Parashat Va-Yakhel-Pekudei 5769--Creating

In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei, we are reminded that we, as human beings, have the power to create worlds. Each of us, every day, wakes up with the capacity to create our own reality. What will the world we create look like? How can we create our world with intention?

The Torah teaches us that acts of creation happen in four stages: Doing, finishing, admiring, and blessing.

When God created the word, God’s creation unfolded in the four stages we would expect:

Doing: God said “let there be light” and God began creating

(Genesis 1:3-31)

Finishing: “On the seventh day God was finished with the work which God had made,” (Genesis 2:2)

Admiring: “God saw everything that God had made, and indeed it was very good” (Genesis 1:31)

Blessing: “God gave the seventh day God’s blessing (Genesis 2:3).

In past weeks, we have followed the process by which the Israelites constructed the Tabernacle, or in Hebrew the Mishkan (literally, the Dwelling Place). In this week’s parashah, the Israelites finish their work. Many ancient rabbis, as well as modern thinkers, assert that the Mishkan was made to be a microcosm of the universe. God created the world and we created the Tabernacle. Our building process, as well as the language that the Torah uses to describe it, parallels God’s creation of the world.

The Israelites built the Tabernacle:

Doing: God says “let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8) and the Israelites made the Tabernacle (Exodus 25-39)

Finishing: “Thus was completed all the work of the Tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting” (Exodus 39:32)

Admiring: “Moses saw all the work, and- there it was!- they had done it! Exactly as Adonai had ordered, they had done it.” (Exodus 39:43)

Blessing: “Moses blessed them” (Exodus 39:43)

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes “Bereishith [Genesis] begins with G-d making the cosmos. Shemot [Exodus] ends with human beings making a micro-cosmos, a miniature and symbolic universe. Thus the entire narrative of Genesis-Exodus is a single vast span that begins and ends with the concept of G-d filled space, with this difference: that in the beginning the work is done by G-d-the-Creator. By the end it is done by man-and-woman-the-creators. The whole intricate history has been a story with one overarching theme: the transfer of the power and responsibility of creation from heaven to earth, from G-d to the image-of-G-d called mankind.”

Today, we exist in the image of God-the-Creator and inherit the legacy of Israelites-as-creators. God created the world, our ancestors created the Mishkan, and we create our own reality.

On this Shabbat, I invite you to imagine the reality you would like to bring into being. What resources do you have to help you? What obstacles stand in your way? What active steps do you need to take in order to see your reality realized? What is in your end goal, and how will you know when you’ve reached it? How will it feel to live in your consciously created world? Who will be blessed by your endeavors?

When God commanded the Israelites to create the Mishkan, God didn’t use the word “build,” but the word “make.” When God created the world, God didn’t use fire or force, but words. We can make and speak and imagine our world into being. It begins with intention, and ends in blessing.