Don’t Lose Focus!
Don’t Lose Focus!
This Dvar Torah was originally published in Torah && Tech, the weekly newsletter I publish together with my good friend Ben Greenberg. To get the weekly issue delivered straight to your inbox click here.
This week’s Torah portion, Vayakhel, begins with Moshe gathering the Jewish people to pass over the specs he received for the project of building the Mishkan — the tabernacle that would be G-D’s home on earth.
Strangely enough, he seemed to take a “detour” before making the momentous announcement. In the words of the Torah:
Moses called the whole community of the children of Israel to assemble, and he said to them: “These are the things that the Lord commanded to make. Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have sanctity, a day of complete rest…” And Moses spoke [further] to the entire community of the children of Israel, saying: “This is the word that the Lord has commanded to say: [going on to command them regarding the building of the Mishkan]”
Exodus 35:1–4
An obvious question raised by many commentators is how does Shabbat come in here? If Moshe gathered the Jewish people to tell them about the Mishkan why didn’t he focus on that?
Rashi explains that G-D was worried that in their great excitement to get the Mishkan built, the Jewish people might think that the work of building the Mishkan could take precedence over the Shabbat. G-D, therefore, instructed Moshe to tell them that no matter how important the work on the Mishkan may seem, they should not forget about the Shabbat.
There’s a common attitude that is, unfortunately, prevalent in the tech world, that if your work is important to you than you’ll spend all your waking hours (and some of your sleeping hours as well) immersed in it.
Many people have the attitude that “real” developers are those who stay in the office until 9 pm and then come home to work on their 3 side-projects, write a bi-weekly blog post, record their podcast, all between submitting talks to multiple conferences and meetups.
This week’s Torah portion teaches us that no. No matter how important your work is — you may be building a home for G-D on this earth — some things come first. Taking time to connect to your soul, your family, your community cannot be pushed aside by your work to change the world.
This Shabbat let’s take a moment to reflect and reconnect. To focus on what’s important and to discard what isn’t. You’ll find that on Monday you will be a lot more prepared to tackle your work and make the world a better place.
Shabbat Shalom,
Yechiel