The Part That Stays Perfect (2 minutes)

0:00Okay, I'm glad you're here, and let's get ready for Shabbos. If we're building the Mishkan, that means we're building the perfected world. So to understand all of these ideas, first we have to understand what Shabbos stands for, and then we have to understand what the Mishkan stands for. But can we talk about our own lives first, you and me? It's so easy to think everything is falling apart all over the time. And if I don't build it, it will never get built. But the truth is, the only thing that really exists at all is God, and God is perfect, which means perfection continues to exist no matter what. And that's why we don't build the Mishkan on Shabbos, because that element of creation which exists to this day is perfect and it hasn't gone away. It's like there's an aspect to yourself of your own pure soul, which can never be solid, so too there's a part of this world which is already constructed and doesn't need

1:05to be built on Shabbos, because that perfection continues to exist even amidst the brokenness and never goes away. I once heard that there's not 39 categories of labor, but there's actually 40 categories of labor. But the 40th category is making something out of nothing. And so when it comes to the laws of Shabbos, we don't have to worry about breaking that one, because only God can do that one. God already made perfection and it continues to exist in this world. So why does Moshe reverse it? Why does God say, build the Mishkan first? And Moshe instead tells the people about Shabbos first, because Moshe understood it so easy for us to forget that perfection still exists no matter what is going on in the world. And when we know that, it's so much easier to build, and it gets to that last piece where

2:07the oneness of God becomes revealed forever. Good Shabbos, good Shabbos.