Vayakhel
In order to build a House that will represent unity, it is essential to assemble the people in unity.
Moses gathers the people close, assembling them as one and stresses the importance of Shabbat. After downloading the Tabernacle plans upon Mount Sinai, Moses now diagrams it for the people. The people bring all of the materials needed for building, and than some. A team of expert craftsmen builds the Sanctuary and all its furnishings. The detail of the description is exquisite, enough so that we may emulate this template and build the spiritual equivalent into the many details of our lives.
When Half Is More than Whole
Discover how love is defined by the counter-intuitive power of incompleteness — how being half can be more than being whole.
Read More
Kindred Spirits: The Power of Synergy
Discover the power of community, and how its synergy enhances individuality. Learn how a kindred spirit can help you access your uniqueness.
Read More
The Beginning
Has life’s travails distorted your path? Discover the real you. Learn the power of a birthday and how to reconnect yourself to your own beginning.
Read More
Trust and Self-Interest
Perhaps our current economic meltdown is an unprecedented opportunity to give us all pause to think about the meaning of trust. And to learn the most vital lesson of all: The foundation of all trust is trust in G-d.
Read More
And Moses Gathered… My Georgian Genes
Find inspiration in Moses’ gathering the 600,000 Jews in Parshat Vayakhel to appreciate the great diversity within Judaism.
Read More
Money and Spirituality (Part 2/5)
Part II of a discussion on money and spirituality including class struggles and wealth as the foundation of the material world.
Read More
The Visionary and the Builder
Vision alone can remain abstract and unfulfilled ; building without vision is aimless. First we need the voice of the visionary and then we need to balance it with the voice of the builder.
Read More
Lend an Ear
Just as the women gave everything they had to help build the Mishkan, today women must replicate this in building a strong Jewish home.
Read More
Cause and Effect
The Talmud teaches that the spiritual unity represented by the half-shekel laws precedes the physical differences of cross-breeding laws.
Read More
Heaven and Earth
Don’t be discouraged by the gap between spiritual and material. G-d wants an earthly sanctuary constructed of the finite materials of physical life.
Read More
A Marriage Made on Earth
When a man and woman marry, they unite two approaches of bringing the divine into the spiritual world.
Read More
Vayakhel-Pekudei: And the Good News Is
In this year of hei’elef ushva hame’ot vachamishah veshiv’im – 5775 – may the Alter Rebbe’s pronunciation of the words resonate within us and motivate us to act.
Read More
A Marriage Made on Earth
Man was created male and female initially—as a “single being with two faces.” In marriage, the divine analogue is made whole again. Essay by Rabbi Simon Jacobson based on a letter from the Rebbe.
Read More
Vayakhel Pekudei: Service or Slavery?
We humans must shed the blinding force of self-interest and respond to the call for service; we must weaken the grip that keeps us trapped and enslaved to our own temptations, and allow ourselves to be mobilized to serve – not human structures, but to serve – our higher calling.
Read More
Vayakhel-Pekudei: Faith at Harvard
The debate among academics about Harvard’s core curriculum sheds light on longstanding tensions between scientists and people of faith.
Read More
Vayakhel-Pikudei: Intimate Light
Follow the Divine light from emerging during the Exodus to finding a home in the Temple. The Rebbe Rashab elaborates on the lessons hidden within it.
Read More
Veyakhel: Jerusalem in White
A poem about a great snowfall in the Holy City of Jerusalem and the transformation that happened among its people and sites.
Read More
