saw that “you were shown, so that you would know, that Hashem is G-d; there is nothing else besides Him.” After Matan Torah, idol worship was finished, yeshus and a sense of independent existence were finished, and everything became utterly nullified. Hashem’s oneness was then present in its fullest perfection. And that is the greatest innovation of Matan Torah. That is why the Jews were then “like one person with one heart,” and they had unity—the oneness of Hashem’s unity, the unity of the Jewish people and the Torah; everything was at one point of unity. Then came the sin of the Golden Calf.

15:55 And once again there was impurity: “Their impurity returned.” That is what the Gemara says: at Matan Torah, “their impurity ceased.” The impurity of the primordial serpent, the impurity of feeling oneself, of the “I,” of yeshus, disappeared completely. But through the sin of the Golden Calf, the whole matter deteriorated again. As explained in Chassidus, the reason is that Matan Torah was a revelation from Above. It was not that the Jews were truly ready for it. It had not fully penetrated their very being. Because it came from Above, the revelation passed; after forty days it departed, they reverted to their former ways, and the darkness returned. That is why the whole matter of the sin of the Golden Calf took place. Yom Kippur came, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu said, “I have forgiven, as you have asked.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu forgave the Jews for the sin of the Golden Calf, the sin of idol worship, and the matter was restored with the second Luchos. And only after Yom Kippur—“Moshe assembled.” Moshe Rabbeinu brings about that assembly among the Jews, countering the division created, may G-d have mercy, by the sin of the Golden Calf: division had again arisen among the souls, between them and Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and between one soul and another. Division had arisen in every way. And after Yom Kippur—“Moshe assembled”; Moshe Rabbeinu, the faithful shepherd, gathers all the Jews and tells them to bring this unity into everyday life. How do we bring it about anew? In everyday life: the correction for

17:27 the sin of the Tree of Knowledge. The correction for the sin of idol worship, the sin of the Golden Calf. The gravest sins, whose foundation, as we said, is yeshus, division, and feeling oneself—associating other powers with Him in the fullest sense. This is the opposite of true oneness of Hashem, and it is then reflected in true unity among Jews as well. So the point of “Moshe assembled” is to bring about unity among the Jews. And what does Moshe tell the Jews? “For six days, work shall be done.” This is the exact opposite of the whole matter of idol worship and associating other powers with Him. Idol worship and that kind of association say that work is something in its own right, something one needs to be immersed in. One needs to toil at it, to put effort into it. It is a reality. One attaches importance to the world, to all the affairs of the world. Not only to the stars and constellations in the heavens, but also to the things that come from the stars and constellations. That is, to all the things that serve as intermediaries, like the stars and constellations. Hakadosh Boruch Hu sends His bounty through the stars and constellations. And the argument of idol worship is that one must attach importance to them. But not only to the stars and constellations. In a subtler sense, when this comes down to practical life, all the worries of earning a living, all these matters, the means through which one receives a livelihood—even a person who believes in Hakadosh Boruch Hu can still have this argument. That is a form of associating other powers with Him. But in a subtle way, of course. G-d forbid,

19:03 not in an overt form. But in a subtle way, as the Gemara says: “Jews outside the Land of Israel worship idols in purity.” Idol worship has entered here. What is idol worship? He has an argument: We need to earn money. We need to know the ways of the non-Jews, how to earn money. We need to know how people conduct themselves in the world, how business and earning a living work. So he puts his mind into it, puts his [unclear] into it. When he goes to daven and learn, alien thoughts sneak in, fly into his mind during davening. He is completely preoccupied and busy. This is how things develop from the sin of the Tree of Knowledge to the sin of idol worship. That is true in practical matters, and it is true in spiritual matters too. One can even feel “my strength and the power of my hand have brought me this wealth” in davening and in learning. He sits and learns, but thinks: I am clever, I understand, I am a genius, I understand the subject. And my explanation and my analysis, and the way I say things—that is how they must come out, the way I understand them. That is the “I.” And that is yeshus, the foundation of the entire sin of the Tree of Knowledge, from which the sin of the Golden Calf developed, as explained above. And this is what Moshe Rabbeinu tells the Jewish people: “For six days, work shall be done.” The correction for the sin of the Golden Calf and the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, that—

20:20 What we need to work on now, in these days, is that throughout the six days of the week, what should be heard is “work shall be done,” not “you shall do the work,” as though I am the one doing it. [unclear] Hashem sends us into this week. I need to act here, but it should not sound as though I am doing it myself. It is assistance from Heaven; everything comes from Above. Even in serving Hashem, my “I” should not be heard. It is assistance from Heaven; Hashem is the One who does everything. “Hashem, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.” It is Hashem’s will; it is Hashem’s Torah. It is “My words that I have placed in your mouth”—the devotion, [unclear]. I am a simple, submissive servant, and Hashem is the One who gives me all these strengths. [unclear] And so, “work shall be done.” This is what a Jew who serves Hashem in this way looks like, Moshe Rabbeinu tells the Jewish people. “And the seventh day shall be a Shabbos of complete rest”—not just Shabbos, but a double Shabbos. A Jew who lives the entire week with the sense that “there is nothing besides Him,” that only Hashem directs the world and no one besides Him can do anything—a Jew who lives this way all week is, in truth, in a state of Shabbos even then. He is a Shabbos Jew; he lives differently throughout the entire week. And when a Jew who lives this way reaches Shabbos, it is a “Shabbos of complete rest.” It is a Shabbos that—

21:56 is entirely holiness, entirely closeness to Hashem, entirely G-dliness. As the Alter Rebbe explains in several parshiyos regarding the additional soul: What is the additional soul a Jew receives on Shabbos? The Alter Rebbe says that the additional soul means the great love given from Above, beyond measure and limitation. There is Hashem’s kindness, the love a Jew works to attain each day in prayer. One can reach a love based on reason and understanding, and also [unclear]. That is a limited love, ahavas olam. But when a Jew works on himself throughout the week to live in a way of “work shall be done,” when Shabbos arrives he merits an additional soul. That is the additional soul: the great love that transcends reason and understanding. We cannot reach this higher form of love through our own efforts, but only as a gift—“Shabbos is a precious gift.” From Above, you are given the “Shabbos of complete rest,” the double Shabbos, as a gift. And with this, we understand everything that follows and why these things are said here. Moshe Rabbeinu then goes on to explain: This is the purpose of building the Mishkan, and this is the whole matter that must now be put right—to bring Hashem into daily life, into ordinary life, so that it is evident among Jews that all the affairs of this physical world, including everything that needs to be done in it, are in the spirit of “work shall be done,” with self-nullification.

23:21 [unclear] He senses Hashem throughout the reality of earning his physical livelihood and serving Hashem; the “I” is not heard in his service of Hashem. Then he receives the “Shabbos of complete rest,” the double Shabbos, in which the light of that complete rest shines. And so we come to what follows: “Take from among yourselves an offering for Hashem”—from all the silver, gold, and copper, as explained later in the parsha. All this comes through “Moshe assembled the Jewish people.” Moshe Rabbeinu, the faithful shepherd, is the one who unites the Jewish people. And even regarding the unity of the Jewish people, as the Tzemach Tzedek writes, this is what is said about Moshiach: “Until Shiloh comes, and to him the peoples shall gather.” The meaning of “shall gather” is that he gathers them together—the true “Moshe assembled.” And “Shiloh” has the same numerical value as “Moshe.”

24:15 This is Moshe, the Moshe of every generation, who gives him the strength—Moshe Rabbeinu in every generation—to bring about the true unity of the Jewish people, the true oneness of Hashem, and to truly live in that unity [unclear] in our material lives. Through this, we prepare the world for the building of the third Beis Hamikdash. This is the meaning of the half-shekel and the building of the Beis Hamikdash, and of all the details we learn in the parsha: to truly be [unclear] with joy. May we merit the third Beis Hamikdash and the true and complete Geulah, immediately, amen, may it be His will.