Holy Work Completes Itself

“In the first month of the second year, on the first of the month, the tabernacle was set up.” (Exodus 40:17)

In the biblical calendar, Nisan is the first month, making Rosh Chodesh Nisan the first day of the year. According to the Torah, it was on this day that the Israelites completed the tabernacle, the portable sanctuary they carried through the wilderness on their way to the promised land. For the Zohar, this auspicious date of the tabernacle’s completion connects it back to the creation of the world:

Envision this: The vision of the beauty of the world could not be seen until the tabernacle was constructed and set up and the ark was brought into the sanctuary. From that time the world could be seen as a whole, and all was set right.

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According to the Zohar, the completion of the tabernacle was, in a way, the completion of creation. In other words, the world wasn’t really finished until the tabernacle was constructed. This is because the tabernacle served as a sort of anchor for the world, a focal point for seeing the interconnectedness of creation. In contemporary language, we might say that the tabernacle offered a vision of wholeness that served as a reminder to the Israelites to orient their lives toward unity rather than alienation, toward harmony and connection rather than loneliness and strife.

Reading on:

They traveled with the tabernacle and the ark until they reached the point called “fair-crested, joy of all the earth.” (Psalms 48:3) When they reached that point, the ark began speaking and said: “This is my resting-place for all time; here I will dwell, for I desire it.” (Psalms 132:14)

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Eventually, the tabernacle chose its own place of permanent rest — the site of the future Temple in Jerusalem, the axis mundi, the place where the universe, God and the Children of Israel come together as one. Earlier on the same page, the Zohar describes this same spot as anchored by a mighty stone. Rooted in the deepest reaches of the abyss, the stone’s top reached the earth’s surface at the site of the Temple in Jerusalem. It is called the “foundation stone,” and it is not only the foundation for the Temple but the site from which the entire world was created. The idea that the tabernacle is the final piece in the creation of the world, and that it comes to rest on the foundation stone that is the origin of creation, leads the Zohar to reflect further on the process of creation:

Envision this: After the artisans began to do their work, the work that they began completed itself. They began, but she (the work) completed the task. It was her, as it says: “The work was completed (vatekhel), the work of the tabernacle, the meeting tent.” (Exodus 39:32)

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Like many beautiful interpretations in the Zohar, this one is rooted in a close and novel reading of sacred text. The Torah states that the work of building the tabernacle “was completed,” using the passive verb vatekhel. Because it is in passive form, the verse does not point to a subject who completed the work. This allows for the Zohar’s reading that the work actually completed itself.

For creation to include divine participation, the Zohar teaches, the process cannot be completely controlled by the creators. Rather, while artisans initiate the process of creation, at some point they must relinquish control to allow the work itself to go where it will.

The grammar here allows for another twist. The word vatekhel can be read as a passive form, but it can also be read as an active feminine verb — suggesting a female subject completed the tabernacle. Who might that be? For the Zohar, it is the Shekhinah, God’s divine presence in the world (which is gendered feminine).

The Zohar applies a similar logic to the Torah verses describing creation in Genesis:

Similarly, “Heaven and Earth were completed.” (Genesis 2:1) But you might ask, doesn’t it also say that, “Elohim completed (the world) on the seventh day” (Genesis 2:2)?

They are both true in regard to the completion of the world. Even though each and every element of creation completed itself, creation as a whole was not completely established until the seventh day. It was only when the seventh day came that all creation was completed. With this day Elohim completed the universe, and therefore it says, “Elohim completed on/with the Seventh day.” With this day, all the work done was established and completed, therefore Elohim completed with the seventh day.

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In Genesis 2:1, we read that heaven and earth were completed (passive verb). The Zohar reads these verses in the same way it reads the verse about the completion of the tabernacle — meaning that the heaven and the earth completed themselves. Even God, teaches the Zohar, had to relinquish some creative control.

The idea that God needs to relinquish control is more challenging than the notion that human creators must do so. Indeed, as the Zohar points out, the very next verse says that Elohim — God — is the one who completed the work on the seventh day. In response to this challenge, the Zohar goes to an older rabbinic teaching (Rashi on Genesis 2:2, based on Genesis Rabbah 10:9) that the restful seventh day was in itself the completion of creation. In the Zohar’s version of this teaching, it is God’s abstention from work on the seventh day that, paradoxically, completes the work. Only by pulling back and allowing the earth to exist without further divine intervention or the expectation that anything else be done does God enable the world to find its own divine core and, through that, become holy.

Let’s go back to the tabernacle and the more permanent divine home later constructed on its final resting place, the Temple. Famously, the 20th-century Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel called Shabbat a “palace in time.” For the Zohar, the inverse is also true: The Temple is a Shabbat in space. How is this possible? Its creators made room for holiness by allowing the work to complete itself rather than forcing their vision onto it.

…  And so all holy work completes itself.

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This is a model we too should strive to follow in our lives, and our own works of holiness. Rabbi Moshe Cordovero writes in his interpretation of this section of the Zohar: “Also when creating a Torah scroll or constructing a synagogue or writing Torah teachings, the artist begins but then the holy spirit enters the work and it is done and completed on its own, each step growing out of the previous one. The help and support given to the process depends on the specific project, its essence, and the quality of ‘holy work’ within it.” (Or Yakar, Pekudei, Siman 2)

And it seems to me that creating holiness is like making soup. First, I choose the ingredients, the spices and the sequence in which they will enter the pot. Then I step back and let the heat transform it — at most I mix it a bit from time to time. But the real magic happens when I turn the fire off and let the soup rest; that is what really turns a pot of boiled vegetables into soup. 

The first of Nisan marks the completion of the work on the tabernacle, reminding us of our capacity to create vessels for holiness. But the Zohar’s teaching reminds us that all of our “doing” can only prepare the ground for holiness. If holiness actually appears in our work, it is greater than us and what we do.

This piece was originally published as part of A Year of Zohar: Kabbalah for Everyone, an original series produced by My Jewish Learning and Sefaria. Sign up for the entire series here.