Laziness: A Reflection on Parshas Vayakhel
I sat down on Wednesday night at around 9 o’clock to write this dvar Torah. As I was beginning, I was informed that CHAZAQ was in the last two hours of their Charidy Campaign. I love everything that CHAZAQ does and wanted to donate, however, I was very behind schedule and really wanted to get writing. In addition, it looked like the campaign was going well and that they would make their goal anyway, so if I didn’t give this time, it wouldn’t be the biggest deal in the world. So, I decided to go back to the scheduled plan of writing. I opened the Chidushei Halev, one of the seforim I use, and I saw the following dvar Torah and boy did it shake me up.
In this week’s Parsha, Rashi tells us that the Nesiim were punished for being lazy in how they dedicated to the building of the Mishkan. When the collections began, they convinced themselves that it would be better to give at the end so that they could supply whatever the other members of Klal Yisroel couldn’t give. Hashem sniffed out their bad intentions and held them responsible for their behavior and their name was spelled in the Torah without a “yud”. The Chidushei Halev highlights the deception of the yetzer harah and how even such great people were susceptible to laziness, even though the cause was so “once in a lifetime”.
As you could imagine, as soon as I finished reading the dvar torah, I dropped what I was doing and quickly got in touch with CHAZAQ and made my donation. My cover was blown, and I got Hashem’s hint.
HAVE A WONDERFUL SHABBOS!
Rabbi Anton
Download the PDF -> Vayakhel