Vayakheil-Pekudei, March 25

This week’s double Parsha: Vayakheil-Pekudei, which describes the construction of the Mishkan opens with the verse Vayakheil Moshe es kol Adas bnei Yisrael “Moshe assembled the entire congregation of the Children of Israel.” After a brief recapitulation of the mitzvah of Shabbat, we are again told Vayomeir Moshe el kol adas bnei Yisrael “Moshe spoke to the entire congregation of the Children of Israel” which marks the beginning of Moshe’s instructions to them on how to build the Mishkan.

Over and over, through the account of the building of the Mishkan, the Torah emphasizes the participation of the entire community—that every person whose heart moved them contributed, that men and women alike contributed, that every man and every woman with skill in weaving or construction or other arts relevant to the building of the Mishkan participated. The emphasis on universal participation is notable. We do not see such repeated emphasis elsewhere, nor does the Torah tell us regarding every mitzvah that Moshe spoke about it to the entire community. It seems there’s something special about the Mishkan.

The Mishkan is not just a place for religious rites and rituals to take place. The Mishkan is built in order to allow God’s presence to dwell among the Jewish people. As such, the Mishkan needed to be the product of the labor and contributions of the entire people. It would not do to have some subpopulation of Jews sitting around taking credit for building God’s dwelling place on earth while others experienced no share in it. Moreover, we might even argue that Mishkan could only serve its function of enabling God’s presence to dwell among the Jewish people, when all Jews have a share in it.

Let us bear this in mind as we continue to build up our own community here in Sacramento. Any institution that belongs to, serves, and welcomes only a fraction of the Jewish people, cannot be a dwelling place for God’s presence. If we want the Shekhina to rest upon KITC, we must make sure that we are a place where all Jews can gather and participate fully in the community. This means making sure that we don’t inadvertently exclude people with limited financial resources, or people who may not be halakhically observant. That we are welcoming of everyone, even if they do not dress or talk the way we expect Orthodox Jews to dress or talk. We must find a way to make sure our services and classes are accessible to people with different levels of Torah knowledge and different levels of Hebrew ability. It means we must also make sure that people with disabilities are able to participate fully in the life of the community.

In short, to make our community a dwelling place for the Divine, we must make sure that every Jew has a place here. That’s not an easy task, and it’s a goal that perhaps can never be achieved completely. However, if we persistently strive to become a community where truly all are welcome, then I believe in the process we will become better Jews, we will become a stronger community, and we will bring more Chessed, more loving-kindness, more of God’s presence, into this world.

P.S. If you have any ideas for projects that will help further the goal of being a truly inclusive community, I would love to talk to you—send an email to Rabbi@kitcsacramento.org and we can set up a time to discuss.

Rabbi Garth Silberstein