CHOCHMAS NASHIM: KI TISSA: MY CAR,
THE SPEAKEASY
By: Suri Davis
I went to a wedding this week they had valet parking. I came out of the wedding and the valet lost my fob to start and run my car. My other car is 20 years old, and it has a key, and if I lose the key, I go to Lowes and for $1.25 I get a new key.
I called up the dealership and asked them to order me a new fob. Nope, said the dealership, we need your license and registration to order the fob:
Me: Can I send it with someone
Dealer: No
I go to dealership show them the documents
Dealer: Do you want the key with the fob
Me: The fob doesn’t have a key
Dealer: Yes it does.
He shows me a small notch on the fob, and out comes a key.
Me: Sir, why the key? My door doesn’t have a key hole and the engine has a button.
Dealer: Come on out with me and I’ll show you it does.
So I go
Dealer: Now lay down on your back and look up at the door handle, do you see a notch? Well the key goes into that notch, if the battery in the fob dies.
So I put the key in the notch, but the door doesn’t open
Dealer: This is a notch, not a hole, when you put the key in the notch, it pops off the cover over the keyhole, and then you can put the key in the keyhole.
So I do that, and I sit in my car.
Me: Ok, so now I am in my car and there is no keyhole to start the engine that I can see.
Dealer: You put the fob over the button and it will start the engine
Me: But I thought you said that the fob battery died
Dealer: It’s too dead to open the door, but its not completely dead, so it can start your engine once.
By now, I’m thinking, what man sat in his corner office at Kia and said to himself, you know it’s really hard to turn a key 10 degrees, to open the car door, and another 10 degrees to start the engine. What problem were they solving that created this hidden passageway to my car. Were the keyholes determined to be so ugly that they had to have a cover with a notch and a special key to open the notch, and all of this whyyyyyy?
Dealer: And it will take two weeks to get the fob because you know we are in the midst of a pandemic supply shortage.
Me: Ok. Can you have the fob mailed to me then.
Dealer: No, you have to bring the car back and it takes two hours to program the fob to the car, and by the way that will cost $650.
Me: Aha.
And what does all this have to do with this week’s torah portion? There is a core verse in Ki Tissa Exodus: 31:3: “I have endowed him[Bezalel] with a Divine spirit, with wisdom, understanding and inspiration and with all types of craftmanship.” The Hebrew acronym for wisdom/Chochmah, understanding/Binah and inspiration/Daat, form the word Chabad.
The name of the Chabad organization stems from the Chasidic teachings of the original Lubavitch Rabbi, who wrote His famous book the Tanya, which discusses spirituality. Core to the Tanya is that the soul is clothed in three garments, thought, speech and action. As I understand it, thought is the beginning process of dedication to G-d which is revealed by thought, speech and action. If one permits his mind and thoughts to wander, his speech and actions might not be directed toward G-d.
The components of thought are wisdom, understanding and inspiration. It’s taking the body that G-d gave us and being inspired through fear and love of G-d to use our thoughts, speech and action in dedication to G-d’s commandments and Torah.
Juxtaposed to this commandment to complete the building of the Tabernacle is the commandment to keep Shabbos, why? There are 39 sections of forbidden acts on Shabbos, which correspond to the 39 acts which were done to create and serve G-d in the Tabernacle and holy Temple. Why are they juxtaposed? Because when these acts are performed with G-d’s permission they are holy, but these very acts done on the holiest day of the week, become sins.
This is juxtaposed to the sin of the golden calf. When Jews come together to donate their finest gold and jewelry for the Tabernacle, those assets are elevated, when those assets are collected in an unauthorized fashion, they utterly undermine faith in G-d and the breaching of the first two commandments of “I am G-d” and “There shall be no other G-d.”
Car companies and our work during the week is done to show our effort in making money for our sustenance, as commanded by G-d to Adam. But see how engineers will take a process which was so very benign, the turning of the key, and use their machinations, thinking they are elevating a process, and utterly upturning the process to make it absurd. A hidden passageway to my car…my speakeasy.
Technology was to simplify our lives. When we call anywhere now, we have to press button after button to get to a live person to verbalize our needs, dropped calls and having to start again. You need paper and sign on and passwords and question challenges, and and and.
Using our intellect in service of G-d, smiling at everyone who you meet, helping a senior cross the street, putting a penny in a pushka, sitting with someone who is sick, is not that complicated. Inviting a neighbor for a Shabbos meal, not so complicated. How do we use our intellect, for the mundane it has become farcical, spiritually the effort, great or small, yields great rewards externally and internally/spiritually.
Today is Shushan Purim Kattan, G-d has the ability to take the mundane and elevate it, the farcical and inspire it, VNAHAFOCH HU/G-D CAN TURN IT UPSIDE DOWN, it is what we pray for, that G-d intervene in our daily lives and infuse us with His spirit and take the millennia of our exile and redeem us completely.
Freilich Purim.
Gut Shabbos.
-Suri