The last chapters of Exodus are concerned with the details of the Sanctuary (Mishkan), and open with God’s command to Moses: “Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him…And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them (be-tokham)” (Exod. 25: 2, 8). The command does not say “that I may dwell within it (be-tokho)” but “that I may dwell among them (betokham),” that is within or among the people. What is this space, among them, in which God will reside? How can one confine God within a space boundaried by walls, fifty by a hundred cubits long? Does not the divine “presence fill all the earth” (Isa. 6:3)? Could the indwelling of God depend on the accoutrements of gilt, acacia wood, tanned ram skins, and cherubim? The Or HaHaim (Rab Haim Ibn Attar, 1696-1743) suggests that the Sanctuary was an attempt to replicate a vision the Israelites experienced at Sinai: “The place which they will sanctify for His dwelling will be among the Israelites, who will encircle the sanctuary with four banners. Perhaps [God's] words are a response to what the Israelites’ desired at Sinai, when the mountain was encircled by the flags of angels, and He [God] was a sign in their midst. They too, with love and longing, desired God to be in their midst. And so He answered them, knowing what was in their hearts, and said, ‘Make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them’ (Exod. 25: 8).”
The image of the angels’ flags or banners encircling Mount Sinai recalls a circle-dance. In surrounding the mountain, they define a center, like the joyous circle dancing, hakafot, on Simhat Torah. Yet the image is perplexing. The original reason for the deployment of the flags seems to have been for the sake of defining a boundary, a limit, beyond which the Israelites could not go: “Take heed to yourselves, that you go not up into the mountain, or touch the border of it; whoever touches the mountain shall surely die” (Exod. 19: 12). Is this a Dance of Death, daring those on the outside to venture in? Or are they compelled in the dance, by centrifugal force, outward, while God abides at the center of the circle like a magnet? Avivah Zornberg, citing the commentary of the Siftei Hakhamim on Exod. 25:8, suggests that God commands them to build a sanctuary on condition that it had a hollow (tokh): “How could the Shekhinah come to dwell in something without a hollow (tokh). So He prompted them with the command, ‘that I may dwell amongst them (betokham)‘”. She suggests that this hollow serves as an antidote to the solidity of the Golden Calf, a desire consummated all too soon, before Moses descended the mountain with the command to build a home for God in their midst. The space itself is defined by the cherubim that face one another, their wings spread over the ark, and within this space God will meet with his prophet, and speak to him there, “from between the two cherubim that are on top of the Ark of Testimony – all that I will command you to convey to the children of Israel” (Exod. 25:22).[1] This is the centerpiece of the Tabernacle – empty space, tokh - an inversion of that primal sin of the people – “Let the gold of the Mishkan come and atone for the gold of the Golden Calf” (Tanhuma Terumah 8). Instead of solid gold, the cherubim define an empty space from which language emerges as fire.
The cherubim over the Ark
The desire of the circle dance, to hold God within, is essentially a feminine erotic mode. Yet there is an ambiguity as to where this center actually is. If it is within the people, how could God constitute the center which they all surround? If God is at the center, how could He also abide “among them”, within each individual? Will God abide within us or outside of us? The midrash beautifully expands on this ambiguity, by likening God’s relationship to the people to the beloved, sated with desire, hearing the knocking of her lover at door. “I was asleep, but my heart was wakeful. Hark, my beloved knocks! [He urges]; “Open up for me, my sister, my darling, my faultless dove! For my head is drenched with dew, My locks with the damp of night.” (Song of Songs 5:2-3). The lover knocks on the door from without, but so too does her tell-tale heart knock within:
“Take for Me an offering” (Exod. 25;2). To this applies the verse: “I sleep but my heart wakes” (Song of Songs 5:2). Said the congregation of Israel: I despaired (lit. slept) of there ever being an End, but the Holy One, blessed be He, is awake, as it says: “But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Ps. 73:26). I am asleep with regard to the commandments, but the merit of my fathers stands up for me and my heart is awake. I am asleep on account of the deed of the gold Calf, but my heart is awake – the Holy One, blessed be He, knocks: “Take for Me an offering” (Exod. 25:2). As it says: “The voice of my beloved knocks, open up for me, my sister”, for how long shall I wander homeless, “for my head is drenched with dew”, but make Me a sanctuary that I should not remain outside. (Shir HaShirim Rabbah 5:2).
The woman’s wakeful heart is on the inside, encased in a body which lies in a stupor of sleep, passive yet still yearning. She (the congregation of Israel) is unable to rise from her slumber to answer the door, in despair, with regard to a sense of Redemption, “the End” (the eschaton). The lover, God, is on the outside, knocking, drenched in the dew of the night air – knocking, knocking. And yet the heart that beats within, betokh, is also God, as the quote from Psalms suggests, “But God is the strength of my heart” (Ps. 73:26). What prevents the woman from responding to her lover at the door? The despair of a time beyond this one? Lassitude with respect to the commandment? Or the Sin of the Golden Calf? Despair and sin both distance the Israelites from being receptive to God. Yet there is an ambiguity of placement – the call comes both from the wakeful heart within, out of anticipation, desire, and from God knocking on the door, outside. In the command to build a sanctuary, the Israelites must create a house, a center, to contain that desire within themselves (betokham), yet, paradoxically, it must remain hollow, a space within which the Heart can beat.
Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem, “The Panther”, paints another image for that hollow space, the heart of this circle dance:
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
The movement of his powerful soft strides
Is like a ritual dance around a center
In which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
Lifts, quietly–. An image enters in,
Rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
Plunges into the heart and is gone.
The pacing of the panther in cramped circles suggests the impossibility of confining the divine presence within the walls of the Mishkan. Yet from the pupil of the panther’s eye, at that very hollow center, the tokh, the heart is plumbed. We too engage in a “ritual dance around a center”, but the mighty will stands free, not paralyzed, for this is the center the Sanctuary can hold, “within you and without you.”
[1] Based on her seminar on Parashat Shavu’a which I attended for years at Matan. See also the discussion in Avivah Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture (New York: Double Day, 2001), 315-350.
