Bringing Ketanim to Mikreh Megillah

Shiur this morning was on the minhag of bringing ketanim (less then Gil Chinuch) to shul for Mikreh Megillah. Sources are available here.

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Yonatan Kohn - Political Statement

Tomorrow, Thursday, March 17, two of the former Chief Rabbis of Israel have called upon the public to join together in a (half) day of prayer and fasting, as the Israeli government votes to approve a budget whose conditions include the uprooting of Jewish families from their homes in Gaza. It behooves us as Jews, of every religious, political, and ethnic stripe, to take to heart the weight and import of such action.
It is antithetical and abhorrent to fundamental Jewish values to ignore the crisis that confronts the Jewish people as a Jewish government waits to remove Jewish towns and expel people from the homes and lives that they have built with their own blood, sweat, and tears. And even if the current situation mandates such drastic action (a position to which I do not ascribe), one cannot but acknowledge that we have indeed suffered greatly and are truly desparate if we have come to this.
At the very least, we owe it to the Jewish people to make the Gaza crisis a part of our consciousness. At the very most, perhaps we owe it to the Jewish people to pray for them, to unify, and to go beyond ourselves in some way to help. Many people in Israel speak sincerely and passionately about the horrifying prospects of civil war, only if the issues are so important and so frought with emotion. We cannot ignore it, and it is at our peril that we choose not to think about.
The security guard sitting at the computer behind me has spent hours and days making posters and sending emails to Jews all over the world to try and get them to take notice. May his efforts bear us fruits in the pursuit of peace.
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Yonathan Kohn - Notes on Vayaqhel

“And Moses assembled all the congregation of the Children of Israel and he said to them, ‘These are the matters that Gd has commanded to do them. Six days work shall be done, and on the seventh day, it will be for you holy, a Sabbath of Sabbaths for Gd; any who does labor on it [that day] will die. Do not ignite a conflagration in any of your settlements on the day of the Sabbath’” (35:1-3). The very next verse, already a new paragraph in the Biblical text, reads, “And Moses said to all the congregation of the Children of Israel, saying, ‘This is the matter that Gd commanded to say*’” (35:4).

1) What is meant in the first verse by the clause “to do them,” when it would seem that it the verse could have ended where it was? 2a) What is more problematic is that upon close examination, it does not seem that Moses is actually commanding anything. Moses declares that the seventh day will be the holy Shabbat, but this seems to be self-generating. In fact, the notion that Shabbat comes automatically, without the active participation and declaration of the people, is the subject of a great deal of discussion. As opposed to the calendar system, the months upon which the order of the Festivals is established, the Shabbat’s position is unaffected by the renewal of the moon. At the end of the sixth day of every week, Shabbat begins by itself. 2b) It is true that Moses issues the pronouncement that the violator of the Shabbat will incur a death penalty, and he delivers the prohibition to light a fire on the Shabbat. But there is no positive commandment, no instruction to do anything active. It is then only more confounding that the Torah affixes this strange qualifying clause, “to do them.”
A number of commentators (Nahmonides and Ibn Ezra are prominent among them) note emphatically that the phrase “these are the matters” refers only to the commandments that come after this passage; they insist that “these matters” are the commandments surrounding the construction of the Tabernacle. There are, however, two problems with this suggestion. 1) The Talmud (Shabbat 70a) understands that “these matters” refer to the 39 categories of labor prohibited on Shabbat. 2) If this refers to the Tabernacle, why does the Torah interrupt with the note about Shabbat? To this, they answer that this mention of Shabbat is meant only to clarify that Shabbat may not be violated even for the construction of the Tabernacle, which is itself Gd’s will and commandment. However, the question still stands because the subsequent verse repeats the line, “This is the matter that Gd commanded to say,” and in using the singular “matter,” it becomes clear that one of the “matters” in v. 1 must be part of the commandment of the Shabbat.
Therefore, perhaps one could understand the term “to do them” radically differently. In Hebrew, the words are *laasot otam*. These could also be taken as, ‘to make them.’ In other words, these commandments, ordinances and pronouncements, are issued to Moses to pass on to the people for the purpose of making the people, for the purpose of helping them to construct themselves. What are these ordinances? One is the declaration of Shabbat; Gd declares that Shabbat is the seventh day, and those who recognize it will learn about the sanctity of time. Those who construct a community in which the violation of Shabbat is understood as a capital crime have internalized the message of sacred time.
Of course, this commandment is twinned with the commandment to construct the Tabernacle, whose essence embodies the sanctity of space. This continues the theme of the Tabernacle outlined in Exodus 25, where Gd tells Moses that the people should construct a Tabernacle so that ‘I will dwell among them.’ Gd says He will dwell among them rather than in the Tabernacle, because the construction of the Tabernacle allows Gd a place among the people themselves, who have matured and developed through building a sanctuary for Gd in space. When man appreciates the importance of distinction, of sanctity, of the disciplines of both space and time, he is empowered to make himself. **

* It is noteworthy that this verse redundantly repeats the word *leimor*, which can be translated as the introduction to a quote or the infinitive ‘to say.’ The translation above is based on Rashi’s rendering of the verse, his attempt to present the plainest meaning of the text. It may be possible to tease out more from this particular wording, but the present discussion will make no such valiant attempt. Any ideas from the readership would be welcome.
** This essay is partly influenced by R SY Zevin’s piece on this week’s Torah reading in his book Ltorah UlMoadim. In addition, R Soloveitchik explores at great length, in a number of essays and lectures, the importance of sanctity of time and sanctity of space and the relationship between the two.

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