This week’s Torah reading is very strange because it is almost totally a repetition of Parshat ‘Truma’ describing the details of making the Tabernacle; aka the Holy Temple (and the next week's reading "Pikudi is a repetition of Tzave we read 3 weeks ago). The only difference is, that here the word ‘VaYaas’ is added to each detail, telling us that what was commanded earlier was ‘actually done’.
But, why was it necessary to make an entire separate chapter and repeat hundreds of the same words when one sentence in the end of Parshat ‘Truma’ saying the Jews did everything G-d told them to would have been sufficient.”
What is G-d trying to tell us here with this repetition? And why does it occur specifically in the laws of the Holy Temple?
I would like to answer this with first a JOKE and then a story
Joke
Once, after Napoleon had won one of his most important battles, he called the allied Generals of his various legions to his stately war-room to reward them by granting their requests in a pompous ceremony.
The General of the Bavarian troops stepped forward, fell to one knee before the Emperor and declared, “I want autonomy for BAVARIA!”
“So it shall be!!” proclaimed Napoleon to the ministers and officials surrounding the scene. “Write it down! Autonomy for Bavaria!!”
The Slovakian General then stepped forward, fell to his knee and similarly declared, “Liberty for Slovakia!!”
“Liberty it shall be!!!” shouted Bonaparte.
And so it was with the Arabian and the Ukrainian Generals. “Autonomy and statehood for Arabia, and for the Ukrainians!” He announced.
Finally the Chief of the Jewish forces stepped forward. “And what of you my loyal friend” Napoleon asked, “What reward do you ask for your bravery?”
“I would like two bagels with cream cheese and some lox on the side, and a cup of hot coffee with milk but no sugar”
Without hesitating, Napoleon sent one of his officers to bring the Jew’s order, saluted all those present, and left the room. Meanwhile, the order arrived, and the Jewish General washed his hands for bread, sat down, and began eating while the other Generals gaped in amazement.
“You fool!” one of them exclaimed, “Why did you make such a stupid request! You could have asked for autonomy, riches and power! Why did you waste your wish on a few bagels !?”
The Jew stopped eating for a moment, looked up at them with a sly smile and replied. “At least I actually got what I asked for.”
Story
In the summer of 1956, one Rabbi Adelman made his first visit to Communist Russia with a delegation of American Jewish dignitaries and when he returned, he called the office of the Lubavitcher Rebbe to arrange a private audience. He was not a Chassid, had no previous connection with Chabad and, as is evident from his essay, he knew close to nothing about the movement or its leader, the Rebbe, beforehand. But he was a sensitive and responsible Jew that was deeply worried about the lack of Jewish identity among the Jews and had a strong desire to do something positive.
He wrote as follows in the B.M.H. Bulletin, September 20, 1960:
“The purpose of my visit to the Rebbe was more than idle curiosity. Somehow, as a result of what we had seen in Russia, I felt that I could find the answer to a most pressing problem. I wanted to know how to captivate the hearts and hands of our people for God and His Torah—how to cause commitment to His Truth.
But why the Lubavitcher Rabbi? For this I will have to go back to our visit in the Soviet Union.
It would be trite and unnecessary to repeat the oft-heard story of spiritual decay in this Soviet hell-on-earth—where Satan rules and the god of materialism holds sway.
Yet it was in the midst of this modern Egypt and its forty-nine degrees of spiritual uncleanliness that my colleagues and I discovered the only meaningful Jewish defiance among our people. For, to our amazement, we found scattered groups of Jews that had somehow managed, not only to survive, but to continue to find strength and to transmit it to their children. And they all identified as Lubavitcher Chassidim who had been inspired by the Lubavitcher Rebbe whose headquarters are on 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn even though many of them had seen him or had never even left Russia.
Upon my return to America, I made an appointment and hastened to that address expecting to find an imposing building as would befit this gigantic challenge to Russian Communism and the god of Moloch. I looked for severe security measures—secret chambers—and a hard dynamic leader of international movement.
I was a little disappointed to find, instead, a ramshackle old building, badly in need of paint and repair, the lusty voices of young men hard at a folio of Talmud—and when I first entered the room of Rabbi Schneerson, I found him to be a soft spoken and gentle middle-aged rabbi, who at first seemed hardly to be a match for the Khrushchev I had met in Moscow.
But that was until we started to speak to and I looked into his eyes.
Slowly, it began to dawn on me why we had met Lubavitcher Chassidim in Russia, even after they had been cut off from their source of strength for over thirty years. The former Lubavitcher Rabbi had been expelled in the mid-twenties and they had never seen any leader since then. But more importantly, I began to see the answer to many questions that had been giving me no peace. For here I saw strength of a different kind—the strength of spirit that could bring Jews back to Judaism.
The answer was obvious. To overcome material giganticism, one does not have to meet it on its own level. Synagogues need not be turned into a kind of religious night clubs or replicas of Las Vegas to draw on the hearts of its people.
The simple answer to material giganticism is in being spiritually gigantic. No more—no less.
The power of truth is overwhelming—and its obvious asset is that it is Truth.
This is the great discovery that is beginning and will succeed to turn American Jews back to the synagogue. Truth. We are beginning to realize, in the words of the Lubavitcher Rabbi:
“Far dem emes muzen alle fahlen!“ “Before the truth, all will surrender.”
Conclusion
These answer our questions about why the repetition of the details of the Tabernacle. Both the joke and the story have the same point. Actual, physical DEED is most important.
In the Joke, all the promises and ideas couldn't compare to an actual sandwich and in the story all the false and empty ideas can't stand against the ACTUAL truth.
Therefore the Torah repeats everything twice in VaYakhel-Pikude; to show that the plans, ideas and words in Truma-Tzave mean nothing without ACTION: Actually doing them.
Or, in other words, the physical is more the goal of Judaism than the spiritual. That was the truth the Rebbe spoke of in the second story.
That is why this message is brought regarding the Mikdosh: A physical building that reveals truth.
That explains why Maimonides writes when explaining the GEULA: that Moshiach will first build the Third Temple and THEN gather the Jews. Because, as Rebbe said, "Everyone surrenders to the truth" and the truth will be revealed in the actual, physical Holy Temple.
And this will culminate with even a higher and MORE PHYSICAL level of truth: THE ENLIVENING OF THE DEAD; when all the departed, including even the highest souls; Moshe, Avraham etc., will all return to physical bodies in this world of ACTION.
But all this depends on us to make it happen.
And not much is lacking. We are standing on the merits of thousands of years of Jewish suffering, good deeds and self-sacrifice. Now it could be that just one more good deed, word or even thought.... Can tilt the scales and bring....
Moshiach NOW!
Rabbi Tuvia Bolton
Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim
Kfar Chabad, Israel
