Rabbi Yair Robinson

Parashat Pekudei

3/13/26

When I was an assistant rabbi, my senior rabbi had a ritual that he had to perform every high holidays. After the last Tekia Gedola of Neilah, after Havdalah was concluded, after we had wished the last straggler a shana tova, we retired to his office, right next door to mine), where the mahzor, the high holy day prayerbook, was ceremoniously placed back in its empty space on the shelf, thus signifying that the yammim  noraim were officially over. There was also a wee dram of whisky to celebrate, but that’s a story for another time.

There is something profoundly satisfying by being able to declare that one is done: closing the laptop, hitting ‘submit’ on the project, or admiring the sweater or scarf or stool or toy soldier, or painting, or loaf of bread, or whatever creative effort we may have been working on. During the pandemic, many of us picked up long-abandoned hobbies, or took up new projects, and in a moment of chaos found a sense of ‘flow’ and a sense of accomplishment.

So, it first appears in our text as well, that cantor chanted so beautifully for us. We read va-yichal Moshe et malacha…Moses completed the work of the mishkan. The curtains are hung, the tablets—broken and whole—placed in the aron hakodesh, the menorah, the altar and all the furniture are placed in their spots, and the Presence of God descends on the mishkan just as God promised. In fact, the language of this portion, as many commentators reference, parallels the end of the story of creation: vayichal Elohim b’yom hashvi’I melachto asher asah… God completed the work of creation. That is, complete. So ends the days of creation, so ends the book of Exodus. The job is done, roll credits.

Except, it’s not actually done, is it? The Torah doesn’t end with the book of Exodus. We have, believe it or not, three books left, with Vayikra, Leviticus, continuing the work of setting up the mishkan and teaching us what it actually means to have this new sacred architecture. And this is aside from the fact that the journey itself is incomplete: Israel is still in Sinai, at the base of the mountain. Now the real work begins of journeying to the land promised them and their ancestors, a land flowing with milk and honey. We are tempted to ‘fast forward’ in our minds to the next chapters in the story—after all, we’ve been here before, we know what happens next—but Torah invites us to be in this moment. To pause and reflect: what does it mean to use this language of completion when, in fact, the work is not complete?

Of course, this is true for us in our own lives as well. We hit ‘submit’ on the project or application, but there will be another one. The email inbox is cleared for only the briefest of moments. Even our creative efforts do not really signal an end: the bread is eaten, the sweater is outgrown, we are called back to the work. We never really, truly reach that moment of va-yichal. Creation is never really at an end.

If that is true in our work and our hobbies, it is especially true in our sacred work. When we started our food pantry several years ago, it was with the hope of mitigating the profound need in our community, and there were some who dared hope that we might fully mitigate the hunger that breaks our heart. And we were told—I was told—by leaders of other pantries: we will see the same people, and if we’re open long enough, even multiple generations of families over the years come to use our pantry. The needs we see in our world are seemingly endless, and if there is a bottom to the depths of misery in our broken world, we surely cannot see it. We keep striving for that moment when “all shall be one and the world shall be one”, but at best it feels like it’s permanently over the horizon, and at worst, feels like the threads of justice are torn apart even as we frantically stitch them together. As Jews I think we find ourselves praying Aleinu less with a sense of eventuality and more a sense of wistfulness as a reminder to be patient, and perhaps, with some measure of grief. Perhaps “on that day All shall be one and god’s name shall be one”, but what day will that be?

And yet, even though the journey is not complete, even though Israel is not settled, God comes to dwell among the people, in a structure made willingly and enthusiastically, even with love. Perhaps, we may say, God dwells among the people dafka because the journey isn’t complete. After all, the world the Israelites occupy is just as full of terror, of slavery, of violence, of horror, and God knows that. But in the mishkan God can show Israel, and by extension, the world, what it might be to live in an ordered, holy and complete world, the one God first imagined. Likewise, our urge for completion, for wholeness and holiness chafes up against the reality of the world we occupy: there is always more to do, and it drives us forward. It urges us toward that moment that is tov, that is good. And for each moment we advocate for our values or offer groceries to a person in need or simply lift up a person’s spirits; every moment we affirm the dignity of human beings and this world, we reveal what the mishkan revealed, a world of holiness and order, even if it’s only for a few seconds.

And so, we complete the work, and then we take it up again, with some sense of God’s presence in our midst, a presence that gives us hope. May this be true and may we continue our sacred work, as we say, Amen.