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Ariel Ben Avraham

Parshat Vayakhel-Pekudei: Living our bond with God (II)

“Them has He filled with wisdom of heart (…)” (Exodus 35:35)

This verse appears in the context of the two men God chose to craft the items and utensils for the Tabernacle, in order to tell us that all the living beings that He created are filled by Him to be, to have and manifest His will. Thus we realize that everything that breaths does so by the sake of their Creator.

Bezalel the son of Uri and Oholiab the son of Ahisamach would not have done the task assigned to them by themselves, but by the spirit God filled in them to do their job. The lesson here is to make us aware of a few key points. God’s creation is a complete fact, and anything that we discover through our intellect, mind, thought, emotions, feelings and instinct has been already created by Him. Whatever we discover or realize and call it “invention” has been revealed to us by the One who created it.

The laws of gravity, the theory of relativity and the polio vaccine were already there for us to discover and manifest the goodness that they encompassed for the sake of goodness. We just need to be chosen and be filled with the spirit of the wisdom that God infuses in our hearts. Another lesson is that we must have the space in our hearts to give room for the spirit with which the Creator blesses us to be partners with Him in the revelation of His complete creation.

Also we need to be aware that the giver and the receiver must have something in common, that set up the dynamics and expression of what is given to be manifest in our consciousness, from which we reveal it in our lives and into the world.

The Torah teaches us time and again that all the characters in its narration were infused by the spirit of God to do what they did, according to His will. The most outstanding of them, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon and the Prophets taught us with their lives that God were with them, as He is in major or lesser proportion with the beings that He created, who also exist to fulfill His will in one way or the other.

“And Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab, and every wise hearted man, in whose heart the Lord had put wisdom, even every one whose heart stirred him up to come unto the work to do it.” (36:1)

As we mentioned before, the space that we must have to receive God’s spirit has to come from us by stirring our hearts to invite Him, so He may pour His blessings on us. We have to remark that this divine wisdom is a particular kind of goodness that not only stirs our awareness and knowledge of wisdom, but it is something with which we have to bond. We bond with goodness in order to make it an experienced wisdom by which we manifest what which is destined to be manifest.

Thus we realize that every item and utensil of the Tabernacle serve for the one and only purpose of manifesting God’s goodness in every level, aspect and dimension of consciousness, for the sake of goodness. Some of our Sages call the Temple of Jerusalem a cleaning apparatus by which we are whitened through our closeness to God.

They called the sacrificial offerings with the same meaning of “getting close”, for through them we bond with our Creator in the purity of the goodness He infuses in our hearts to enjoy and rejoice in it as our bond with Him.

Thus we evoke God’s goodness every morning to fulfill His promise of complete redemption sooner than later in our days.

“(…) My Spirit that is upon on you, and My words that I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth, nor out of the mouth of your seed, nor out of the mouth of your seed’s seed, declared the Lord from here to eternity.” (Isaiah 59:21)

About the Author
Ariel Ben Avraham was born in Colombia (1958) from a family with Sephardic ancestry. He studied Cultural Anthropology in Bogota, and lived twenty years in Chicago working as a radio and television producer and writer. He emigrated to Israel in 2004, and for the last fourteen years has been studying the Chassidic mystic tradition, about which he writes and teaches. Based on his studies, he wrote his first book "God's Love" in 2009. He currently lives in Zefat.
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