When you read through Parshas Vayakhel, and, for that matter, Parshas Pekudei, one gets a strange sense of Déjà vu, or perhaps, Déjà Jew. They seem to be nearly identical as the Torah repeats all the vessels of the Mishkan, how they were made, of what they were made, and who was to make them.
We go through the Ark and the Menorah and the Table and the pillars. The words sound familiar because we’ve just read them! Is this like a second Megilla reading for those that missed the first one? The truth is, though, that there is a very good reason to go through all these vessels and items again. Let’s explain by way of a story:
A young rabbi was visiting the United States from Israel. As he traveled around the country, he endured uncertain schedules, various times of praying, eating, sleeping and waking. Breakfast was a coffee and maybe some cookies behind the wheel of his rental car.
One day, he arrived at a school for his next meeting. Suddenly, there was a knock on his car window. He lowered it and smiled at the young boy of perhaps twelve years old. “How can I help you?” he asked.
The boy replied, “Are you the fellow delivering lunch?” The rabbi laughed jovially and said, “I am certainly NOT the delivery driver, but I AM hungry. What’s for lunch?” he asked with a big grin. The young boy shrugged “I don’t know,” and headed back inside.
A few moments later, the rabbi looked up to see the same boy approaching his car with a steaming bowl of food. Shocked, he lowered the window. “It’s some lunch,” said the boy. “You said you were hungry.”
The rabbi gratefully took it from the lad and was stunned by the simple act of kindness which made perfect sense but was so unusual. The boy had heard someone was hungry so he decided to feed him. It was a remarkable chesed the rabbi would long remember.
What does this have to do with the Parsha’s repetition? Everything. In Parshas Terumah and Tetzaveh, Hashem told Moshe what He wanted to be in the Mishkan and how to do it. “You shall make” this and “You shall make that.” But the later verses have a subtle difference.
Says Rabbi Avrohom Pam: In the first pesukim about building the Mishkan, it tells us what they were supposed to do. The latter parsha tells us that they did it! Instead of saying, “You shall make,” it says, “and he made.” It recounts to us that every aspect which Hashem outlined should be done, was done.
This is surely a lesson worth repeating words for. Each time it seems to repeat is actually just checking off another goal reached and another mission accomplished. These are worthy of mention, so the Torah does.
Let us learn from this the importance of not only setting goals but reaching them, and of maintaining our determination to finish the job.
