Pray Tell!

This week’s Torah portion repeats the instructions for and the events concerning the building of the Mikdash; as Rabbi Plaut points out, while this repetition might feel tedious to modern readers, it would have been reassuring to ancient listeners: the more clearly version A and version B connect, the more likely those facts were to be true.

The repetition also underscores the importance in the building of the Mikdash of a partnership; God cannot live among the people if the people don’t create a place for God. Moreover, the children of Israel can’t build the Mikdash individually. It’s up to all of them to work together to create the Mikdash. Partnership therefore works two ways: on the one hand, it takes a partnership of Jews to create a sacred space, and the relationship between Jews and God also requires a partnership.

What is it that makes a partnership successful? No matter what sort of pairing we’re talking about, communication forms the most important aspect of partnership. You can’t work together if you don’t know what the other party wants, right? Certainly the relationship between B’nai Yisrael and God might not be an equal partnership, but we still need to communicate with the Divine. To me, that’s where prayer comes in.

To pray with sincerity, as the Talmud exhorts us to do, is to pray with the belief that God hears us. Prayer is therefore an inherently affirmative, optimistic act: the very act of praying implies that we believe someone is listening—that God is listening. So pray with sincerity. Converse with God. Communicate with your partner. Allow prayer to be transformative. God is listening, so you might as well have something to say.

A well-lighted place?

This week's Torah portion contains another reminder that we're supposed to work for six days and then, fer crying out loud already people, take the seventh day off. No work on Shabbat! You're not even allowed to light a fire! Sorry for the yelling. It's not me, really, it's the repetition of the point.

So why no fire? Letting your fires go out is not a good thing when it took a bit more than striking a match or turning on the burner to get the flames a-jumping again. Part of it, according to the Rabbanim, is that lighting a fire is part of the 39 melachot, the professions and actions involved in creating the Beit HaMikdash; there's more to it, too, I'm certain.

Coincidentally, I was looking up another Shabbat no-no today, that we don't lay tefillin on Shabbat. Why no tefillin on Shabbat? In the Talmud, we're told in the name of Rabbi Akiva that since laying tefillin is a sign of the people's relationship with God and since Shabbat itself is a sign of that same relationship, well, we don't need to double-up our signs. In short, we don't lay tefillin on Shabbat because the day itself reminds us of the relationship we have with God.

So back to the fire--why no fire on Shabbat? I think it's because we already have a fire with us on Shabbat: our own, internal Aish Tamid, an eternal flame, the Divine Spark...our souls. That's right, in my view, we don't light a fire on Shabbat because we already have a fire going. On Shabbat, we should tend our own fires, our souls, and look to them for heat, warmth, and comfort. Six days for the other fires in our lives (make your own pun, please), and only the internal fire on Shabbat.