Weekly Message

13 March 2025

In this week’s parashah, Ki Tissa, God finishes teaching Moshe how to build the mishkan, the sacred structure that will be God’s home on earth.  The Torah then goes on to tell the story of the golden calf. In moving from one story to the other, the Torah contrasts sacred work with idolatrous work.

In between the two sections, the Torah reminds us of the importance of Shabbat:  “ V’shamru b’nei Yisrael. . . The children of Israel shall keep Shabbat throughout their generations, as an eternal covenant. . .“

Why does the Torah place Shabbat between a story about sacred work and one about idolatrous work? Because Shabbat can be the difference between the two. It keeps the former from becoming the latter.

Whatever work we do all week can be like the building of the mishkan, work that points toward a larger purpose. Or it can be like the building of the golden calf, work that has become an end in itself, a “god” in its own right. In fact the same work can be either one. It all depends on our ability to step back from what we are doing and remember why we are doing it.

That is why Shabbat is so important. Once a week we pause from our work in order to remind ourselves that work is not an end in itself. We rest in order to remember what our work is truly for. In that sense, Shabbat helps to insure that, no matter what it is that we are building during the rest of the week, it will be a mishkan.