We are blessed this week with reading the portion of Va'yakhel - the completion and inauguration of the Mishkan / the Tabernacle; we read the extra section in Sh'mote / Exodus 30 that grants this Shabbat its special name: Shabbat Sh'kalim - the offering of the half shekel to the Mishkan and later the Mikdash / the Temple; we bless the new moon, ushering in the month of Adar and Purim. If that wasn't enough to lay on the shoulders of one Shabbat than we can add to it the completion of reading the second of the Five Books of the Torah - we complete Exodus - while still wandering in the desert.

So why am I drawn to commandedness this week? When reading the Torah portion I found a repetitive rhythm in the form of "...as God Commanded Moshe." Though I may be mistaken, I counted this phrase fifteen times. For the rationalists this will mean little, if at all; for the mystics it will mean heaven and earth, since the numeric value of 15 is the letters Yud and Heh, and the Talmud teaches us that God created heaven and earth with these two letters. And as you know, if I counted incorrectly and there are more, or less, I'll have what to say about that number, too.

The Chassidic masters are those that are driving me to ask about commandedness. The Ma'or Ay'nayim, Reb Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl (1730-1797), in his opening remark to our Torah portion says / asks: "These are the accounts of the Mishkan/Tabernacle"... for it is known that the Torah is God's names... and what was in the time of the Mishkan, how does it teach us the way to walk / how to behave in our times..." The Yismach Yisrael (R' Yerachmiel Yisroel Yitzchok Dancyger,1853-1910, asks regarding Aharon, on the pasuk/verse "...and Aharon did so" (Bamidbar/ Numbers 8:3): "Why do we need to be told that Aharon did so, could we imagine that he would change what God commanded of him, and act differently?" These two Chassidic masters ask of me to pause and ask, what am I meant to learn from the repetition of Moshe doing as God commanded? Does this concept of acting as God commanded inform the rhythm of my life? Especially when in the adjacent chapter the commands were given, why would we imagine that Moshe would do things other than the way he was told to do them? Do I / we have a way of walking in the world that mirrors this?

It is told that when the Ma'or Ay'nayim was still a disciple of the Ba'al Shem Tov (the founder of the Chassidic movement, 1700-1760), his master sent him to a certain village to collect donations for orphaned brides and grooms; hours of knocking on doors, and not one donation in his hand. The Ma'or Ay'nayim sits himself down on a stone on the side of the road exiting the town, ready to give up, and from a distance he sees two policemen escorting someone to prison. He thought that he must be hallucinating from fatigue and despair, since the prisoner was dancing. The Chernobler Rebbe stops him and asks him who is he, and why is he dancing while being escorted to prison? The prisoner, in dismay:

"I'm Moisheleh Ganev / Moisheleh the thief, everyone knows me!" "Moisheleh Ganev, what do you mean that everyone knows you?" "This is who I am, this what I do. And every once in a while I get caught, they throw me into jail for a while and then I'm back again..."

The Chernobler tried to convince Moishele that this would be the last time, begged him to promise that he would stop.

"Stop???" roared Moishele Ganev, "How can I stop doing what I'm meant to be doing? How can I stop doing what God asks of me?"

And with these words he motions to the policemen and he continues dancing his way to jail.

The Chernobler sits again, recalling Moishele the thief's words: "How can I stop doing what I'm meant to be doing? How can I stop doing what God asks of me?", only this time he says them to himself. It is with these words that he dances himself, one more time through the same town, and within a short few hours he has all the money he needs for all ten orphaned brides and grooms! Just so you know, it is told that when he returned to the Ba'al Shem Tov, eager to tell him all that had happened, he was summoned immediately to the Ba'al Shem Tov's study, and before he opened his mouth the Ba'al Shem Tov looked at him and said, "So, my dear one, what does Eliyahu HaNavi / Elijah the prophet look like when he's dancing between two policemen?"

The last three verses of our Torah portion offer us the beginning of an answer to our opening question "Where Does Commandedness Take You?" to our question whether commandedness pulsates throughout our life, and to the understanding of what Kofer Nefesh could mean for us today:

"And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Yisra'el went onward in all their journeys: but if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Yisra'el, throughout all their journeys." (Sh'mot/Exodus 40:36-38).

I believe that what we are asked of today is to look at our lives and to ask ourselves, what does our journey look like? Are we living a life that God's presence is in the background and the foreground of our steps? Can we trust to continue on our journey, regardless of the challenges, knowing that the pillar of fire and the cloud of glory are walking with us every step? Does this sense of commandedness lead us to dance our souls on their way to celebrate being who we are meant to be, and doing what we are meant to be doing in God's world?

May we dance together this Shabbat. Shabbat shalom.