Sparks of Vayakel (and Pekudei)

Posted on by Rebecca


Sparks of Vayakel (and Pekudei)

Conversations At Home

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The end of sefer Shemot can seem a bit repetitive. As Ramban (Bereisheit 36:8) points out, Hashem began telling us in detail how to create the Mishkan in parshat Terumah. By the time we get to parshat Pekudei the information has been repeated, either in detail or as a general principle, five times. Ramban connects this repetition to another repetition in Bereisheit, when Eliezer repeats the story, in detail, of his journey to find a wife for Yitzchak. There, the Midrash (Bereisheit Rabbah 60:8) tells us that the repetition is a sign of the value that Hashem places on the simple conversation of the servants of the Patriarchs.

Although the two situations at first seem to have little in common, it’s actually not that surprising that we find ourselves, at the end of sefer Shemot, returning to the world of the Avot in Bereisheit. After all, that is what Shemot is all about. As Ramban explains in his introduction to the sefer, Shemot is the book of galut and geulah, of exile and redemption. And although we physically leave Egypt halfway through the book, we only get to the point of true redemption at the end of the book. Real redemption only occurs when we, as a nation, reclaim the spiritual state of our forefathers. The end of Sefer Shemot is a national return to the spiritual level of our forefathers. Our forefathers lived in homes with the Divine Presence hovering over them constantly. As a nation, we replicated this through the Mishkan, and the cloud of glory which covered it.

Building the Mishkan was therefore not just building something new. It also meant returning to our spiritual home, to the home of Avraham and Sara. And that meant returning to our mother-tongue, to the language, and the rhythm of the language as it was spoken when our nation was in its infancy. The Midrash quoted above uses the word “siach” to describe the language of our forefathers. Siach is not a language of learning, or academics. It’s the language of simple conversation and natural, unaffected speech. It’s the dialogue of life. It’s repetitive because that’s how we live. Rav Kook (Orot 66-67) points out that its value lies in the way it is an expression and description of how the Avot lived. Their ideals permeated their day-to-day living and found expression even in the discourse of their servants.  

This ability, to be uplifted and to speak naturally at the same time is an expression of what our world was created to embody. The Torah begins, “In the beginning G-d created Heaven and Earth,” the two of them, together. Aretz, earth, which is connected to the root ratz, to run, and the word ratzon, desire or will, is our place for running after and pursuing all that we desire. It was brought into existence together with the Shamayim, from the root sham, there, the place of our destination. The first words of the Torah reveal the nature of our world. It is a system of striving and acquiring, a place created for self-actualization.

It is also a place that is built for man, and reflects man in all its aspects, because all is meant to work together. In Avraham Avinu’s world, and in his home, this was self-evident. In the sefer of secrets that he left us, Sefer HaYetzirah, we learn that all of existence can be divided into three aspects: World, Year and Soul. They are all reflective of each other, and of our inner essence as man. What we call World is all that exists in space, and it encompasses everything in our physical world, and in all the heavens.  In this space, our Creator established one place where His Presence dwells, the Mishkan and then the Beit HaMikdash, and its structure reflects the structure of man. The courtyard, where animals are slaughtered, is the place that relates to our animal soul, our nefesh. In the heichal, the menorah, the shulchan and the ketoret, relate to our higher faculties, to our mind and our emotions, and to our ruach. The kadosh hakedoshim is parallel to the higher level of our soul, our neshama. Time also reflects the structure of man. It spans from the very beginning, which is called reishit, head, and has progressed to our time, ikvisa d’meshicha, which literally means the heels of Moshiach. The refined image of humanity, the nefesh of the world, is seen when we can express our tzelem elokim, our true image, in time and space.

We built the Mishkan, the Ohel Moed, the tent of destination, as the place where we celebrated our moadim, our days of destination. It was the nexus between space, time and human. And as such, it was a return to the home of our forefathers and foremothers, who were the perfect expression of the refined image of humanity. Their simple conversation was a natural expression of what humanity was meant to become.

We were commanded to build the Mishkan, and we fulfilled that command with joy. But there was an additional aspect to that building, even more than just actualizing Hashem’s plan. We didn’t just receive a command, we lived it, and carried it out perfectly (see Shemot 39:42). This was an echo of our Avot, who were the Divine Chariot. Every essence of their being was as Hashem commanded. We too, on a national level, lived the mitzvah with all our being. We reflected this  aspect of “the conversation of our forefathers’ home,” the aspect of actualization of self. Ramban is telling us that this is what is hinted to through all the repetition at the end of sefer Shemot.  

This level is the level of constant conversation with Hashem. Beyond just fulfilling a command, or even fulfilling a command joyfully, this is the concept of living in spiritual reality. It is the recognition that our world was created for a purpose, and that purpose is self-actualization and connection to Hashem.  This is not something that needs to be commanded. Actualizing ourselves spiritually is a necessary part of being, like breathing. We breathe not because we are commanded, but because we want to live. And we actualize ourselves and connect our selves to Hashem, because that is the essence of what it means to be truly alive.

We no longer have the Mishkan or the Beit HaMikdash, but we still maintain this aspect of “the conversation of our fathers.” It exists in the tefillot that they established for us. When Yitzchak established Mincha, for eternity, the pasuk (Bereisheit 24:63) uses the language of siach. The level of “the conversation of our fathers” stays with us through our tefillot. Whenever we daven we have the ability to return home, to our roots.

Sparks of Ki Tisa

Posted on by Rebecca


Sparks of Ki Tisa

The Golden Calf at Evening Time

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This week we revisit a tragedy that happened a very long time ago: the sin of the golden calf. It’s an ancient sin, but Rashi (Shemot 32:34) reminds us that it’s an event that reverberates into our lives today. Every punishment we currently experience includes a bit of the punishment of the sin of the calf. Rav Shapiro draws the logical conclusion from this. Punishment is tied to sin. If there is no punishment without a measure of the punishment of the sin of the calf, then there is also no sin that does not include a bit of the sin of the calf. In other words, ever since we were camped at the base of Har Sinai, at least part of the root of all our sins is the sin of the golden calf. It seems, therefore, a relevant topic to delve into.

It is also somewhat confusing. Why is this sin  so relevant to us, when according to many commentators, it wasn’t even really our sin. When Hashem tells Moshe (Shemot 32:7), “Go descend, because your nation that you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly,” Rashi tells us that the implication was that the actual sinners were not the Jewish nation as a whole. Instead, the sin was instigated by the group of converts that Moshe brought out of Egypt, who we call the eirev rav. These troublemakers of the desert seem far removed from us—at least until we delve a little more deeply into their roots.

The Gra tells us that the roots of the eirav rav go back to the time before time. There is a fascinating Gemara in Chagigah (13b) which describes a river of fire in gehenom which flows onto the heads of certain wicked people. These wicked people are the 974 generations that are described in Iyov 22:16 as “ordained before their time and whose foundation was swept away by a river.” The Gemara explains that these brazen-faced people were set to be created before the formation of the world, but then they were not created. Instead, their souls exist in gehenom, and Hashem plants them into every generation. The Gra equates these souls with the eirav rav. It’s important to note at this point that even though we don’t talk about the eiruv rav much after our time in the desert, this is not because they disappeared. The Gra tells us that the eiruv rav succeeded in influencing us to such an extent that they became an intrinsic part of our nation. In a very real way, the description of these souls describes us as well.

What does it mean to be from the time before the world was created, when the world was just a thought before Hashem? Rashi on the very first pasuk in the Torah actually describes this time period. At first, it arose in Hashem’s thoughts to create the world with the middah of Din, Justice. However, when He saw that the world could not exist this way, He partnered Din with Rachamim, mercy. The world of thought was a place of din, where neither the world itself, nor these 974 souls establish their existence.

There is something very deep here, and it is more than the idea that we aren’t perfect enough to survive under a strict set of rules. The middah of din is fundamental to our existence. Chazal describe this middah as the middah that says “dai, enough” to the world. It is the middah that mandates the exact form that creation takes. It defines our strengths and our limitations, including our distance from Hashem, so that we can feel our own individuality, and our own sense of self. By defining space, it creates for a space we can exist within.

In this truth lies the paradox of din. On the one hand, in order to live, we need to feel that we are independent creations. We experience ourselves as if we are a necessary existence, which has always existed and always will. On the other hand, the only truly necessary existence in the world is Hashem. We live because He gifts us with life. The moment we cut ourselves off from Him, the moment we feel ourselves begin to exist on our own, is the moment we decree our own death. This is why the 974 generations that existed in a reality of pure din are described as having a “foundation that was swept away.” Din can create worlds, but it can not sustain them. The only way to continue forward, to continue to exist, is to recognize that we are loving creations of Hashem, and reattach ourselves to Hashem’s continuous outpouring of love and life-force. The middah of the outpouring of Hashem’s love and connection to us is the middah we call chesed, or rachamim. From the beginning of time, din could not exist alone.  The world is a balance, a partnership, between the middah of din and the middah of rachamim. This is what mandates our continued existence.

The eiruv rav were souls that were caught up in the middah of din, and we can see the mark of this on every part of their creation of the golden calf. The calf was a part of the vision of the Merkavah, which all of Klal Yisrael had seen both at the Yam Suf and at Har Sinai, and which is also described in the first perek of Yechezkel. In the language of the Midrash (Shemot Rabbah 42:5) Hashem describes the actions of the eiruv rav as “slipping out one of my four beasts of transport.” Hashem’s guidance of the world was described by Yechezkel as being expressed through four different middot, each symbolized by a different animal. But the eirav rav was interested in only one, the one on the left side, which corresponds to the middah of din: the ox.

The eirav rav acted in the evening, the time of din, when the light of the sun that symbolizes Hashem’s endless outpouring of chesed into the world, begins to be constrained. They chose gold, whose bright and reflective color mimics fire, the element of din. They chose the form of ox that is called eigel, calf, related to the word ma’agal, a circle, which is a space that is enclosed into itself, and its own complete existence. This was self-expression in service of G-d, taken to an extreme. They wanted to replace Moshe with an image of their own choosing. They used their own tools, to form the image they desired. And like all sins, this sin was created when they breathed their own life force into it. What arose from all their efforts, the Midrash tells us, was a distorted image of man: a moving, speaking calf. It was their version of the face of the ox, the yetzer hara that says, in the words of Rav Shapiro, “Once I exist, I am the one who determines my existence, and I will do what I decide (p.579).” It is the famous last words, “Let us run this on our own.”

These are words that we all know well. We are, after all, in the generation before moshiach, the generation of the chutzpadik. We are racing toward a time of self-perfection, and that project requires no small amount of self-expression. Chutzpa is part of the air we breathe. So it’s good for us to pay attention to the response of Hashem to this sin, which is the root of all of our sins.

Hashem tells Moshe, “Lech reid, go descend.” The word reid has only two letters, reish and dalet, and they both happen to appear oversized in the Torah. The oversize reish occurs in our parsha, Shemot 34:14, in the word acher, as in “Do not bow down to a foreign god, el acher.” The oversize dalet is in Devarim 6:4, in the word echad in the shema, as in “Hashem echad.” These two letters look very similar. In fact, chassidus teaches that the only difference between them is a yud. If you affix a yud to the upper right corner of the reish, it becomes a dalet.” But they symbolize the exact opposite concepts. The dalet is the letter of humility, that announces, “d’leit leh m’garmei klum,” he has nothing of his own. The reish is the letter of haughtiness, of ram, raised spirits, and of the rosh, the head that is lifted high. Hashem was telling Moshe that the distinction between the letters dalet and reish has been erased.

The path to emunah and the path to kefirah begin in very similar ways. They both begin by examining the wonders of creation. The difference between them lies only in whether those wonders are connected back to their original creator. The difference between humility and haughtiness is similarly small. As Rav Kelemen teaches, haughtiness is the simple statement, “I am great.” To turn that haughtiness into humility we need only add, “I am great, Baruch Hashem!” Self-expression is a vital part of how we were created. But the key is that our continued existence lies recognizing that everything we have and everything we are is an expression of Hashem. With that in mind, we can stay connected, not only to ourselves, but also to the source of everything we have, the rachamim that is the expression of Hashem’s loving expansiveness in our world.

Sparks of Tezaveh

Posted on by Rebecca


Sparks of Tezaveh

The Clothes Make The Man

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A good amount of this week’s parsha, which deals mostly with the inauguration of the Kohanim, is spent describing what they will wear to the event. Though we may not automatically ascribe much spiritual value to our clothing, the Torah clearly has a different message. The clothes of the Kohanim are no small matter. They are, the Torah tells us, are “for kavod, honor, and for tiferet, splendor (Shemot 28:2).”  Rashi points out (Shemot 29:29) that it is through his garments that Aharon is invested with the kehuna gedolah. Perhaps most surprisingly, the Gemara tells us that it is the merit of the garments of the Kohen Gadol which saves us from being destroyed by our enemies in galut (Yoma 72b).

This definitely requires a bit of explanation. In order to gain clarity, it helps to begin at the beginning, from the first place we find clothing in the Torah, which is immediately after Adam and Chava sin in Gan Eden. Before the sin, Adam and Chava were unclothed and felt no shame. Shame is borne from the gap between where we would like to be and where we really are. Before the sin, the was no gap. We were clothed in light, and our physical bodies were perfect expressions of our soul. After the sin, a separation was created between our physical body and our soul. Adam and Chava recognized the gap and felt shame.

The first response of Adam and Chava to the situation was to clothe themselves. We call the clothing we create for ourselves beggadim, which comes from the word bagad, to betray. It expresses the idea that our physical bodies betray our essence by hiding our most valuable part, our soul. We clothe our bodies to minimize the physical so that we can emphasize the spiritual. For this reason, we don’t usually cover our face, since that is the one place on our body where our neshama is still clearly seen.

However, when Hashem clothes Adam and Chava, the verv that is used is “vayalbishem,” from the root levush. Levush is another word for clothing, but it can also be read as lo bush, without embarrassment. Hashem was teaching us that we can use our clothing not just to hide our bodies but also as a tool to mitigate the results of our sin.

We are actually clothed in many layers, and most of them are not physical. For example, our middot are called levush, clothing (see Yeshayahu 52:1, 51:9, Tehillim 93:1). Our highest soul is clothed in our lower soul, and then again in our middot, our character traits, which enable our soul to express itself in the world. Those middot are clothed in our bodies, and finally our bodies are clothed in our physical garments. The true purpose of our physical clothing is to be the final link in this chain. On the one hand, our clothing covers our body. On the other hand, it is also an expression of the spiritual covering of our soul. Clothing is an expression of true honor, kavod, which is our internal connection to our highest self. Kavod is another name for our soul, which is hewn from the kisei hakavod, the throne of Hashem’s Honor.

Our clothing has the potential to be the expression of our soul. This was certainly true about the clothing of the Kohanim. Aharon’s clothing reflected his middah of Hod, and his role in the giving of the Torah, which was to be “a mouth for Moshe.” In the desert, Moshe was the face of the written Torah, and Aharon was the face of the Oral Torah. With this as an introduction, we can begin to understand the statement of the Gemara that the clothing of the Kohen Gadol is what saves us from destruction in the galut.

 

The Gemara illustrates its point with a famous story. Yoma 69a describes what happened as Alexander the Great was advancing on Israel, ready to conquer the tiny nation-state. Shimon HaTzaddik was, at the time, leader of Israel. He was both Kohen Gadol and head of the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah. In response to the threat, Shimon put on the garments of the Kohen Gadol and went out to greet Alexander. It was a moment of great tension. At daybreak the two leaders met in the field, and to the astonishment of the entire Greek Army, Alexander bowed before Shimon HaTzaddik. It was Shimon’s image that he saw before him in all his successful battles.

This is a Gemara that expresses the spiritual reality that underlies historical events. Shimon HaTzaddik lived at a turning point in Jewish history. His was the first generation without neviim, prophets, and the first generation in which Torah was expressed in the name of the teacher who said it. His generation was the generation that moved from the world of prophets to the world of scholars. In his generation the human intellect became the main repository of the Torah in this world.

The tremendous outpouring of Torah that was cultivated in the minds of the Chachamim of Am Yisrael, had to be balanced in the world by an outpouring of wisdom in the secular world. Without this balance, free choice would not be able to be maintained. The spread of the Oral Torah in the world, as exemplified by Shimon HaTzaddik, was what paved the way spiritually for Greek philosophy and culture to sweep through civilization. The clothes of the Kohen Gadol were clothes that revealed the soul of the Kohen Gadol, which was the soul of Torah She Ba’al Peh. These are the clothes that Shimon HaTzaddik wore to confront Alexandar, and these are the clothes that save us through our long years of galut.

We no longer have the clothes of the Kohen Gadol, but we, too, are able to wear clothes that express our souls. The Kohen Gadol was our representative, and his clothing was empowering for all of us. From the clothing changes of the Kohen Gadol, we learn the halacha of wearing special clothing for Shabbat (Shabbat 114a). Shabbat comes from the root shav, return. On Shabbat we can all return to our inner point, and connect to our higher soul.

We are in galut, but we have Torah. And Torah draws out the soul of the person. Each of us has a unique soul that is hewn from the Kisei HaKavod, and a unique revelation of Torah and of that soul in the world. We can clothe ourselves in our Torah and find our kavod.