Exodus: Vayakhel Read previous entries of Slow Burn: Quarantine Edition Dear Rereaders, All readings are rereadings, Vladimir Nabokov thought. Maybe so—but some more than others. Jews, of course, cycle through a Torah scroll each year, then rewind and repeat. Readers of Vayakhel, the tenth parsha of Exodus, may feel especially strongly that they are watching a rerun, because this parsha duplicates material nearly verbatim from Terumah, four parshas earlier, about the construction of the Tabernacle. Carina’s description of that material as the stuff of “an upscale IKEA pamphlet” applies to Vayakhel as neatly as a peg from one Malm bed fits another. Things have developed, to be sure, in the interim: Where Terumah introduces God’s minute instructions for building the traveling sanctuary, Vayakhel narrates the actual process of construction: the people’s contribution of raw materials, the designation of chief artisans. But the later parsha continually rehashes the details of the Tabernacle’s blueprint in describing its realization: The length of each curtain, the copper clasps to fasten the Tent together, the silver sockets, posts of acacia wood, the lampstand of pure gold are all described exactly as they were the first time. Even when chapters in Vayakhel stray slightly from their originals in Terumah—“You shall make fifty loops in the one curtain” becomes “He made fifty loops in the one curtain”—the divergence only intensifies the sense of repetition by underscoring the perfect fulfillment of God’s command.