The Mishkan came from IKEA

[cellio]

Ok, maybe not. But it would explain some things.

Wednesday I met with my rabbi again to study talmud. We've been working our way through the 39 categories of forbidden work on Shabbat. A unifying principle is that everything on this list is a kind of work that was done to build the Mishkan (the portable sanctuary that travelled in the desert). That's important, actually; the reason these types of work are forbidden is that right after we get the instructions for building the Mishkan God says "keep the Sabbath". So the rabbis interpreted that as meaning "don't build the Mishkan on Shabbat".

(There are a few explicit directives, like not kindling fire, but most are derived from Mishkan-building.)

Ok, so one of the categories is writing (and its inverse, erasing in order to write). Specifically, it is forbidden to write two letters together; a lone letter is fine. Why?

Because the various poles and things that held up the walls in the Mishkan were labelled. And we thought "insert tab A into slot B" was a modern construct. Who'd've thought?

I guess IKEA is the wrong model, though. IKEA never gives you anything as straightforward as text. "Insert the thing that looks kind of like this doohicky into the hole that isn't quite in the right place but is your best guess" would be more the IKEA style.

Comments

[gingicat]

*chuckle* I put a pointer to this in my journal, as chaiya and I were discussing the derivation of Shabbat rules on Friday night, and I love the IKEA prefab image.