Finding your calling

What's the biblical word for role?

It's not what you would think! The word used for the role the Levites were tasked with is mishmeret or watch. They had to keep "their watch," in essence guarding and protecting the Jewish people by ensuring that no one who wasn't a Levite approached.

There was a protective encampment around the Mishkan, the holy tabernacle, with the Levites' mere presence, symbolically and spiritually guarding the entirety of the Jewish people from either attack or moral decay. It was only the Levites who could do so after the firstborns had egregiously sinned and erred in the worship of the Golden Calf; this past week's parsha details the redemption of the firstborns and the very transfer of that holiness to the Levite tribe.

The Levites, thus, had a role that only they could do, one that was inimitable, unable to be performed by any other.

The word used for that construct is very telling and likewise bespeaks the unique role that each of us play. Rashi states that the word mishmeret, or guard or watch, defines what we are meant to do in this world. It is the Levites, and only the Levites who can carry and construct the Mishkan because of the holy resonance and remembrance they bear.

For each of us, it is no different. We each have a role only we were designed to fulfill, whatever it may be, how large or pressing, how sometimes humbling, how meager in means or trying in title. We, as children, or parents, or grandparents, as community members, workers, managers or employees – whatever it is we are tasked with, we best, as Rashi teaches, do it our sincere best because that is what we must safeguard, and when each of us plays our role, sacred in the responsibility it places on us, we are seeing to the integrity of the whole, just like the placement of each and every Jew around the Mishkan took on a certain order and design that kept the Jewish people not only intact, but represented our very reason for being.