Shabbat Parshat Vayakhel-Shekalim - 5763

This week's Parshah begins with a reference to Shabbat, and proceeds to a review of the materials and activities required for the construction of the Mishkan, implying a strong connection between Shabbat and the Temple. It is also Shabbat Shekalim, commemorating the public announcement of the collection of half-Shekalim of silver from the Jewish People. Chazal say that Shekalim were required at this time partly in order to precede the Shekalim of Haman, who in Year-from-Creation 3404 (357 BCE) bribed Achashverosh with ten thousand talents of silver to secure his permission for a program of genocide (G-d forbid) directed against the Jews. That plan happily was overturned upon him, and accomplished his own destruction. This was in accordance with the principle that whenever G-d visits a punishment upon His people, He makes sure that the remedy or antidote exists already in the world. (It is “not poshut;” that is, probably more than a coincidence, that war with Iraq, designed to disarm and unseat another tyrant and sworn enemy of the Jews, is looming as Purim approaches).

One connection between Shabbat and the Mishkan is that the prohibited activities on Shabbat, the categories of “Melachah,” are derived from those activities performed in connection with the construction of the Mishkan. Another idea found in Chazal is that the categories of Melachah are precisely those activities that constitute the full range of creative activity that HaShem employed in bringing the world into being during the initial 6 “Days,” before He “rested” on the 7th “Day,” the Shabbat.

The main functionary in the Mishkan and the Temple was the “Kohen,” or Priest. He served as the representative of the People of Israel before G-d. HaShem charged the Jewish People at Mt. Sinai (Shemot 19:6), “You shall be for Me a Kingdom of Priests, and a Holy Nation.” The People of Israel was destined to serve HaShem in His world, primarily from the Holy Land of Israel, and represent all of humanity before G-d. HaShem commands Moshe to inform Pharaoh (Shemot 4:22), “Israel is My first-born son,” implying that the other nations, who Rabbi Akiva informs us in Pirkei Avot 3:18 are “created in the image of G-d,” are also part of the “Family of Man,” and also related to G-d. But it is the “first-born” who are destined to be the Priests.

The Torah, in describing the Sacrifices to be offered on the Holiday of Sukkot, prescribes a variable number of oxen, beginning with 13 on the 1st day, and ending with 7 on the 7th day, for a total of 70, corresponding to the nations of the world, and brought for the benefit of the rest of the world. Indeed, our Sages tell us that had our enemies realized what they were destroying in the Temple, they would not have been so foolish as to do so.

The First Temple was built by Shelomo, with the assistance of Chiram, King of Tzor, who provided timber from the cedar and cypress forests of Lebanon. Another king who played a positive historic role in assisting the Jewish People in connection with the Temple was Daryavesh, Darius II, the son of Queen Esther and Achashverosh, who commanded in Year-from-Creation 3408 (353 BCE), that the Second Temple be built, exactly 70 years after the destruction of the First Temple by Nevuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. (Earlier, in Y-F-C 3391 (370 BCE) Cyrus had ordered the reconstruction, miscalculating the count of 70 years by beginning the count from Yirmiyahu’s prediction of destruction. So that when Achashverosh (who also mistook the start-time of the 70 years as the exile of Yechaniah, occasioning his infamous party, in which the Jewish community shamefully participated) became king the following year, he was able to halt construction on the Temple site.)

Thus, it was also part of the historic mission of Queen Esther to effectuate the rebuilding of the Temple, in addition to averting the catastrophe that threatened the Jewish People at that time, courtesy of Haman.

On Rosh HaShanah, the “Priest among the nations” prays for the universal recognition of HaShem, “Let everything with a life’s breath in its nostrils proclaim ‘HaShem, the G-d of Israel, is King, and His Kingship rules over everything.’ ”

And the “Shoshanat Yaakov,” the Rose of Yaakov, the People of Israel, will shortly enter its synagogues and pray to the Almighty, “You have been their eternal salvation and their hope throughout generations. To make known that all who hope in You will not be shamed; nor ever be humiliated, those taking refuge in You. Accursed be Haman [the personification of evil] who sought to destroy me; blessed be Mordechai [who, as a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court, was required to understand all of the “seventy languages” of the human race], the “Yehudi,” the Jew.

Rabbi Pinchas Frankel

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