Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg
February 24, 2007

Many is the time that rabbis wax poetic about the value and power of Shabbat.  We all know that the idea of taking a break, taking one day a week to aspire toward spiritual and psychological renewal, makes eminent sense.  We rabbis spend so much time driving home this idea, that sometimes we neglect to focus on the other side of coin.  There is value too, spiritual and otherwise, in the doing of work. 

This week's parasha, Terumah, includes the famous line, "V'asu li mikdash, v'shachanti b'tocham, Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them."  Much ink was spilled as our sages attempted to grapple with the grammatical conundrum presented by the second part of this phrase, but it is worthwhile to address the first part as well: "Let them make...."  Avot D'Rabbi Natan, the minor talmudic tractate that corresponds to its more famous cousin, Pirkei Avot (The Ethics of the Fathers) offers the follows comment: "Great is work, for even the Holy One of Blessing did not have the Divine Presence abide among Israel until they had worked."  There is no kodesh without chol, no Shabbat without the rest of the week.  This Sabbath, let's take a moment to remember that work, too, is sacred.  May our work in this world be for good, and may it bring us ever closer to the presence of the Holy One.