VaYakhel                                                                                     Lou Sroka

            How do we recover from life’s blows?  How do we pick ourselves up after a rupture in the family, the death of a loved one, the loss of a job?  How can we re-gain a sense of balance and even a trace of optimism after a tragic event?  How can we re-establish faith?

            Parshat VaYakhel is about this issue.  Not on the face of it.  On the face of it, it’s hard to tell why it’s in the Chumash at all.  It is almost entirely a repetition of the material covered in Terumah, Tetzaveh and Ki Tissa:  How to build the Mikdash.  If VaYakhel had been left out, there’s no detail about building the Mikdash that we would lack.  So, it’s really not another of the parshiyot dealing with construction.    VaYakhel is in the Chumash to teach us about facing loss and finding redemption.

            VaYakhel follows immediately on the heels of the Golden Calf.  The Calf is a story of betrayal, of brother killing brother, of illicit relationships, of disease and death.  It is a story of a loss of faith in God, and a subsequent loss of faith in ourselves.

            And Vayakhel is the story of return.  Immediately before the incident of the Calf, were three parshiyot discussing in detail the construction project known as the Ohel MoEd; a construction project that engaged the efforts, in some way, of every man, woman and child in Yisrael. 

            Immediately after the cataclysm of the Calf, the people did not dramatically alter their lives.  They did not go on a retreat, get a tattoo, or quit their jobs.  Immediately after the cataclysm of the Calf, the people picked up from the exact point where they had been before.  The resumed construction of the Ohel MoEd.  They returned to their daily lives - with one difference. 

            They put more of themselves into it.  They brought from the bottom of their wallets and the bottom of their hearts.

            Vayakhel teaches us that healing is not obtained and faith is not re-built in the extraordinary, but in the ordinary.  It is in the deliberations and progress of each day that we must seek, and give, our love.  It is in the sanctity of small steps.  And when we can, it is in the doubling down on life.