The sicha for parshas Vayakhel is in Vol. I of Likkutei Sichos.

In the beginning of parsha it says that “ vayakhel Moshe” that Moshe gathered all the people and said to them, these are the things that G-d commanded to do, six days “ t’asei malacha” you should do work, and on the seventh day should be holy, a Shabbos Shabbason.

The commentaries ask a number of questions. First of all, what does it mean that Moshe gathered the people? All other commandments were given directly, “ and Moshe said to the people..” It doesn’t say that he first gathered them, in order to say to them. Secondly, what are these things that Moshe gathered the people to tell them. It seems that he gathered them to tell them about the laws of Shabbos, but they were already given in the Ten Commandments. Thirdly, why does he refer to Shabbos as Shabbos Shabbason, a double Shabbos? Fourthly, Rashi says, quoting from the Gemarrah, the Medrash, and the Zohar, that this gathering that Moshe made, happened the day after Yom Kippur, when Moshe came down from Mt. Sinai. After the Jews had made the golden calf, Moshe went back up the mountain and when he came down forty days later, it was Yom Kippur, so this gathering was the day after Yom Kippur. Therefore Vayakhel, Moshe gathering the people, must be connected to Yom Kippur, to the forgiveness that comes on Yom Kippur, which included the forgiveness for the sin of the golden calf. So what is the connection?

To understand this, we first have to explain the words of the Sages, where it says that there is a difference between the word t’asei, and taasei. Both mean “to do” but t’asei means doing passively, and taasei means doing actively.

Taasei means being absorbed in the activity that one is doing. T’asei means to do something without being absorbed as if it is happening by itself, as it says, when Jews are fulfilling G-d’s commandments, then G-d makes their work happen by itself. That’s concerning the blessing from heaven. But everything also has to be translated into human activity, so the idea of t’asei, of doing something without being involved in it, refers to how we hare supposed to go about the ordinary activities of life, making a living and so on, without involvement of the mind and the heart in the business and the activity, but rather it should be as if it is happening by itself. As it says, “yagiya kapehcha” if you eat by the sweat of your brow, then you are blessed and things are good. The explanation here is, that in order to make a living, only the hands should be involved in the labor. The heart, the mind and the head should be in Torah and mitzvos, even while doing work.

Then, as the Gemarrah says, you will be blessed in this world, and it will be good for you in the world to come. This is also the meaning of t’asei melacha, six days you should do work. We are not involved in our business with our mind and with our heart, we do it only with our actions, and then only what is necessary to create a vessel for G-d’s blessing. That is what provides sustenance and not the labor or the business itself. It is just that in order to receive G-d’s blessing, we have to create a vessel into which the blessings can be given. So you do only as much as the vessel needs in order to receive the blessing, but the heart and the mind are completely detached, you only do what needs to be done and not more.

Truthfully a person shouldn’t be allowed to do any kind of labor at all. G-d fills the heaven and the earth, and is present everywhere, therefore out of respect for the presence of G-d, the King of Kings, the Holy One Blessed Be He, we really shouldn’t be doing any work at all. In the presence of a king, one is not allowed to be involved in any kind of activity. It is only that Torah gives us permission and tells us to go to work, as it says “six days you should work”. However if we are supposed to labor only with our hands and not involve our mind and heart, why is it called labor?

The explanation is, as is known, that when a person does something that he enjoys, is excited about, then even if it takes a lot of energy and effort, and he becomes very exhausted, it is not considered labor. But when he does something that is not pleasurable, that he doesn’t enjoy, then even a little bit of work tires him out – it is a labor for him.

The same is true here. When the person goes about his activities without great enthusiasm because his mind and heart are elsewhere, then it is “yagiya” it drains him, even the little bit that he does is called a “yagiya kapecha” because he is doing it as if he is forced. And even though he will use it for mitzvahs, and he is doing it because G-d said to work during the six days, but since it is not directly involving a mitzvah, the study of Torah, he does it as if he is forced and there is no enthusiasm to lighten the burden and therefore it is considered a heavy burden.

So this is the meaning of “six days t’asei melacha” for six days work should happen” and on the seventh day it is Shabbos Shabbason. In order to reach Shabbos, for Shabbos to be the way it needs to be, then during the six days you have to be involved in your labors in a passive way t’asei l’derech memeleh, without mind and heart involvement. The idea of Shabbos is that when Shabbos comes, all your labors are completed and you have no further needs.

However if in the middle of the week, this person is involved and preoccupied with his mind and heart in the pursuit of the business, then when it comes to Shabbos and he wants to tear himself away at least for one day from this obsessive involvement in his business, and get absorbed in Torah and tefillah, in order to enjoy the beauty of G-dliness, even then he is distracted by thoughts of business, the same thoughts that he is obsessed with during the week, or even worse, unholy thoughts that even during the week he doesn’t have. Because when you are not in control and you can’t close the door of the mind, then all sorts of thoughts can come in, even the unwelcomed and the unbidden. So when it comes to Shabbos, he really is not ready to be Shabbosdik.

Conversely if during the week, his labor is a passive one - “t’asei melacha”- then when it comes to the seventh day, he has Shabbos Shabbason – Shabbos is pleasant and Shabbos is bright, a double Shabbos. If during the week, he didn’t obsess and involve his mind and heart in the business, then even during the week he has a little bit of a Shabbos taste. Therefore when it comes to Shabbos, he has a double Shabbos.

And with this we will answer the question, why the mitzvah of Shabbos is mentioned here when it was already mentioned in the Ten Commandments. It is because here we are not talking about keeping Shabbos, we are talking about how to come to the Shabbos, how to prepare so that the Shabbos will be a Shabbos.

With this we will also understand why “vayakhel” the gathering and the commandment of the six days came after Yom Kippur when the sin of the golden calf was forgiven.

The sin of the golden calf is avodah zarah, idol worship. Rambam says that the people who believed in idols knew that the stars and the sun and the moon were all created by G-d but they gave the sun and the moon a certain amount of recognition and significance because of the effect they have on the world. However the sun and the moon affect the world only the way an axe affects the wood in the hands of a woodchopper. So you don’t thank the axe for chopping the wood, it is only a tool in the hands of the woodchopper. The same is with the sun and the moon. The effect they have on earth is a passive one, not one that they can choose to do or not do, and therefore all recognition should go to the Creator and not to the tool.

Chassidus explains it on an even more subtle level, that when a person is obsessed with business and is consumed by the schemes of business, that that is a subtle form of idolatry because he is giving the world of business a significance beyond what it deserves. He is believing that although the bracha, the blessing, of profit and success comes from G-d, yet he believes that the way he goes about the business and the amount of effort he puts into the business, are all significant and that they somehow also play some part in his success. So he puts his mind into it, and putting one’s mind into the business is similar to bowing to it, by humbling oneself to the demands of the business. That is like bowing to an idol, and that is giving significance to a tool instead of giving the significance to its master.

So when you do work during the six days by being consumed in it, it is because you are giving significance to the laws of the business world, and are bowing to those laws. But when you realize that the business is only an axe in the hands of the Creator, then your mind and heart are not in the business and then the blessing from G-d comes automatically and effortlessly.

This gives us another insight into why we should go about our business passively as if it is happening by itself because that in turn brings the blessing from G-d, that G-d gives us His blessing in the full measure without effort, b’derech memeleh.

And so Moshe gathered the people on the day after Yom Kippur, because the removal of the sin of avodah zarah, the way to get rid of this particular avodah zarah is by telling people that during the six days of the week, your work should be effortless, without involvement. This idea that your efforts should be without involvement of mind and heart, can also be understood on a much higher level, in the world of G-dliness. In the service of G-d, there is also a way of fixing the sin of the golden calf, without involvement.

The Mishnah says that we should not be like servants who serve the master for the sake of a reward, but like servants who serve without the sake of a reward. When a person studies Torah and it gives him pleasure or he does mitzvahs because it feel right, that is doing mitzvahs for a reward. The ideal way is without the reward, not because of the pleasure that the mitzvah has, but rather because it is what G-d wants - to do it for G-d and not for oneself.

This is called doing a mitzvah b’derech memeleh – without personal involvement. It is an effort; since he is not doing for his own personal pleasure, and as we said before, when there is a lack of pleasure then it is an effort. On the other hand, when a person is doing his mitzvahs and studying Torah and living like a Jew because of the feelings of pleasure, he can sometimes come to the mistaken conclusion that all this goodness is coming from himself, because he is a refined character, has a good mind and so on, and that’s why he learns, gives tzedaka…

But when he does the mitzvah without involvement, “t’asei” passively, without involving his personal experience of the mitzvah, when he does it for G-d’s sake, then he knows it is not coming from him, but it is coming from Above. As the Gemarrah says, G-d asks us to open the door for Him the width of an eye of a needle, and then He opens the door as wide as a palace gate. This means that when a person does just a little bit, G-d does the rest. So he knows that it is coming not from himself but from G-d. And even the little bit, the opening up, can be attributed to G-d. That is why it is called b’derech memeleh, passively without involvement, because he is not attributing the success of the mitzvahs to his efforts, rather to a blessing from Above.

And so it is also with the correcting of the sin of the golden calf, which reintroduced the unholiness of the sin of the Tree of Knowledge. When Adam and Chava ate from the Tree of Knowledge, they brought a certain unholiness into the world and at the Giving of the Torah that unholiness was removed, which by making the golden calf, came back.

So the sin of the Tree of Knowledge was a result of taking oneself seriously, as it says that the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and that it is pleasurable to the eyes. By feeling the enjoyment, this brought the sin. How is this fixed? By “yagiya b’derech memeleh,” rather than doing mitzvahs because of how it feels, because the pleasantness of the mitzvah, there has to be kabalos ole. Because from pleasantness of mitzvahs, you can easily slip into the pleasantness of that which is not mitzvahs. And so instead of going on how it feels, of attributing it to one’s perceptions, go instead b’derech memeleh, let it be the way G-d wants it to.

And with this we will understand why here Moshe had to gather the people, rather than just simply stating the commandments.

Since it was the day after Yom Kippur, and Yom Kippur was the correcting of what was damaged by the golden calf, so he had to bring the world back together again. Originally the whole world was one united land belonging to one G-d, a reshus hayachid, a private domain, G-d’s dwelling place. When the sins were introduced, it became scattered – this was holy, this was unholy, there was division. That’s why as a result of Yom Kippur, “ vayakhel Moshe” Moshe gathered the world back together again, bringing the world back to oneness. This is why it says, these are the things, six days you should work – this refers to the world of space – and he said it to all the children of Israel – they are the soul of the world – and six days you should work and on the seventh is Shabbos– that represents time. So olam, shana, nefesh – space, time and soul – make up the whole world.

And so by bringing them all together, Moshe was creating a oneness to replace the division that had been caused by the sin.

And when we do this, with the power from Moshe that exists in everyone of us then we fulfill the ultimate purpose of creation. Instead of sin, where the world is damaged, we have the world in its completeness and perfection. This will be realized with the coming of Moshiach, with the Third Bais HaMikdash, and as the Gemarrah says, we know how to keep Shabbos because of the work that was done in the Bais HaMikdash, so we will have the Bais HaMikdash and the laws of Shabbos in their completeness speedily in our days.

In the posuk “ ele hadevarim” these are the things, the Gemarrah says that from this we learn the thirty nine labors that are prohibited on Shabbos, which were the thirty nine labors that were done in the construction of the Mishkan. The fact that the thirty nine labors that are prohibited on Shabbos are derived from the things that were done in the Mishkan, tells us that there is an essential connection between them. It is not merely a coincidence that the thirty nine melachas that are prohibited on Shabbos, happened to be the thirty melachas that were necessary in the construction of the Mishkan.

Their connection is two fold. First of all, where do all the things that we do during the week, why do they exist? They exist because they are necessary in the Mishkan. And from the holiness of the Mishkan, they eventually devolve into worldly activities for the six days of the week. Secondly, because the purpose and ultimate achievement of all these labors is to make a Mishkan, therefore when we do them in the course of the six days of the week, their purpose is also to create a Mishkan, to make this world a dwelling place for G-d.

With this we will be able to understand why we are allowed to do labor in the first place. Since the purpose of all labor during the week is to make a Mishkan, therefore it is a mitzvah even during the week to be involved in labor as it is part of making the Mishkan, of turning the world into a dwelling place for G-d. The only difference is the Mishkan is in fact a dwelling place for G-d, while the rest of the world is a potential dwelling place for G-d.

Therefore we have to take advantage of every moment to work and be involved in our physical activities in such a way to realize the potential of this world - to make this world a dwelling place for G-d in the actual, by seeing in everything we do an element of G-dliness and revealing that potential to have actual G-dliness that the whole world becomes G-d’s private dwelling place.

Shopping cart

0 Product(s) in cart

Total $0.00

» Checkout

It's Good News