Vayakhel
The Lubavitcher Rebbe on Parashat Vayakhel, read on Shabbat Vayakhel · After Purim — with one of this week's three questions for the two of you.
Vayakhel — and Moshe gathered — opens with the people coming back together after the Golden Calf. The fracture had been real. The recovery had to be active: someone had to call the people back. Moshe gathers them, and the work of building the Mishkan begins. The Rebbe, with characteristic optimism, hears the parsha-after-Purim sequence as a single teaching: the hidden hand of providence — yad ha'nistar — is what was holding everything together while we couldn't see it. The Megillah of Esther never names God explicitly. The whole story is providence working underground. And then Vayakhel: the gathering. The work resumes. What had felt fractured was, all along, being prepared for re-gathering.
Looking back at this past year — name one fracture between us that turned out to be a re-gathering underway. What looked like only breaking, in retrospect, was bringing us closer to something.
The full week — the passage itself with its source, the other two questions, and the closing verse of hope — lives in the app. Together Tomorrow on the App Store.