Parshat Vayakhel – March 21, 2025 / 21 Adar, 5785

When will the Sabbath Day finally come for us as Jewish people? When will our day of rest truly arrive? These might seem like odd questions to ask on Shabbat, which is our designated day of holy rest. This week’s Torah portion, before delving into the detailed building of the Mishkan, or tabernacle in the desert, gives us God’s command to observe Shabbat, the Sabbath day. As many of us know, we are supposed to rest on Shabbat; which according to our Rabbis from the Mishnah can be operationalized as refraining from 39 categories of work, or Melakhot. Rather curiously, our Torah portion this week only mentions one of these 39 categories: We are told, “Lo t’vaaru eish b’chol moshvoteichem b’yom HaShabbat- You shall not kindle fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath Day.” No fire is to be ignited on Shabbat. We are supposed to rest, not deal with active, and even dangerous, flames. 

This portion is so filled with building instructions and the beautiful generous and righteous giving of the Children of Israel; a people who give so much that they have to be told to stop; these children of Israel- the builders of the beautiful Mishkan, are the same people who, today, are not being offered a Sabbath Day…a Shabbat of rest, by the world-at-large, and maybe sometimes even by one another. The flames of Jewish hatred and antisemitism are constantly being kindled. How are we to rest on our Shabbat when it seems like so many are at work to send our traditions, our homeland, our people, into flames. I have talked with many who are anxious and downright fearful about what the world has in store for our people. What does it mean when antisemitic posts on the internet skyrocket by more than 1,000 percent on the very same day that Israel is attacked? I am talking about October 7th, 2023. This is before any response from Israel. The embers of antisemitism were always glowing right beneath the surface, and the attacks of October 7th were a gust of wind blowing the embers across the world and starting what seem to be uncontrolled wildfires. 

What makes this conversation all the more difficult is that the wildfires have also engulfed this conversation into a political one. No matter where one falls on the political spectrum, I have been hard-pressed to find any Jew who is not disturbed by videos of masked individuals at a prominent New York City University calling for the murder of Israeli Jews, and glorifying terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah as justified freedom fighters. When did the hatred of Israel and the calling for the destruction of the Jewish state and the Jewish people themselves become awkwardly entangled in a struggle between democrat and republican? My best educated guess is that the actors who wish to see Jews and our only Jewish state as no more likely figure that the best way to dismantle a people is not to do so with rockets, gunfire, and hostages in dark tunnels (That does not work!) but by taking the advice of our own 16th president Abraham Lincoln; who made it famously clear in his 1858 speech at the Illinois Republican State Convention that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Israel’s right to exist as the only democracy in the Middle East and the safety of the Jewish people on a University Campus in the largest city in what is supposed to be the most free country in the world…these things should not be much of a source of division for Jews. However, when the clearest waters of our commonality are muddied with politically partisan issues, it becomes more difficult to take a stand for our people. This seems intentional. Let us not be fooled. According to Gallup, Americans with sympathy toward Israelis was at 64 percent in 2019. Fast forward to 2025, to today, in the wake of the most horrific attack on Jews since the holocaust, and that number of American sympathizers with Israel has plummeted to 46 percent. Now, less than half of this country feels for the plight of Israelis, and I do not believe it would be going out on a limb to say that this likely correlates to the attitude toward Jews in America as well. We need one another, but we also need others.

As we just discussed and spieled about during Purim last week, there have been many times in our history when the future looked very bleak, but we have always found ways to overcome even the most precarious of situations. I find hope in some of the most important things that our tradition has to offer–divrei, words. I was lucky enough to be able to be part of a multi-faith forum at a local junior high school last week. Students visited five different tables during their social studies class period. They visited stations with information about the traditions of Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs. While this educational aspect was a productive experience, what I found the most heartening was lunch time. All of us clergy people from different backgrounds sat in the middle of the room together, and save for those fasting for Ramadan, we ate together. Even those fasting sat with us. We had spiritual conversation…we were human to one another. I serve on many of these multi-faith forums and panels. The criticism usually is that these are ideal settings, and they don’t represent or tackle the real problems of the larger world. I am starting to disagree with this notion. Why? Because I keep doing them. I keep sharing words with people who might think, live, and pray differently from myself. If this were to happen enough—if these offerings were continuously made, would we have too much peace, too much understanding, too much togetherness, too many small conversations? This is doubtful! As the children of Israel were told before they began building the Mishkan, The correct materials must be offered…the same goes for productive dialogue. 

We can do our part by continuing the conversations that extinguish the flames of hatred. Mechabeh, or extinguishing a flame is also one of the 39 melachot, or categories of work, that Jews are told to avoid on Shabbat. We need allies to stand up for us and fight fire with us. We cannot extinguish the flames on our own. We need friends of all backgrounds and faiths to demand that the masks of those who wish us harm are removed, and that the hatred is brought into the plain light of day. When will we be allowed a true Sabbath day; a real rest? When the flames of antisemitism are extinguished, not only by us, but by the world who sees the value in a Jewish future. What we cannot do is add fuel to the fire by taking the political bait of those who would use our peoplehood as pawns. Our existence is apolitical. Our safety is not negotiable. Perhaps we can agree on that. When the flames finally clear, I hope we can all have a nice lunch together, not with the same exact views about everything…not with naivete of difference, but with shared humanity. Humanity must also be willing to share with us. 

May we all be blessed to see clearly through the smoke rising from the flames of hatred. We must give one another oxygen as we also offer the ruach, the breath of fruitful words and conversation to those who misunderstand and miscast us as a people. We work to share a true Sabbath day, and know that our tradition also tells us that it is not our duty to complete the work, but neither are we free to desist from it. So, as Torah tells us, let us rest, and then keep building our future of harmony with beautiful materials in abundance. 

Shabbat Shalom

– Rabbi Josh Gray