As our parasha opens, Moshe has come back down the mountain with the second set of tablets, and gathered Israel around him (Rashi at the beginning of our parasha). ויאמר אליהם אלא הדברים אשר צוה ד' לעשת אתם: ששת ימים תעשה מלאכה וביום השביעי יהי' לכם קדששבת שבתון לד' כל העשה בו מלאכה יומת: לא תבערו אש במשבתיכם ביום השבת: (“And he said to them, 'These are the things which Ha-Shem has commanded to do them. Six days work [mëlacha] will be done, and on the seventh day you will have a qodesh, a Sabbath of resting for Ha-Shem; anyone who does a mëlacha will be put to death. You will not burn a fire in your dwellings on the Sabbath day”; XXV, 1-3).
This passage is immediately followed by another דבר אשר צוה ד' (“thing which Ha-Shem has commanded”), which turns out to be basically a repetition of parshoth Tëruma and Tëtzavve, a restatement of the commandment to gather the materials for the Mishkan and what is to be done with them.
Shabbath, of course, was also commanded earlier, first at Mara (cf. XV, 25, Rashi ad loc.), then in the ‘Asereth ha-Dibbëroth. So our parasha consists of two repetitions, joined by the vav ha-hibbur (which, of course, also joins our parasha to the one preceding it). Why?
B.
The Talmud tells us: והתניא רבי אומר "דברים, הדברים, אלה הדברים" אלו ל"ט מלאכות שנאמרו למשה בסיני (“And this is taught: Rabbi [Yëhuda ha-Nasi’] says, ‘things, the things, these [are] the things’; these are the 39 mëlachoth which were told to Moshe at Sinai”; שבת צ"ז:, וע"ע ירושלמי שבת פ"ז ה"ט ששם מגיעים לידי החשבון מתוך דברים אלה דרך דרשה אחרת ). As Rashi ad loc. helpfully explains, the minimum of a plural word (“things”) is two; the definite prefix ha- (“the”) increases it by one, and the gimatriya or numerical value of élle (“these”) is 36; thus, the total is 39.
But this is not the only allusion to the 39 basic mëlachoth to be found in this initial passage. After taking note of this Talmudic teaching, the Ba‘al ha-Turim next focuses our attention on the penultimate word in the first verse, לעשת, la-‘asoth, “to do.” The word is spelt anomalously, lacking the vav which normally represents the long “o.” Hence, the letters can be rearranged as ל' תשע, i.e. “thirty-nine” (with the added feature that the number nine, tésha‘, is in the proper, feminine form required by the word mëlachoth).
Nor is this all. Verses 1-3 contain a total of 40 words, the last one being ha-shabbath, “the Sabbath.” So the very word count is an allusion to thirty-nine mëlachoth not to be performed on shabbath (interestingly, the mishna which specifies the thirty-nine basic mëlachoth begins: אבות צלכות ארבעים חסר אחת, “The fundamental mëlachoth are forty less one”; עיי' שבת ע"ג.).
Our passage, therefore, is a fitting introduction to the rest of our parasha, since Hazal derive the thirty-nine basic mëlachoth from the mëlecheth ha-Mishkan (שבת מ"ט:), which, as we have already noted, occupies the rest of the reading. But why is that?
C.
In the ‘Asereth ha-Dibbëroth, the Torah offers us a reason for observing the Sabbath: כי ששת ימים עשה ד' את השמים ואת הארץ את הים ואת כל אשר בם וינח ביום השביעי על כן ברך ד' את יום השביעי ויקדשהו (“For [in] six days Ha-Shem made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; therefore, Ha-Shem blessed the seventh day and sanctified it”; XX, 11). The sanctification of the seventh day came about as the culmination of creation.
In a very long comment at the beginning of parshath Tëtzavve (XXVII, 20ff.), the Ha‘améq Davar demonstrates and establishes that the Mishkan was designed so as to constitute a microcosmos, a simulacrum of the created universe. With this in mind, we return to the Ba‘al ha-Turim, who discovers yet another allusion, as he counts up the various acts of creation, forming, making, constituting, bringing forth, and distinction in the creation account, and arriving again at the number 39. Be it noted that the creation account itself ends: ויכלו השמים והארץ וכל צבאם: ויכל אלקים ביום השביעי מלאכתו אשר עשה: ויברך אלקים את יום השביעי ויקדש אתו כי בו שבת מכל מאכתו אשר ברא אלקים לעשות: (“And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host. And G-d completed on the seventh day His mëlacha which He had done. And G-d blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, for on it He desisted from all His mëlacha which He had created to do”; Genesis II, 1-3).
The generic term, then, for all the various categories of creative work counted by the Ba‘al ha-Turim is mëlacha.
The Torah thus makes abundantly clear that ultimate purpose of shëmirath shabbath is to provide regular testimony that G-d created the world. The Eloqim created a cosmos, and all His actions in carrying out and refining that creation are collectively termed mëlacha; human beings, the dëmuyoth Eloqim (ibid., I, 26), “likenesses of G-d,” were tasked with building a microcosmos, a task similarly termed mëlecheth ha-Mishkan. As He desisted from His mëlacha, comprising 39 categories, so do the dëmuyoth Eloqim emulate Him. For this reason, our parasha is comprised of these two elements, seemingly unrelated, but in fact intimately intertwined.
D.
Why is this vital and salient parasha, without which we would have no idea how to שמור את יום השבת לקדשו (“keep the sabbath day to sanctify it”; Deuteronomy V, 12) located where it is, connected to the incident of the golden calf, with which last week’s parasha concludes, by the vav ha-hibbur?
The Or ha-Hayyim is bothered by this question, and begins his answer with the Talmudic dictum: כל המודה בעבודה זרה ככופר בכל התורה (“Anyone who confesses to ‘avoda zara is like one who denies the entire Torah”; הוריות ח.). He then goes on: ומעתה הנה צריכין כל ישראל לתקן כל תרי"ג מצות אשר פגמו בכולן כו' ואמרו רבותינו ז"ל "שקול שבת כנגד כל התורה" ובזה יתוקן פגם שפגמו בכל התורה והוא מאמר משה כאן "אלה הדברים אשר צוה ד' לעשת אתם" פירוש לשון תיקון כו' ובזה יתיישב כו' למה חזר עוד לצוות השבת אחר שכבר צוה כמה פעמים ועוד למה צוה עליו סמוך למצות מעשה במשכן ולדברינו יבא אל נכון כי יצו ד' על תיקון העבר כדי שיהיו מוכשרים לשכון בתוכם ובמצות שבת ששקולה ככל התורה היא תקנת עבודה זרה כאומרו "אשרי אנוש יעשה זאת" ודרשו ז"ל "כל השומר שבת כהלכתו אפילו עובד עבודה זרה [כדור] אנוש מוחלין לו" וגו' (“and from now, all Israel had to repair all 613 mitzvoth, all of which they had damaged... And Hazal said, ‘Shabbath is weighed against the entire Torah” [שמות רבה פכ"ה סי' י"ב], so that by this means the damage which they had done to the entire Torah might be fixed; and this is why Moshe said here, ‘These are the things which Ha-Shem has commanded to do them,’ referring to repair.... And through this may be resolved... why He commanded the Sabbath yet again after already having commanded [it] several times, and further, why He commanded it close to the mitzva of making the Mishkan; according to our words it seems correct that Ha-Shem commanded the correction of the past so that [Israel] might be fit [that He] dwell amongst them, and it is through the mitzva of shabbath which is weighed like the entire Torah is the correction of ‘avoda zara, as [Yësha‘yahu] says, ‘Happy the man [enosh] who will do this’ [Isaiah LVI, 2] and Hazal interpreted, ‘Anyone who observes the Sabbath according to its halacha, even if he serves ‘avoda zara as was done in the generation of Enosh is forgiven’ [שבת קי"ח:]....”). Be it remembered that the origins of ‘avoda zara in the generation of Enosh lay in shittuf, an illegitimate “partnership” between Ha-Shem and something else (עיי' רמב"ם הל' עבודה זרה פ"א ה"א).
Therein lies the reason for our parasha’s location and connection to last week’s; therein lies the way that modern Israel can repair the immense damage which has been done to Torah by the modern form of ‘avoda zara, famously identified by the great Rabbi Elhanan Bunim Wasserman הי"ד, in his prophetic séfer ‘Iqvëtha di-Mshiha, published on the eve of the Second World War, as ideology.
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