All sin stems from folly

Two takes on the same passage:

1

Holy Foolishness

וְעָשִׂיתָ אֶת הַקְּרָשִׁים לַמִּשְׁכָּן עֲצֵי שִׁטִּים עֹמְדִים: (שמות כו:טו)

You must make the planks for the Tabernacle out of acacia wood, [placed] vertically. Exodus 26:15

The Hebrew word for “acacia” (shitah) means “bending.” The acacia tree is called the “bending” tree because it bends to the side as it grows, rather than growing straight up. The Hebrew word for “foolishness” (shetut) is another form of this word, since foolishness is an act of “bending” from the path dictated by logic.

Foolishness can be either holy or unholy. Unholy foolishness is the illogical thinking that leads us to go against G‑d’s will. Holy “foolishness” is our willingness to go beyond the strict requirements of the Torah in fulfilling our Divine mission or in refining ourselves.

Allegorically, then, placing the “bending” acacia planks vertically means using our power to be “foolish” for holy purposes. We can thereby turn this often negative character trait into a positive force in our lives, enabling us to reach levels of dedication to G‑d and union with Him that we would not be able to reach otherwise.1

FOOTNOTES
1.	Sefer HaMa’amarim 5710, p. 114.

2

רֵישׁ לָקִישׁ אָמַר: אֵין אָדָם עוֹבֵר עֲבֵירָה אֶלָּא אִם כֵּן נִכְנַס בּוֹ רוּחַ שְׁטוּת

"Reish Lakish says: A man commits a transgression only if a spirit of folly enters him."

He becomes so passionately charged that he becomes temporarily insane ... and later he says, "Oy, vey, what did I do?"

The tabernacle in the desert was to become the centre of atonement for the folly of sin of the Jewish people, and, in our lives, we have to see to it that we create a tabernacle in our hearts so that we can create a balance to the folly in our lives. The Rebbe would also say that we have to becomes servants in the service of folly in the holy, which means we have to act irrationally in the positive way, to create a balance with the irrational act of the evil inclination in the negative. The purpose of the tabernacle is also to take the falsehood of this world, to take the lies of materialism, to take the transience of the material, and transform these into a permanent energy. We have to take the false, in Hebrew, _sheker_, and jumble the letters to make _keresh_: an upright board, which is what was used to create the tabernacle in the service of G-d. The _keresh_ symbolises taking the untruth, identifying and elevating the gody spark, and making it the headquarters of the godly energy in this world.

Rabbi Yehoshua B. Gordon, from a class on Parshat Terumah, 4th Portion