By Zoe Friedland

The torah portion of Vayakhel-Pikudei is the story of the erection of the tabernacle, the holy place where the Jews were able to pray during their exile in Egypt. Honestly, most of the portion is measurements for how to build it, and up until now I thought it was this thing.

The most interesting parts of the portion for me are at the beginning. First, Moses comes to the Jews with a reminder to keep shabbat. Keeping shabbat has never been a priority in my life, and I think that is a common mindset for many (though not all!) movement members, yet it is also one of the things that connects me most to Habonim. Perhaps that is because for many of us and our chanichim, shabbat in movement settings are the only places where we celebrate it. Shabbat at machaneh is a time set aside for reflection and renewal, something that can be hard to find when we are not being challenged in such direct ways like at machaneh. And for our chanichim, shabbat can be a time for those who don’t have a strong connection to their Jewish identities to find one. These values don’t have to only exist at machaneh, and I want to encourage all of us in the movement to find ways to recognize the time that shabbat is meant to be. Taking time to do simple things like going for a walk or writing in a journal can be wonderful ways to connect to the parts of ourselves we tend to forget to take care of.

Which brings me to the other part of the portion I found interesting. When Moses asks the Jewish people to donate items to help build the Tabernacle, they bring too much stuff, they give so much that Moses has to ask them to stop. This relates to something many of us tend to do, which is give so much of ourselves that we ignore our own needs. We work on our homework and our extracurriculars and try to also hang out with friends and all of the other things in our lives. All of these things are important, but they shouldn’t be all encompassing. In order for us to be good friends and good madrichim, we need to be able to take care of

ourselves. Sometimes this means we need to step back and take a break. We need to be able to do this without feeling anger or resentment towards that ever present feeling of “not enough”. Refuelling is not only important, but necessary to being able to be as helpful as possible to those around us. There is a great analogy that Toby King (shoutout Gesher/Rishon 63!) told me once that has always stuck: Everyone has a cup of water, and if your cup isn’t too full, someone else can totally empty a little bit of their overflowing cup into yours. This only works if your cup has space though, if it is also full, the water isn’t going anywhere and no one is having fun.

My challenge to my fellow chaverim is to try and take the time to refuel. Take care of yourselves. In the wise words of Tom Haverford “treat yo’self”. And Shabbat can be a wonderful practice in our lives to help us take this time.