Dear Friends,
I hope this note finds you well during these very challenging times.
It has been a painfully hard week as the delicious joy of Adar and Purim has been eclipsed by the darkness of profound internal divisions. The resumption of the war with Hamas and the incoming missiles from Yemen come together with the many battles we have seen ourselves waging against each other on almost every front, political, social, and religious. The pure unity that was in the air not long ago has been replaced by the smog of confrontation, the kol milchama bamachaneh.
As of this writing, it appears that massive numbers of our heroic soldiers of Tzahal are being called upon for yet another stint of extended and dangerous service inside Gaza. Their sacrifice and that of their precious families are immense and they are in desperate need of reinforcements. They must not feel or be alone. That is the mandate of vayakhel.
Vayakhel is the magic word.
Moshe knew that for the Jewish people to successfully undertake the shared enterprise of building the Mishkan – the shul that every single Jew would need to attend – he had to first forge community amongst them. The word vayakhel describes Moshe’s intentional effort to bring the Jewish people together as a kahal, a unified community.
Kli Yakar notes that this effort was successful only because – as Rashi notes – it was undertaken on the day after Yom Kippur. While Klal Yisrael had previously achieved the ultimate quality of community at Sinai, standing together k’ish echad b’lev echad (as one man with one heart), that unity was shattered by the episode of the Golden Calf when Moshe had to call upon the faithful Jews to bear swords and to traverse the camp, killing their guilty brothers, friends, and relatives.
It is difficult to imagine anything further from Sinai’s k’ish echad b’lev echad unity and community.
The original Yom Kippur that followed on the heels of the Golden Calf was therefore not only when Hashem would replace His now shattered luchot and restore the relationship between God and the Jewish people. That Yom Kippur – like every Yom Kippur since – was also a day to heal those sword-inflicted wounds, for us to forgive each other and bring reconciliation between people, bein adam l’chaveiro. Once that spirit of understanding prevailed the time was ripe for vayakhel, for Moshe to forge community and bring us together around the shared enterprise of building the mishkan.
Purim – like Yom Kippurim – is a day of interpersonal warmth and connection. While it is not the season when we beg forgiveness, it is a time for proactive expressions of friendship as Jews everywhere traverse their communities bearing not swords but cookies, delivering yummy goodies to their neighbors, friends, and relatives. The day after Purim should be the time for vayakhel, for us to forge community and come together around the shared enterprise of effort and prayer for a secure and thriving Jewish future, l’hikaheil v’la-amod al nafsham. Quite apparently, we are not there yet.
Today, 21 Adar, is my father’s yahrzeit. Yesterday I read one of his published essays and chanced upon a lesson he shared from that very day’s Daf Yomi, Sanhedrin 93b. My father shared a story from the writer Avraham Kariv who told of the day that the town jester sounded the shofar from a nearby mountaintop, leading his townspeople to run to the rabbi and inquire if Moshiach had arrived. The rabbi went to the window, opened it and inhaled the air outside. “I am sorry, but Moshiach has clearly not come as it does not feel like anything has changed.”
My father noted that this sweet tale can be used to illustrate the Talmud’s description of the Moshiach as morach v’da-in, someone capable of making judicial determination with his sense of smell, with his intuitive grasp of the Torah’s values of right and wrong, of justice and decency. When we are doing things right and are worthy of the Moshiach, we too will be able to feel it in the air, to open the windows and smell it.
That fragrance will likely be a combination of the ketoret incense of Yom Kippur, representing that day’s overwhelmingly generous mood of forgiveness, mixed with the aromas of Purim’s home-baked mishloach manot, embodying our desire to do whatever we can for each other. I am not quite sure what that combination smells like, but we clearly don’t quite smell it yet.
It is time for vayakhel.
Have a wonderful Shabbos and may be blessed with besoros tovos, truly good news.
Moshe Hauer
