ADAR RISHON TORAH
The four parshiot in Adar Rishon begin with what I call the two detour parshiot of Terumah and Tetzaveh. Moses has gone up the mountain. We know he is going to get the first set of tablets and then come down to see the Israelites worshipping the Golden Calf whereupon he loses it and smashes them. But our text takes a break from the story and detours to describing the mishkan, the portable dwelling place of YHVH and the ordination of the priests who will serve the divine at the mishkan. Ki Tissa sees the episode of the Golden Calf, discussed below and the return up the mountain for Moses and his descent with the second set of tablets which are actually very different in content from the first set. Vayakhel is the next to last parsha of the book of Exodus and gives us the details of the plan for actually building the mishkan. The mishkan is built in Pekudei, a parsha which is read with Vayakhel in non leap years. .
I’m going to pick one theme from each of the parshiot, except there is a bonus second theme from Ki Tissa. For more discussion, see my commentaries on the website.
· The importance of sacred space in Judaism (Terumah)
· Implications of the altar having the ability to transfer holiness (Tetzaveh)
· The Golden Calf and the relationship with the indigenous people of Canaan whom we are to displace (Ki Tissa)
· The idea of vision fasts in Judaism (Ki Tissa)
· The problem of now what after the experience of the divine (Vayakhel)
Sacred space is hugely important in Judaism. The mishkan described in this parsha is the forerunner of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple was conceived as an axis mundi, the centerpoint in the world connecting the underworld, the middleworld and the upperworld (heaven). The temples were a focus of Judaism for about the first third of our history as a people. Then the land of Israel as a whole became a focus of our dreams in exile. When Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, desperate to save the Jewish people from the tide of antisemitism in Europe, proposed settling in Uganda for a new Jewish state (as if nobody lived there—the proposal being typical European colonialism), the people, observant of law and non observant alike, shouted him down and insisted on our ancestral homeland. The Western Wall, as the only remnant of the Second Temple, is highly revered and is a place that appeals to secular and religious Jews alike.
But there are those within Judaism who reject the importance of sacred space. There’s a certain tension around having a UNIVERSAL TRUE GOD OF THE ENTIRE WORLD, and privileging one particular place over any other. We’ve had plenty of leading thinkers who haven’t so much denigrated sacred space as who think that we have moved past the particularism of a particular place.
This rejection of place can be found in the thought of Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-72), a highly revered and influential thinker. Let’s briefly look at the introduction to his book The Sabbath. The book begins with an attack on the idea that a deity could be associated with a particular place and a denigration of mountains and rivers as mere things (pp.4-6). He contends that pantheism is a religion of space (p.4). Heschel then argues “To Israel, the unique events of historic time were spiritually more significant than the repetitive processes in the cycle of nature, even though physical sustenance depended on the latter.” (p.7) and “Judaism is a religion of time, aimed at the sanctification of time.” (p.8). Finally, “Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. (p.10, italics in original)
I would not deny the importance of sacred time in Judaism or in general. But I would argue vociferously both for the general importance of sacred space and for its place in Judaism. I would emphatically argue against a view that sets time against space and privileges time over space as something inert. I believe that land and mountains and rivers are alive. I would argue that if we want to reclaim a sense of being indigenous, that sense must include an uplifting of local sacred space.
We have many examples of the importance of sacred space in Biblical Judaism. The details of the mishkan are a testimony to the reverence our ancestors felt about sacred space. The closing line of the Mourner’s Kaddish is Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu which should be translated as “He who makes peace from the high sacred places, he will make peace on us.” My Jewish Learning, to give one example, mistranslates bimromav as celestial heights because they can’t conceive of sacred high places. We see the sacred high places throughout the book of Judges, Samuel, Kings and we’ll see it later when the prophet Balaam blesses us after being paid to curse us in the book of Numbers. The sacred high places were often associated with sacred groves and the Goddess, which I think is part of why this idea of sacred space is problematic and/or gets suppressed in Rabbinic Judaism.
It is easy to lose sight of sacred space in our mobile modern lives. Almost all of us do not live somewhere where we go to particular holy areas to celebrate rituals, and none of us live our lives surrounded by widespread agreement that certain places are sacred; the Black hills may be sacred ground for the Sioux, but they are a tourist destination for far more people. The place where I did my vision fast in Vermont was not far from a snowmobile trail.
What’s your experience of sacred space? What makes it sacred? If you have ever connected to a sacred place, imagine that this was a regular part of your life and the lives of everyone around you. How would that change your life?
The alter is consecrated right after Aaron and his sons are ordained. “Seven days you shall perform purification for the altar to consecrate it, and the altar shall become most holy; whatever touches the altar shall become consecrated. (29:37). So it sure seems like the altar has a rite of passage that takes seven days, just like the priests do. Indeed, maybe the altar is holier than the priests, because the text does not imply that the priests can transfer their consecration to anything else at all, let alone everything that they touch or that touches them.
It's really interesting to me that this altar is a human made object. I am an animist, so I believe that a river, for instance, can be sacred and certainly is alive and has equal ontological status as humans. But I have more trouble with things we humans have created. In what sense is the computer on which I type this alive? I think it is Freya Matthews the philosopher who quotes a native Australian thinker who says that of course, the rusted out cars that dot the village are as alive as the trees because they too are come from the earth.
But if our altars are ontological equal to trees and people, why are they more powerful than the priests? After all, if you touch a priest, you are still just an Israelite, you don’t become consecrated. There’s some sense, I think, in which the charged object retains the charge in a way that the priest does not.
Let me share an example a student gave. She has a tallit that she wore at Standing Rock, the Native American led protest against the trans Canadian pipeline that crossed sacred land and promised to be an ecological disaster. The student said that the tallit still faintly smelled of the eternal fire at Standing Rock and wearing it brought the sacredness of that community back to her.
Do you believe that human made objects can be holy such as the altar? What, if any, is the significance of the altar being more sacred or more powerful than the priests, if you follow my interpretation of the text?
The Golden calf is one of the most famous stories that is routinely taught as an example of idolatry and something that we should never, ever do. But there are problem with what we’ve been taught.
Aaron says something that is truly puzzling if the Golden Calf is simply idolatry, the worship of a different deity. He says “Tomorrow shall be a festival of YHVH” (32:5) when he sees the people’s response to the Golden Calf. And indeed, the next day “the people offered up burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well being; they sat down to eat and drink, and then rose to dance.” (32:6). A celebration. These people thought they were celebrating YHVH when they danced around the Golden Calf.
Ziony Zevit, a professor at American Jewish University, also writes, “In the northern kingdom of Israel, the calf or young bull was the icon associated with YHVH. They were found at both Dan and Bethel, two cultic sites set up by the royalty of the Northern Kingdoms. (The Religions of Ancient Israel, p.317). The Northern Kingdom of Israel was one part of the land under Jewish sovereignty when the united kingdom dissolved after Solomon. So our ancestors worshipped YHVH with the image of a golden calf, not only in the desert when Moses was up on Mount Sinai, but years later.
So why was Moses so angry at them? Why are we taught this as a story of idolatry?
Chapter 34’s condemnation of different ways of worshipping YHVH and the indigenous religious practice in Canaan gives us a powerful way to understand this story. YHVH basically says that he will give the land to the Israelites, but they have to destroy all the native religious altars, pillars and sacred posts. They are commanded not to mix with the inhabitants in any way in order to stay religiously pure, lest they be corrupted away from the true religion of YHVH only and wind up sharing their sacrifices and worship their Gods. (34:11-16).
The Golden Calf, I think, represented a worship that was aligned with Canaanite indigenous religious practice. How? The Golden Calf represented a way of worshipping YHVH in his male aspect, and that implied a female aspect of the divine. Our text wants absolutely nothing to do with the idea of a goddess, because if you have a Goddess, you will have worship of her (as indeed we see in the Hebrew Bible through all the condemnation of her worship). This undermines the idea of worshipping only YHVH. As the text tells us “you must not worship any other god, because YHVH whose name is impassioned (or jealous), is an impassioned (or jealous) God.” (34:14).
There’s also a polemical aspect here, both against the Northern Kingdom of Israel and against a long line of Kings even in the South who supported or tolerated the worship of the Goddess. We need to remember that Asherah had a prominent place in the first Temple. Further these ancestors were just as authentically Hebrew as our Judean ancestors who are the editors of our text and became the founders of Rabbinic Judaism.
Is the Golden Calf a story of idolatry as we’ve been taught, or a religious polemic? What parts of the demand to separate from the indigenous people of Canaan and the worship of YHVH along with other Gods are justified in your mind, and what parts are problematic? What kind of difference would it make if we embraced worshipping the Golden Calf?
Vision fasts in Judaism happen. We have perfect proof in this parsha, where Moses returns to the top of Mount Sinai. “And he was there with YHVH 40 days and forty nights; he ate no bread and drank no water [don’t try this on your own, you’ll be dead] and he wrote down on the tablets the terms of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.” (34:28).
I’ve written more extensively about the possibility of vision fasts in Judaism in two blog posts. https://earthbasedjudaism.org/indigenous-jewish-practices/the-possibility-of-jewish-vision-fasts and https://earthbasedjudaism.org/indigenous-jewish-practices/jewish-vision-fasts-part-2-curriculum. Besides Moses, we have a famous example of Elijah undertaking a vision fast, (I Kings Chapter 19), Jesus undergoing a fast recounted as the opening of the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke and the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism. (In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, p. 22). I know that Jesus might be viewed by some as a problematic example, but Jesus lived and died as a Jew.
Vision fasts don’t happen routinely as initiation rituals as they do or did in other societies. We also have no ethnography. Thus, we know almost nothing about how to prepare for the vision fasts or what the practitioners did during the fasts. In the blogs, I offer a whole series of ideas for preparation and practice that are drawn from our indigenous practices. These include fasting, taking a soul accounting, reciting or writing psalms, working with a Jewish medicine wheel, writing an ethical will for your descendants, experiencing the brokenness of the cosmos and seeking to repair the divine and the world (tikkun olam). It is absolutely possible for us to reclaim this practice and make it available for those who seek it out, not just for people as spiritually elevated as Moses, Elijah, Jesus and the Baal Shem Tov.
Here's what I would ask of people if I were guiding such a vision fast. Before they came, I’d ask them “Why are you doing this now? What do you hope to gain from it? What would success look like? What would failure look like? What strengths and weaknesses do you bring?
To be sure, our fasters’ actual experience will materially differ from what they write. Further, I don’t believe that it is actually possible to fail. It certainly is possible to sit there and not have a vision, but that is highly informative if (AND ONLY IF) the guides can frame this as a function of not being ready for visions. I came away with no vision and no direction from my first vision fast—and that was totally because I had more preparation work to do before I could be granted a vision.
Would you be interested in doing a vision fast? Under what circumstances? What would you hope to gain from this truly intense experience? Do you think you are ready?
Now what? Near the end of the previous parsha we read “Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant, since he had spoken with YHVH. Aaron and all the Israelites saw that the skin of Moses’ face was radiant, and they shrank from coming hear him.” (34:29-30). You go off on this tremendous personal growth retreat, whether it is a vision fast, a week at a retreat center, a transformational experience in a hotel ballroom. You feel like everything has changed, and your face is shining so brightly that everyone is a little scared and jealous of you. And, in the meantime, everyone has just been living their everyday lives. You’ve had your mind and heart blown, and they’ve been busy coping with the craziness that are our contemporary lives. Now what? That’s the question facing Moses and YHVH.
Their answer is to build the mishkan, the tabernacle. It’s an interesting choice. Moses doesn’t try to persuade the people that they too can have radiant faces if they climb Mt. Sinai and do a vision fast. He doesn’t try to get them to make haste to the promised land or urge them to transform their relationships with each other. He says let’s build the mishkan.
Why build the mishkan first? The text gives us no answers. It doesn’t say this is what he heard to do when he was up on Mt. Sinai. Let me first offer some spiritual speculations, and then some more communal/settled lives ones.
Maybe the mishkan is Moses’ way to give thanks to YHVH, who he encountered in an intimate way on Sinai. Maybe it is a way of ensuring to the people that YHVH will be with them, something that is truly important to Moses. In traditional face to face societies, the person returning with their face shining would have conversations with selected tribal elders who would guide them. Moses had no elders, and we don’t have much in that way either. In my own transformative experiences, the lack of guidance from elders is one thing that has really stood out to me. Maybe the mishkan is a way for Moses to keep YHVH close so YHVH can give Moses guidance.
Building the mishkan might also be Moses’ way of domesticating the people’s spiritual relationship to the divine. Saying let’s build the mishkan is arresting because Moses isn’t saying let’s do something that reeks of wilderness spirituality, as his encounters with the divine had been. He doesn’t say let’s do something transformational. Instead he says lets build a building, elect a board president, hire some principals and teachers. The mishkan is a very settled kind of spirituality.
The mishkan is also something that requires communal effort. He didn’t just tell his vision to his family and friends, and then do not much about it. Instead he came up with a plan that required some kind of concrete action from everyone. He seeks, I would argue and not particularly successfully, to unify the whiny community.
What is your experience, if any, with returning from transformational experiences? What kinds of guidance have you received and how useful was it? What would you do differently? What kind of things did you bring home with you to keep alive your experience on the mountaintop?
QUESTIONS
What’s your experience of sacred space? What makes it sacred? If you have ever connected to a sacred place, imagine that this was a regular part of your life and the lives of everyone around you. How would that change your life?
Do you believe that human made objects can be holy such as the altar? What, if any, is the significance of the altar being more sacred or more powerful than the priests, if you follow my interpretation of the text
Is the Golden Calf a story of idolatry as we’ve been taught, or a religious polemic? What parts of the demand to separate from the indigenous people of Canaan and the worship of YHVH along with other Gods are justified in your mind, and what parts are problematic? What kind of difference would it make if we embraced worshipping the Golden Calf
Would you be interested in doing a vision fast? Under what circumstances? What would you hope to gain from this truly intense experience? Do you think you are ready?
What is your experience, if any, with returning from transformational experiences? What kinds of guidance have you received and how useful was it? What would you do differently? What kind of things did you bring home with you to keep alive your experience on the mountaintop?
