Mlachot: parallel between those of Shabbat and of creation
see also:
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Posted to group שבוע שבוע - פרשת השבוע של 929 on FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/parasha929/permalink/826828295161398
הקבלה בין העינויים ביום הכיפורים לבין תנאי החיים שנתחדשו לאדם וחוה עקב גירושם מגן עדן
בגלל "קוץ ודרדר תצמיח לך", ו"הוא ישופך ראש ואתה תשופנו עקב" אדם צריך לנעול נעליים, כדי להגן על עצמו מפני צמחים חדים, ומבעלי חיים עוקצים. ביום הכיפורים, כדי לחזור למצב שלפני החטא, אחד העינויים הוא הימנעות מנעילת הסנדל.
הקב"ה עשה לאדם וחוה 'כתנות עור' להלבישם, ועקב כך אנו נמנעים מנעילת מנעלי עור דווקא.
"בזעת אפיך תאכל לחם", והזיעה (ו"זוהמה") מחייב רחיצה וסיכה. ביום כיפור חוזרים אנו למצב של ניקיון כפיים, של אי-צורך ברחיצה וסיכה.
תשמיש המיטה . ביום הכיפורים אנו מתעלים על היצר, כדי לחזור למצב כפי שהיה בגן עדן, לפני שנקבע: "הרבה ארבה עצבונך והירונך בעצב תלדי בנים ואל אישך תשוקתך והוא ימשול בך".
"בזעת אפך תאכל לחם". עקב כך נמנעים אנחנו מלאכול ולשתות ביום הכיפורים, כדי לחזור למצב של קודם החטא.
https://hidush.co.il/hidush.asp?id=1210 ראה
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My post re mishkan and shabbos etc; this and a previous week were for end of sfer shmos parhiyos: https://www.facebook.com/avi.rabinowitz/posts/4640799812709392:6
Shabbat: Why did God celebrate RESTING rather than the creative act itself - what is so special about the resting from creation that God sanctified that day, made it holy. When we achive something great and then go on vacation, in later years it is the acheivement which is meaningful, not the going on vacation afterwards!
And if God created the world in 6 days and then rested, why should WE rest?
And why every 6 days, why not on an annual holiday?
And why according to Traditional Judaism is it permitted to work on the Shabbat - after all, the Rabbi is most busy that day!
Some of the above will be addressed, but moreso, we will focus on this quesiotn:
Why does keeping shabbat in Traditional Judaism involve so much that is inscrutable, where what is forbidden on Shabbat is a list of very specific rather arcane mundane actions?
An allegory: As an introduction to the explanation, let's imagine a scifi movie: information from some mysterious source outside Earth is received, and it turns out to be the specifications for building some structure, but the information is provided as a puzzle or riddle.
The people of Earth are told that there are parallels between the structure and that of the fundamental aspects of the physical universe - in fact the aspects required for making the strucuture parallel in some deep way the aspects required to bring the universe into existence. So scientists try to figure out which actions were needed for the creation of the universe, and then they use those actions to erect the structure.
Amazingly, when people enter the structure they feel a special spirtual sense, a conection to their essence. It turns out that humans can feel this special spirituality because they were created by the entity which created the universe, and which gave the specifications of the structure, and this entity's spiritual presence fills the people who enter the structure.
And furthermore, it turns out that after the universe was created, a special energy was placed in it and made accessible under special conditions - and the genetic structure of humans was crafted in such a way that when commemorating that event and refaining from using those specific actions used for the crafting of the universe, and for the structure, they are able to connect to that special energy.
So in this way there is a deep link between how the universe emerged into existence, and the human body, and the special 'structure', and the ability to connect to the creator of it all....
This is what Tradition tells us about the mishkan and perhaps hints about the creation of the universe - and the human body, and the mishkan abd shabbat......
Humanity and the mishkan: In some sense we ourselves are effectively a mishkan ('tabernacle') for God's Presence! God explicitly states to Moses to tell the Jewish People "Have them build me a 'mikdash' (temple), and I will dwell in THEM"! (ie God's presence will 'dwell' NOT in the mikdash but rather in the people). Indeed as described in Genesis humans are constructed by God in the divine image and our essence is God's breath/spirit, and God tells the Jewish people many times in the Torah "be holy for I am holy" (and variations on this phrasing).
Physicality is a creation of God, and was designed to 'house' spirituality, so that the universe created by God according to a very special design is a repository for divine presence, as is the very-specially-designed human body/brain, as is the very-specially-designed Temple, and according to Traditional teachings there is a type of interconneciton and mirroring of these in the other. All parts of the mishkan and its contents and priestly garments as described in the weekly portions recently and upcoming - their measurements and design and function etc - reflect deep relationships between the deeper levels of the universe and of humanity.
Shabbat: Altogether, as we'll see now, there is an intricate interelationship between shabbat, the mishkan and the creation, and humans, holiness, and God,...
The first Holiness was when God sanctified the seventh day, as described in Genesis, and 'rested'. There's no record in Genesis of the notion that EVERY seventh day from then on would be holy, or of the name 'sabbath' for that day, nor that any humans should rest because God did. However long after the creation and this sanctification, soon after the exodus from Egypt, God instructed the Jewish People to similalrly 'rest' every seventh day, calling it 'the sabbath'!
Though these events (creation and the instruction about shabbat) were far apart from each other in time, they are in a sense juxtaposed since the account of the creation and of the sanctification of the 7th day was given in the Torah, ie proclaimed to the Jewish People during the same period (during the sojourn in Sinai) as the command to keep the sabbath every 7th day!.
So the notion of every 7th day being holy, and of commemorating the original 7th day, are made known not at creation but right after the exodus, as part of the instruction to the Jewish People that they are to observe this, and indeed they are instructed that this recurrent shabbat is meant as a commemoration both of the exodus and of the creation of the universe!
Furthermore: As mandated in the Torah, the Jewish People are to assemble at the mishkan/mikdash during the holy days, which are set to occur on dates determined by the combination solar-lunar calendar. The very notion of a cyclical pattern to time, that a special day can recurr annually, and at a set time, is an interesting concept, and it depended on the institution of the holiness of cycles in time institued by the establshment of the sabbath to be every 7th day, which is mentioned in the Torah after the exodus, not in the creation account!.
God says shabbat is the "first of the holidays", which I interpret as referring ot the above-described concept:that it was God's establishment of cyclical holiness in time when creating shabat for the Jewish people to keep every 7th day which then enables the annual Jewish holidays. And of course at those times the Jewishp people were to assemble and experience God's presence in the mishkan which was created using the same actions as for the universe and which the jews undertook to desist from every shabbat
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The relationhship of the mishkan, creation, and the actions forbiden on shabbat: Shabbat of creation, as described at the end of the creation account, occurred once, and relates to all creation and therefore to all created beings. The eternally-recurring Shabbat - every 7 days - is a covenant between God and the Jewish People, regarding that creation and the Shabbat after it, as God put it in the Torah "a sign between Me and the Children of Israel".
As part of that covenant the Jewish People accepted to desist on each Shabbat from specific actions, as described by God to Moses on Sinai and transmitted as part of the Tradition, and which God told Moses is mnemomnically hinted at it in the written Torah, which is only a tiny fraction of the Revelation at Sinai.
We are commanded to keep Shabbat because God rested from creation, so the Torah should have stated 'desist on Shabbat from doing what God did during creation'. However, the Torah passage only mentions to desist from 'mlachot', so presumably we are to rest on Shabbat from doing the melachot God used in creation. Melacha is a word only used in one other place in the Torah - when describing the construction of the mishkan ('tabernacle'); why desist from the mlachot used to construct the mishkan in order to commemorate God’s resting from the mlachot used in creation? My proposal is now obvious: Clearly then, there must be a close connection between the melachot of building the mishkan and creating the universe – in fact the implication of the command of shabbat is that God employed these melachot in creation.
Indeed a close examination reveals many parallels in the words of the Shabbat commandments and the mishkan. One parallel is the celebration of the seventh day, at the end of 6 days of work constructing the mishkan,
Furthermore, an analysis of the words in the creation (and Eden) account reveals MANY parallels to the words/descriptions regarding the making the mishkan as described by Tradition, specifically the keywords of the "39 melachot", the actions forbidden on shabbat) which Tradition associates to the construction of the mishkan.
Much has been written about the parallel between the universe and the mishkan (including its contents) which would explain why the same mlachot would be used for both. Otherwise Shabbat is a (seemingly) blatant on-sequitar: God telling us "desist from the mlachot of the mishkan because I rested after completing creation".
Twice in the Torah (Vayikra 'Leviticus') 19:30 & 26:20 we see direct links betyween shabbat and mikdash: "אֶת-שַׁבְּתֹתַי תִּשְׁמֹרוּ, וּמִקְדָּשִׁי תִּירָאוּ " and further, the 'mnemonic hint' that God conveyed to Moses (or perhaps to all the Jewish People who received divine prophecy while hearing the ten commandments which include the Shabbat) is that the word 'mlachah' which God uses in the Written Torah (dictated word by word to Moses at various times after the assembly at Sinai where they heard about Shabbat directly from God) to describe the agreed-upon actions to refrain from - the 'forbidden acts of Shabbat' - is the same word that God uses in the Written Torah to describe the construction of the mishkan ('Tabernacle' in English), and which is used by the Written Torah in these two contexts.
Some of these parallels are drawn in Traditional texts, but I have attempted to find parallels for all of them: see my Hebrew page [Those familiar with the original text of the Torah and with the technical laws of shabbat, can see the parallels in Hebrew: click on the 'button' at the top of this page, or here: https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/biblethemes/%D7%9C%D7%98-%D7%9E%D7%9C%D7%90%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%9D
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Further reading
I am not at all an expert in the deep teachings on this subject, interested readers can followup rearding the mishkan and its cosmic function including the intricate relation between the structure of the mishkan, its dimensions, the contents of the mshkan, the priestly garments, the sacrifices, and the parallel at the mysitcal level to the structure of the universe, and what God's presence means, and what it means for it to dwell in humans (I have only tangential familiarity with all these topics). There are many deep works written about these topics (and a little is accessible via google searching using the relevant keywords, eg "connection mishkan and universe" etc), and much more is contained in the Oral Tradition especially the mystical teachings which are only comprehensible to those who have already studied all of Torah and tradition and have practised all the commandments and have purified and refined their character (I cannot claim to be in this category) (See for example the Path outlined in the holy guide-book to self-development "Mesilat Yesharim" written by Ramchal (Luzzatto).
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May we be blessed to connect to the mishkan and to shabbat both, and make ourselves a vessel for accepting God's presence, especially this week when we read about it in the Torah portion! (And a good place to start of course is in celebrating shabbat, starting with the customary kabbalat shabbat service during which the divine presence, the schechinah, is welcomed, along with the holiness of shabbat itself...)
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. In the Written Torah, God relates those instruction given to Moses which had been transmitted to the Jewish People (before the writing of the Torah), in which God states "they shall build me a mishkan and/so that I can dwell in THEM". So the mishkan is a special 'vehicle' for enabling the divine presence to more-fully 'dwell in humanity'. ....
Tradition tells us that Moses was instructed by God that indeed these are the actions to desist from on Shabbat.
Answer: [Like the mind/body duality and paradox]: God is transcendent, but inhabits the universe which is physical, the mishkan is a physical building containing the presence of God, the huuman body is physical but God’s spirit = soul inhabits it (and by mishkan it says: vashachanti betocham = in the PEOPLE!).
The mishkan is mapped to the universe,and so is man’s body.
The mishkan was complete in six days, Bnay Yisrael rested on the seventh, and therefore the creation account tells of the parallel, the creation of the other two mishkans for God: the universe, and man. Man (God’s mishkan, and the fulfillment of creation) is completed on the sixth day, and with that the universe is complete, and therefoee Humanity refrains from "MLACHOT HAMISHKAN" on shabbat, after the sixth day.
[But not that God actually created the universe in 6 days or needed rest etc.]
Why would God imitate Humanity in this? Because humanity is the mishkan for God’s presence (“vayipach be’apo” is Eden account, but is OK because the 6-day account says “tzelem elokim”); also, Torah presents God as parallel to bnei yisrael, as in tfilin of God where it says “mi ke’amcha yisrael”.
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mishkan shabbos etc:
see long vort by someone, similar to my stuff
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#advanced-search/from=air1%40nyu.edu&subset=all&has=vayakhel&within=1d&sizeoperator=s_sl&sizeunit=s_smb&query=from%3A(air1%40nyu.edu)+vayakhel/FMfcgxmLZdRHHtrXlnfWRMnjjksnQhpn?compose=cSRfBQqMhdrxcGNlcBWgpkBBqpphbmWjpwsWRCblQMCtHfxwKsDCVbPdvgrWLsldQDVNjlHfPXPnhXQvHZwdFQDqsHcWTPPsWGVTCpTVgQSXRVDkVPbhwJLkLZzRNwtGjzwHfvFfzbRbLVbXCSWmRDCxMZgNwRCL
bigdei kehuna,
klei hamishkan,
hakomas hamishkan: parallels to shabbos, 6 days etc,
mlachot shabbat.
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desist from work on Shabbat? ronically, the people whose hardest work is on shabbat are Rabbis! (Actually, their wives, the rebetzins, work even harder...). 'Work' per se is not what is forbidden, "mlachah" is forbidden....So....what's "mlachah? "...Ahh, now you're talking!"
https://www.facebook.com/groups/7594892115/permalink/10157642383442116/
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hanks for the comment............ Ironically, the people whose hardest work is on shabbat are Rabbis! (Actually, their wives, the rebetzins, work even harder...). 'Work' per se is not what is forbidden, "mlachah" is forbidden....So....what's "mlachah? "...Ahh, now you're talking!"
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Teruma
Veshachanti Betocham: God/Universe/Human/Mishkan
Although the physical and spiritual are different, and the spiritual cannot be ‘located in’ something physical, there is nevertheless an association of the two (mind/body problem)
· The universe is a physical entity housing God’s presence
· The human body is a physical construct housing the soul, an aspect of the divine.
· The mishkan is a physical construct housing God’s presence: or more precisely, allowing for the presence of God to connect with that aspect of God’s presence which is ‘inside’ us (is our sessence).
Question: Why should God command the same mlachot for making the mishkan as were used for creating the world?
Answer: [Like the mind/body duality and paradox]: God is transcendent, but inhabits the universe which is physical, the mishkan is a physical building containing the presence of God, the huuman body is physical but God’s spirit = soul inhabits it (and by mishkan it says: vashachanti betocham = in the PEOPLE!).
The mishkan is mapped to the universe,and so is man’s body.
The mishkan was complete in six days, Bnay Yisrael rested on the seventh, and therefore the creation account tells of the parallel, the creation of the other two mishkans for God: the universe, and man. Man (God’s mishkan, and the fulfillment of creation) is completed on the sixth day, and with that the universe is complete, and THEREFORE MAN DOES NOT DO THE MLACHOT HAMISHKAN on shabbat, after the sixth day.
[But not that God actually created the universe in 6 days or needed rest etc.]
Why would God imitate Humanity in this? Because humanity is the mishkan for God’s presence (“vayipach be’apo” is Eden account, but is OK because the 6-day account says “tzelem elokim”); also, Torah presents God as parallel to bnei yisrael, as in tfilin of God where it says “mi ke’amcha yisrael”.
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Question: Since the whole idea of shabbos rests on the 6 days of creation, is it necessary to interpret the 6 days of creation literally?
Connection between shabbos and yetziat mitzrayim:
Imagine if the Torah had not included the creation account, no mention of 6 days, for example if the Torah only said: God designed and created the universe, and made sure it produced humans and other life." And then it went right into the Adam and Eve story. Or if it had the creation account but without the phrases about "and it was evening and it was morning", "one day, second day, third day" etc (and without reference to the six days later on in the Torah).
Other possibilities:
· if the creation mentioned in the Torah was instant, as one might have expected from an infinitely-powerful creating God.
· if the creation account spoke of creation in 6 days, but had no reference to God resting;
· if there was no creation account included in the Torah;
· if there was mention of God resting after creation but there was no mention of the Jewish People having to rest because God rested.
Since Shabbos observance is separately mandated in order to commemorate the exodus from Egypt ('zecher leyitziat mitzrayim'), we would still have shabbos
The commandment to keep shabbos was given only after yetziat mitzrayim. Ie one might have thought that such a key concept would have been given to Avraham etc. So this can perhaps be taken as implying that the institution of shabbos is due to the experience in mizrayim, but that it is on the sixth day because of the creation. So even without the story of the 6 days of creation, we would know of Shabbat, just that there would be no reason to have it on the 7th day, maybe we'd have it annually, or once a month.
Alternately, if the Torah would say ‘rest on the seventh day because you were slaves in Egypt’ we would know to rest on the seventh day but it would be a non-sequitar. Of course in any case the whole concept is a non-sequitar as we pointed out above, and also for other reasons: just because God rested, we have to rest? What is the connection? And why would it take God 6 days to create the universe?
Did God create the universe in 6 days?: To be precise: We don’t know that God created the universe “in six days” , what we know is that the creation account which God told Moses to write in the Torah describes a creation taking 6 days; and much later on in the Torah, and later on in history, a rest day is decreed for every seventh day.
An all-powerful being need not rest, and a being who created time is not bound by it: if we interpret the 6 days, and the 'resting' totally allegorically, as would befit a God who is not physical and is beyond time, we could still have shabbos because of the separate commandment regarding shabbos as a reminder of the end of slavery in Egypt.]
A Reverse Interpretation: In this view, Jews are to refrain from doing the mlachot hamishkan on the seventh day because these were the mlachot used for creation. However we can offer a reverse interpretation: God created the universe “in six days” because the bnei yisrael would later create the mishkan in six days: "sof ma’aseh bemachshava tchila".
The completion of the mishkan may have been before the creation account was given to Moses - so the creation account was designed to fit the recent events of the building of the mishkan, and that was no surprise to those who knew that the mlachot which were to be rested from on shabbat were those which had been used not much before in establishing the mishkan. Alternatively, God created the universe in 6 days because that's how long it would take for the Jewish people to build the mishkan; after completing the mishkan they rested on the seventh day and so that is what it means that God 'rested' from creation and that's why the Jewish people were commanded to have shabbos on the seventh day..
Based on this we could say that if not for the story of the 6 days of creation and God resting after it, if we were commanded to keep shabbos to commemorate creation, we could still know to keep shabbos on the seventh day. Since the malchot to rest from on shabbos are those of the building of the mishkan, since the mishkan took 6 days to build, and they rested on the 7th day (parshas Truma), we would learn that so too God created the universe in six days and rested on the 7th.
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אולי 'שמים' הינו החלק הרוחני שבעולם הנבראים דהיינו המשכן וארץ הינו שאר הברואים החומריים
ואז בריאת העולם והמשכן נעשו באותו זמן על ידי אותן המלאכות. ומכאן אם ה' צווה לבני ישראל לבנות את המשכן באותו צורה שה' ברא אותו אזי מלאכות המשכן הם מלאכות בריאת שמים וארץ ובשבת בו שבת ה' ממלאכות שמים וארץ שובתים בני ישראל ממלאכות בריאת העולם מלאכות בנית המשכן.
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[The idea of a rest day is original, and has to do with Yetziat Mitzrayim, and the idea of a seven day cycle is a special invention, not a natural period like day/month/year. ]