After forty days and forty nights at the top of Mount Sinai, Moshe is given “the two tablets of the covenant, stone tablets inscribed with the finger of God” (Exod.  31:18).  God then informs him about the people’s cavorting about the molten calf, and His plan to wipe them out, whereupon Moshe pleads their cause at the top of the Mountain and exacts a suspension of the original decree.   Before the prophet descends, we are introduced to the tablets again:

Thereupon Moshe turned and went down from the mount bearing the tablets of the Covenant, tablets inscribed on both sides, inscribed on one side and the other; they were the work of God [ma'aseh Elohim], and the writing, the writing of God, inscribed on the tablets (Exod. 32:15).

If the tablets (luhot) were specifically mentioned as God’s making, ma’aseh Elohim, why does the biblical text single out the writing as being of divine origin? According to rabbinic sages, the tablets (luhot), the writing (ketav), and the form of the letters (mikhtav) were created at twilight on the Sixth Day of Creation (Pirqe Avot 5:6).   Did the letters have a life of their own, imprinted on the stone?  In the biblical verse, the inscription appears on both surfaces of the tablets, on one side and on the other, conjuring an image of the letters as blank spaces amidst solid rock – sheer form, the mere outline of shapes.  The ketav, then, may be comparable to the content (the meaning of the letters, that is the Torah itself), and the mikhtav the form of the writing, as Rambam in his commentary on Avot suggests.  Bartenura, on the other hand, suggests that the ketav constituted the form of the letters on the luhot, and the mikhtav the instrument of writing or the stylus.

What happened to the original tablets and divine writing (ketav) with which they were engraved?  Though Moshe pleaded the Israelites’ cause before God at the top of the mountain, as soon as he saw their revelry directly, around the Golden Calf, he was seized with fury:

As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became enraged; and he hurled [va-yashlekh] the tablets from his hands and shattered [va-yeshaber] them at the foot of the mountain. (Exod. 32:17-19)

How did Moshe dare break the divine tablets?  God’s ineffable name, the Tetragramatton, was engraved in that stone!  Was his reaction a spontaneous outburst or a deliberate demonstration?

The midrash, Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer (PRE) chapter 45, imaginatively re-writes this scene, endowing the letters with a will of their own:

Moshe took the tablets, and as he descended (the Mountain), the letters held themselves, and so did Moshe.  But when they saw the drums and the dancing and the calf, they flew up from the tablets, which then became unbearably heavy in Moshe’s arms, and he could no longer carry himself or the tablets, so he thrust them from his arms and they broke, as it says, “And he shattered them at the foot of the mountain” (Exod. 32:19).  (PRE 45).

By suggesting that Moshe merely dropped the tablets because he could no longer bear their weight, he is exonerated of willfully smashing them.  Furthermore, it is the letters of the Torah, which grant the tablets sanctity and when they fly away they leave behind merely profane stone; smashing the tablets then entails no act of irreverence.  Before the sin of the golden calf, the letters float suspended within the stone, bearing their own weight.  As long as the letters carry themselves, the stone is also imbued with the ‘bearable lightness of being’.  As the mishnah says of the letters, “read not harut, engraved, but heirut, free — for one is only a free man if one engages in talmud Torah” (Pirqe Avot 6:2).

I’d like to suggest that the buoyancy of the letters within the stone reflects the state of the nation.  That is, as long as they were one with God’s command, “they were free” like the letters; but as soon as they distanced themselves through idolatry, the letters flew off and the tablets become solid, pure density, sacral space, like the golden calf itself, and Moshe could no longer bear them (the tablets/the people) or himself.

The relationship between the stone and the letters serves as an ‘objective correlative’ for the spiritual state of the nation.  No longer able to abide the absence of Moshe any longer, they chose a calf, made of solid gold, to replace the God-Who-has-no-image.  The molten idol is the deity to which the people gesticulated: “Zeh [this] is your god who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Exod. 32:4).  Yet the very same words had been used in the First Commandment:  “I [anokhi], the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt…”  (Exod. 20:2). They replace “zeh” [this] with the Anokhi, God’s declaration of  “I am.”  The people had been given a set of laws, engraved on tablets, which explicitly made the making of molten images forbidden (Exod. 20: 4).  The letters, as blank space suspended in stone, represent the necessity for the God-of-no-image to replace the penchant for thingness — the “this” of the pointing finger.  When Moshe smashes the tablets, he is the paragon iconoclast (lit. breaker of idols).  He insists that the God of language and law, represented by the blank space suspended in stone, replace the penchant for thingness, the concrete solidity of idols.

The Talmud states that had they not sinned with the Golden Calf, the Torah would never have been forgotten (b. ‘Eruvin 54a); it would have been engraved on each and every one who had stood at Sinai-and become a source of  genetic, collective memory.  Yet this movement towards the abstract, towards language and away from concrete images, was too ‘unbearably light’ for them.  Rather, the people felt collectively the gift of Torah to be a burden as heavy as solid stone, for they did not feel the freedom [heirut] of the law, which the suspended letters represented.  Thus, in PRE 45, the letters ‘fly away’ because the people cannot bear their weight (or weightlessness).  Instead, they engaged in filling in the blank space of the letters with density, with a molten idol of solid gold, symbolized by the tablets, which Moshe could then no longer carry.

Yet there is comfort in the second set of tablets. There is a famous statement by Reish Lakish, in the Talmud, based on God’s command to Moshe to carve out new tablets, replacing the ones he had broken, “asher shibarta” (Exod. 34:1).  The Holy One blessed be He affirmed Moshe’s audacious act: “yesher kohekh asher shibarta [good that you broke them!]” (b. Shabbat 87a).  The Talmudic passage praises Moshe for deliberately smashing them.  Yet had the tablets not been broken, the Torah would have never been forgotten!  Wherein lies the gain?  Forgetting necessitates invention or, at least, interpretation; had there been only the Torah-she-bi-khtav (the written Torah) engraved in the mind of every member of the nation, there would have been no necessity for the oral tradition, the Torah-she-be’al-peh.

This shabbat, I would like to bless you with the bearable lightness of the first luhot, and the legacy of their shards.  May you find the letters of Torah buoyant within your soul and breathe through them the breath of life.

This morning I woke early to finish baking for mishloah manot [gifts of food], which we will deliver to friends throughout the day of Purim.  There is no other mitzvah, for me, that seems both so superfluous and yet so much fun.  This year, I want to share the quickening of my heart that surrounds this strange custom.

In my apartment in Jerusalem, the kitchen table is piled high on the morning of Purim with the assembly line of containers, filled with potato kugel, pickles, homemade cookies (oznei haman [Haman's ears] otherwise known as hamantaschen), strawberries, and nuts.  My husband Jon and I take pride in how unique we make our little packages, (even while niggling a little over the excessive expense, which we try to at least match in gifts to the poor, matanot le’evyonim).  After the morning reading, we clear the table of packages and off we go on our delivery expeditions – some by car, some on foot.  But the table will be equally laden by the end of the day with mishloah manot we receive.  This year I feel particularly elated about all this hullabaloo and this is why.   

In chapter nine of the Megillah, we read:

“….the same days on which the Jews enjoyed relief from their foes and the same month which had been transformed for them from one of grief and mourning to one of festive joy. They were to observe them as days of feasting and merrymaking, and as an occasion for sending gifts to one another and presents to the poor.” (Esther 3:22, NJPS trans.)

What is the significance of the original gifts sent out to one another?  Earlier in the chapter, the battle of the Jews in self-defense is described. (Note that we do NOT celebrate the day of victory in battle, but the day after, when they “enjoyed relief from their enemies”).  At that point, the biblical text introduces a rather minor detail, that they “did not lay their hands on the spoil [u-ba-bizah lo shalhu et yadam]” (Esther 9:15).   Perhaps their restraint suggest that they would not stoop so low as the original decree.  Haman’s edict to massacre all the Jews in one day, young and old, women and children, also included plundering their possessions [u-shlalam lavuz] (3:13).  So the Jews certainly did not plunder their enemies possessions even when they [the enemy] rose up on the 13th or 14th of Adar to massacre them.  Alternatively, the self-restraint signifies the tikkun [repair] of Saul’s mistake when, in his battle against Amalek, he took the best of the livestock and left the king, Agag, alive (1 Sam. 15).  But I think there is another aspect to not laying hands on the spoil, which concerns who we are as a people and what, in the end, must draw us together as a community.

When we send gifts to one another to remember the month “when grief and mourning were transformed for them to one of festive joy [nehafakh lahem mi-yagon le-simha, mi-evel le-yom tov],” we embrace giving over taking, life over death.  In Persia and Medea, it was only a true transformation from grief to joy when the Jews maintained their ethical integrity, when it was clear that the tragedies of the deaths on the other side were not motivated by plunder but, rather, were acts of self-defense.  So the Jews did not take from the spoils of war [lit. "send out their hands - shalhu yadam"].   But they did “send out” gifts to each other and the poor.  Mishloah manot then is not only a symbol of the tikkun [repair] against the original decree, but also signifies the way we come together as a people.

We happily and freely feed each other – from our home we send out kugel and pickles.  Today, I understand a little better why — bound together in life, not in death, in survival not wanton destruction.

I’d like to add just one last point.  The extension of generosity to one another today is not limited to food.  It is written in the Sefat Emet (the Torah commentary of Rab Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, 19th c.) :

After the salvation, [the Jews] gathered in their cities and established [the custom of] sending gifts to one another and to the poor, thereby uniting as a community.  So too do the learned [talmidei hakhamim] receive from one another, for each learned person has something unique to give.  And each one of us must receive that unique wisdom from his/her friend to unite as a community. [Sefat Emet, Purim 1901, my translation from the Hebrew].

In Jerusalem, I am fortunate to belong to two communities of learned, generous friends — the writers’ workshop (Beit Midrash Kotvim) at Elul and the shul, Mizmor L’David.  They have taught me the importance of giving and receiving both food and wisdom.  I wish for you all the same.  And if you do not have that sense of community, may you find it or make it happen.  It is a very special thing.

Check out the following websites:

For Elul:   http://www.elul.org.il/index.php

For Mizmor L’David: http://mizmorledavid.org/

I would like to focus on only one little word in this week’s parashah, the one that opens Tetzaveh, a mere pronoun — “ve-’atta” (And YOU).  It is not that the description of the accoutrements of the tabernacle and the details of the priestly clothing are deadly boring; quite the opposite.  The more detail that inundates the Torah reading, the more focused one becomes on innuendo and the more room there is for imaginative play. While I do not quote Avivah Zornberg verbatim, I would like to credit her with the sources and flow of ideas in this drash, based on her weekly teachings which I was privileged to attend for years in Jerusalem.[1] The parashah opens with God’s address to Moshe in the 2^nd person:

And as for you, you shall instruct the Israelites [וְאַתָּה תְּצַוֶּה אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל ] to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, for kindling an eternal lamp…(Exod. 27:20)

Surprisingly, there is no introduction to these words of instruction with regard to the ner tamid, the eternal lamp.  There is no preamble as in other openings: “vayedaber ha-Shem el Moshe le’emor [And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying...]” (cf. Exod. 25:1, 30:11).  Instead, we abruptly drop into a conversation between God and Moses, instructing the prophet with regard to the making of the Tabernacle.  But is it not obvious that Moses would be the conduit for these instructions?  Why single him out “ve-’atta [and as for you]“, while leaving him nameless?   The same direct address introduces Moshe to his role of initiating Aharon and his sons into the priestly office and relaying the instructions concerned with their attire.  Like a trope, the phrase “ve-’atta” – and as for you – is repeated again twice:

And as for you, you shall bring forward your brother Aaron, [ וְאַתָּה הַקְרֵב אֵלֶיךָ אֶת אַהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ ] with his sons, from among the Israelites, to serve Me as priests: Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron….. And as for you, you shall speak [וְאַתָּה תְּדַבֵּר ] to all who are skillful, whom I have endowed with the spirit of wisdom to make Aaron’s vestments, for consecrating him to serve Me as priest. (Exod. 28:1, 3)

The threefold expression, ve-’atta tetzaveh (you shall instruct), ve-’atta hakrev (you bring forward) and ve-’atta tedaber (and you shall speak) all stand in stark contrast to God’s more common form of address to Moshe, as in Exod. 27:1: “ve-’assita et hamizbeah [you shall make the altar]“, and in the next verse, 27:2 , “ve-’assita et karnotav [and you shall make the horns of the altar]“, and again in 27:9 “ve-’assitta et hatzar hamishkan [you shall make the enclosure of the mishkan]“.  The second person pronoun, ve-’atta, just ain’t there!   Why then does God here use this strange, seemingly superfluous, phrase, “ve-’atta [and as for you]“, in addressing Moshe and how does it reflect broader themes in the book of Exodus?

The expression, ve’atta, first comes up in Genesis, in the context of God’s curse of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As Rav Zadok HaKohen of Lublin (1823-1900) suggested, the very first occurrence of a term in the Tanakh determines its significance, its semantic weight.  Following the transgression, God addresses the wily Serpent first in the series of curses:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They shall strike at your head, But as for you (ve’atta) you shall strike at their heel [וְאַתָּה תְּשׁוּפֶנּוּ עָקֵב].” (Gen. 3:15)

The term, ve-’atta (as for you) introduces an about shift, a counterpoint to the symmetry of enmity between the snake and the woman.  On the one hand, humans will have the upper hand, striking at the serpent’s head since it is reduced to a belly-crawl, now the most cursed of all creatures, eating the dust of the earth unto eternity;   “But as for you, you shall strike at their heel [וְאַתָּה תְּשׁוּפֶנּוּ עָקֵב]“, suggests there is recompense; it registers the surprise effectiveness of the snake-bite, striking as it does at the heel.

In opening of this week’s parashah, the threefold expression “ve’atta” also introduces a ‘surpise attack’, an about-shift.  On the one hand, the expression singles out You, Moshe, and, at the same time, it anticipates that the prophet will eventually be displaced by the very role he now initiates into service – he will not be the Cohen, but his brother, Aharon, will serve as Cohen in the Mishkan.   Furthermore, Moshe’s name is never mentioned in this parashah, while Aharon’s name is mentioned an auspicious seven times in the first seven verses (27:20-28:5).    Moshe is, paradoxically, present and yet occluded; he remains anonymous, while his bother is insistently named.   Why? The occlusion and focus on Moshe is reflected in liturgical practice.  This week’s parashah invariably falls on the week in which, according to legend, Moshe was born and also died – the 7^th of Adar.[2] He enters as well as exits the stage of history at this auspicious time.  The Baal HaTurim, on the other hand, relates the absence of Moshe’s name to his demand that God wipe him from the book, in his appeal for the people’s forgiveness after the Sin of the Golden Calf:  “And now bear their sin, and if not, wipe me out of your book which you have written [מְחֵנִי נָא מִסִּפְרְךָ]” (Exod. 32:32).[3] That is, if God is wholly bent on destroying his people in his wrath, Moshe wants no part of it – no record of his name in the annals of Jewish history.  Though, in the end, God does bear their sin (that is, He forgives the Israelites), a token price is paid by absenting Moshe from this one parashah.  It is the only chapter, since the Exodus narrative in which the prophet’s name does not appear.  So Moshe is symbolically, and also literally, erased from the book here.  According to the Zohar, “this is an example of the curse of a sage [being fulfilled] even when it is conditional.”[4] Yet the erasure of his name from print is expressive of a deeper spiritual layer, which requires some excavation.

What psychological reason lies behind this literary Houdini act – Moshe’s strange “appearance-disappearance” in Parashat Tetzaveh?  Perhaps it reflects an ambivalence Moshe may feel in initiating Aharon into his role as Cohen, anticipating his inevitable displacement from office.  The phenomenon of Moshe’s occlusion is consistent with his role in the Mishkan.  While he serves as the one who instructs its assembly and conducts the ceremony of sacrifices for the first eight days of initiation (miluim), once the Mishkan is consecrated, Moshe is excluded from service.  Both the omission of Moshe’s name in this week’s parashah and his exclusion from the Mishkan, in the chapters to come, foreshadow the tragic decree:  the leader of the Exodus will never enter the Land of Israel.  So he repeatedly experiences initiation and exclusion – weighed with tremendous responsibility and, at the same time, held at arms length.    The tension over Moshe’s role as the initiator who is later displaced is most poignantly expressed by a midrash:

And as for you, you shall bring forward your brother Aaron [ וְאַתָּה הַקְרֵב אֵלֶיךָ אֶת אַהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ" (Exod. 28:1).  It is written, "If your Torah had not been my plaything, I should have perished in My poverty" (Ps. 119:92).  When God told Moses, "As for you, you shall bring forward your brother Aaron", He did him an injury.  God said: "I had possession of the Torah and I gave it to you: if it were not for the Torah I should have lost My world!" This is like a wise man who married his relative and after ten years together, when she had not borne children, he said to her, "Seek me a wife!"  He said to her, "I could marry without your permission, but I seek your cooperation [יכול אני ליטול חוץ מרשותך אלא שהייתי מבקש ענותנותך].” So said God to Moses: “I could have made your brother High Priest without informing you, but I wish you to be great over him [שתהא גדול עליו].” (Exod. Rab. 37:4, A. Zornberg’s trans., Particulars of Rapture, 2001: 353).

God demands of Moshe an impossible task, impossible that is for one with less forbearance than him.  While God gave him the Torah, he also “did him an injury” (in Hebrew: her’a lo), for he demanded that he resign from office, to be replaced by Aharon as Cohen.  The mashal, allegory, likens this to a man who asks his beloved wife, who could not bear him children, to sanction his taking another, perhaps younger, more fertile wife. (Can you imagine, after years of fertility treatment turning to your middle aged wife and saying:  Dear, would you mind looking for a second wife for me on J-date?)   What, I wonder, could God and Moshe not bear together as offspring?  God is described as “a wise man, who married his relative” – perhaps they knew each other too well, while Aharon was less like God, more human, “of the people, for the people” – as it says in M. Avot 1:12: “Hillel would say: be a student of Aharon, loving peace and pursuing peace [ohev shalom verodef shalom]” (cf. Ps. 34: 15).  According to the midrash, God asked Moshe for his cooperation or forbearance (in Hebrew: ענותנות, related to the word ‘anavah, modesty) in initiating Aharon into the priestly role.  Yet, in asking for his permission, God assures Moshe that he will be greater than his brother: “I could have made your brother High Priest without informing you, I wish you to be great over him” (in Hebrew:  gadol ‘alav).    You will still be “his elder”, figuratively, the greater, the first wife, the chosen, favoured one. After all, Moshe was given the Torah. But, at the same time, he is placed in a psychologically difficult position – to endorse the introduction of a second wife into the home, to initiate Aharon into service as the Cohen.  This epitomizes the prophet’s unique character, as it says: “And the man Moshe was very humble, more so than any man on the face of the earth [וְהָאִישׁ מֹשֶׁה עָנָיו מְאֹד מִכֹּל הָאָדָם אֲשֶׁר עַל פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה]” (Num. 12:3).

What do we learn from Moshe’s humility, expressed by his displacement from priestly office and the simple threefold expression ve-atta, ve-atta, ve-atta in this week’s parashah?  Moshe Rabbenu, our teacher, the Redeemer (ha-goel), the inscriber (ha-mehokek) of ethical imperatives on our hearts, models for us the possibility of an ego-less existence.   Yet, there is no man on the face of the earth like him, as it says: he was “more modest than any man on the face of the earth” (Num. 12:3). Ranier Maria Rilke once wrote of the artist’s paradoxical role, describing it as “pride in being a tool” – how can one be “proud” if one is merely a “tool”, a conduit for the muse?  Perhaps it is not the poet, but the divine that speaks through him/her.  One could read Moshe’s biography as tragic: the leader of the Jewish people held at bay from serving in the Mishkan, excluded from entering the Promised Land.  Yet this is necessarily the fate of the one who is the conduit for the Torah, as the “tool”, the “vessel” for the words of God.  He will bear the Torah to the people, but he will not bear the people into the Land of Israel.   As in the allegory, it will be Aharon and his descendants, the priests, who will bear the children in that intimate family.  The priest will bear the people, in wearing the breastplate of judgment [hoshen mishpat], with each of the Israelite tribes represented by a unique stone, worn over the priest’s heart (cf. Ex. 28:29). He bears the people by carrying the possibility of their atonement and God’s forgiveness into the Sanctuary, through the very clothing he wears.[5] I would like to bless you all this Shabbat with the ability to recognize the greatness of Moshe’s forbearance, while acknowledging that we, all-too-human, are still being carried, born by virtue of the priestly breastplate (hoshen mishpat) – symbolizing the possibility of forgiveness – which decorates the Torah scroll to this very day.

---

[1] See also the discussion in Avivah Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture (New York: Double Day, 2001), 351-397.

[2] Cf. Megillat Ta’anit, last chapter.  It is listed with the rest of the ancient fast-days in Tur Orah Hayyim 580.  An exception holds for a shanah me’uberet [leap year], in which Parashat Tetzaveh is read in Adar I, and Moshe’s Yarhzeit falls in Adar II.

[3] This reading, of course, assumes that the instructions for the Mishkan were given after the sin of the Golden Calf – see, for example, Rashi on Exod. 33:11 and the Tanhuma Terumah 8:8.  Ramban, however, presents a different chronology (cf. his commentary on Exod. 25:1).

[4] Midrash Ne’elam, Shir HaShirim 4.

[5] See the discussion in b. Zevahim 88b, where each part of the Cohen’s clothing represents atonement for a different sin – the tunic (ketonet) atones for bloodshed, the breeches (mikhnesayim) for sexual transgressions (gilui ‘arayot), the mitre (mitznefet) for arrogance, the sash (‘avenet) for impure thoughts, the breastplate (hoshen mishpat) for civil offences (dinim), the ephod for idolatry, the coat (me’il) for slander, and the headplate (titz) for brazenness.

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 Simhat 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 Hakhamim 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 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.”

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[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.