Shabbos Ki Sisa Parah - 5780

Shabbos Ki Sisa Parah - 5780

Rabbi Hal Miller

And you, speak to the children of Israel saying, however observe My Sabbaths

for it is a sign between Me and you for your generations to know that I am God

Who sanctifies you. [Shemos 31:13]

In the middle of discussing the construction of the Mishkan, the tent version of

God's sanctuary in the desert, suddenly the verse says 'ach'. God tells Moshe to

say to the people, 'ach' observe Shabbos. How does that fit into the flow, and

exactly what does ach mean?

Beis HaLevi explains that some mitzvos are key to being Jewish, such as the

observance of Shabbos, while others only serve to bring a heightened level of

sanctity to the Jewish people, such as building the Mishkan, and are therefore,

relatively speaking, luxuries. Sforno thus says, even though God commanded

the Jews to build the Mishkan, that command did not override His earlier directive

to keep the Sabbath, for by ignoring the Sabbath command in order to build the

Mishkan would be useless as God would not treat it as His home.

Rashi explains ach to mean just, as in just observe My Sabbaths. He imputes

to the Jews eagerness and enthusiasm to build the Mishkan to the point where

they would make a mistake and violate the Shabbos commandment. Ramban

disagrees with Rashi, and dissects the verse to show that grammatically, this

limitation does not apply to building but rather to observing, thus results in

precisely the opposite ruling, that we must build the Mishkan on Shabbos. He

therefore explains ach as however, as in however you must observe My

Sabbaths. Nechama Leibowitz did a study and found a version of Rashi's

text where he in fact does say the opposite of what we have in our text.

Onkelos reads it as nevertheless. We must build the Mishkan, nevertheless

we must observe the Shabbos. Rav Hirsch describes it as meaning only.

Nevertheless, only, however, all seem to connote the same thing, that we are

to build the Mishkan, but not on Shabbos. For this purpose, the word aval,

meaning but, would have made good sense. Why ach instead of aval?

The Beis HaLevi's explanation seems to resolve this. These two mitzvos

are somehow related, thus the Torah gave them together, yet there is a

distinction to be learned. Some things are required for who we are, other

things bring more depth, but do not change who we are.