Vayakhel (5714)

The Alef Kabbalah group (26 Feb 2008) explored the Chassidic-kabbalistic discourse taught in 1954 by the Lubavitcher Rebbe for the Sedra Vayakhel. The Sedra begins with the command to keep the Sabbath, and continues with instructions for building the Sanctuary. The Sages in the Talmud explain that the work forbidden on the Sabbath is defined as the 39 categories of work employed in the building of the Sanctuary. The discourse explores this concept, showing that the activities of a person, their daily work, whether as regards preparing food, or clothes, or the home in which one lives, are all rooted in spiritual realms and in a spiritual form of the Sanctuary. Each person thus potentially reveals the Divine at every step of life. On the Sabbath this revelation becomes more tangible, for then the Sanctuary is indeed complete.