YOU SHALL NOT KINDLE FIRE IN ANY OF YOUR DWELLING PLACES ON THE SABBATH DAY.

(Shemot 35:3)

 

If I learned that one rests from the eve of the Seventh Year for the Seventh Year, so one should similarly rest from the Sabbath eve for the Sabbath? And also - it is an a fortiori argument: [working the land on] the Seventh Year does not entail a punishment of extirpation [karet] or a judicial death sentence, but one rests from the eve of the Seventh Year for the Seventh Year, all the more so in regard to the Sabbath, which entails extirpation and a judicial death sentence [for those who work on it], that one should rest from Sabbath eve for the Sabbath, and will be prohibited from lighting a lamp or cooking a stew, or from making a bonfire. We learn from the verse: You shall not kindle fire in any of your dwelling places on the Sabbath day - you must not kindle it on the Sabbath day, but you can light it on Sabbath eve for the Sabbath.

(Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Vayakhel, Massekhta DeShabbata 1:s.v. lo teva'aru)

 

May God double the reward of the Gaon who responded with perfect answers to the Sadducees who prohibit lamps on the Sabbath. Once, one of them encountered me. I told him we should leave aside the rabbinical tradition and pursue the Scriptural text alone. He was elated, so I asked him: "Who says that it is prohibited to light a lamp on the night of the Sabbath after sunset?" He answered: "You shall not kindle fire." I responded saying that Scripture only mentions the day. And similarly: And on the eighth day, the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised (Vayikra 12:3), but he cannot be circumcised at night! He answered: And it was evening and it was morning, one day (Bereishit 1:5) - the two together are called a day, and the evening preceded the morning. Again I answered that that could not be, because Scripture says: And God called the light day (ibid). How could it contradict itself by calling both darkness and light "day"? And then I explained: it is written: night and day (I Kings 8:49); and day and night (Bereishit 8:22); three days, night and day (Esther 4:16); three days and three nights (Jonah 2:1). He answered: From evening to evening, you shall observe your rest day (Vayikra 23:32). I again answered, saying that the verse refers only to Yom Kippur. The proof is that it says your rest day - in the singular, instead of [the plural] your rest days as in the verse and observe My rest days (Vayikra 19:30)... then the Sadducee became confused... he returned a month later, all happy and self-satisfied, since he had found [the verse]: This day is a day of good news (II Kings 7:9). There it is also written: If we wait until daybreak [we will incur guilt] (ibid) [implying that he spoke at night but used the word "day"]. So I answered him: "So this is the only mention of "day"? Is it not written in the Torah: On the day I struck every firstborn (Bamidbar 3:13) - and the killing of the firstborn occurred at midnight! Rather, the word "day" can be understood in two different ways. One refers to day and night, while the other refers to a particular moment in time, such as, and it shall be in that day (Isaiah 17:4). And similarly: This day you cross the Jordan (Devarim 9:1). I mention these things so that a discerning person will be able to interpret Scripture to find various meanings. That is why we are in need of the accepted interpretations, the tradition and the Oral Torah in connection with [interpretation of] all of the commandments, as I have begun to do in this book.

(Ibn Ezra, Short Commentary Shemot 35:3)

 

The Tabernacle and the Calf - Squaring the Circle

Yossi Hatav

After the giving of the Torah and parashat Mishpatim, the Torah devotes a number of parshiyot to the construction of the Tabernacle, which was meant to serve as the foundation for God's presence in the world. Parashat Ki-Tissa describes the Sin of the Golden calf. Beginning with the Sages, various interpreters have dealt with the problem of the chronological order of these events. That is to say: does the order in which the passages appear in the Torah reflect the chronological order of events, or, as Midrash Tanhuma teaches, does the Tabernacle come afterwards to atone for the sin of the calf?

In any event, our parasha concludes the account of the construction of the Tabernacle, and in Shemot 35:8 we read: oil for lighting, and spices for the anointing oil and for the incense. Details regarding the incense may be found in parashat Ki-Tissa (Shemot 30:23-33):

And you, take for yourself spices of the finest sort: of pure myrrh five hundred [shekel weights]; of fragrant cinnamon half of it two hundred and fifty [shekel weights]; of fragrant cane two hundred and fifty [shekel weights], and of cassia five hundred [shekel weights] according to the holy shekel, and one hin of olive oil. You shall make this into an oil of holy anointment, a perfumed compound according to the art of a perfumer; it shall be an oil of holy anointment... Any person who compounds anything like it or puts any of it on an alien shall be cut off from his people.

The selection of spices and quantities: 500 shekel of pure myrrh, 250 shekel of fragrant cinnamon, 250 shekels of fragrant cane, 500 shekel of cassia. All told we have a sum of 1500 shekel, which equals 3,000 half-shekels. The beginning of parashat Ki-Tissa (which we also read as Parashat Shkalim, this year together with parashat Pekudei) emphasizes that the half-shekel is intended to atone for your souls. For what sin does the half-shekel atone? If the sin of the Golden Calf preceded the construction of the Tabernacle, we it may be assumed that the 3,000 half-shekels given by 3,000 Israelites who sinned with the Calf and who were killed by the Levites constitute an atonement for that sin.

1,500 shekel is a huge quantity of spices, and the commentators disagree regarding the precise combination of those spices that must be mixed with olive oil to produce oil of holy anointment.

It would seem that pure olive oil would suffice for the anointment of the Tabernacle and of Aaron the Priest. The incense was not needed in order to insure that Aaron and the Tabernacle would smell good; rather, holy anointment creates holiness, i.e., difference and separateness (You shall be holy - you shall be separated). The oil's purity and the complexity of the incense, which was made from a variety of plants and materials - some better and some worse - reflect the People Israel in its entirety, just as the midrashim explain in regard to the four species. There is danger in the holy: Any person who compounds anything like it or puts any of it on an alien shall be cut off from his people. It exists at the limit, at the crossing-point. It contains and separates. The Kabalistic "Tree of Sefirot" portrays this well.

The need for this separateness, for the creation of a defined area called the "Tent of Meeting" [Ohel Mo'ed; mo'ed also means "an appointed time"] - both a tent and an appointed time - called for two chief artisans: Betzalel and Ohaliav. Their names speak of their functions, and their functions influence their names.

Betzalel, as Rashi says, following the Sages, was from the tribe of Judah - the tribe of the House of David and of the Messiah son of David. He is Betzel el ["in God's shadow"], but not a replacement for God. He does not stand by God's side and he is not God's son.

Ohaliav is from the tribe of Dan - Dan will judge his people. Jacob calls Judah a lion's cub - Moses calls Dan a lion's cub. The calf and the kid are also "cubs." Ohaliav - his Father in Heaven is his tent - the Tent of Meeting. The role of the Tabernacle's architects, Betzalel and Ohaliav, is to create the place that links heaven and earth, on the earth and within it, as symbolized by the plants that were mixed into the oil of holy anointment - top, stem, and roots.

Ohaliav is also the son of Ahisamakh ["my brother supported"]. Perhaps he was so named to commemorate the difficult fraternal reconciliation reached by Joseph and his brothers; perhaps the additional and even chief function of the Tent of Meeting (stationed in the center of the camp) and of the half-shekel gift is to bind the Israelites together.

Binding and delimitation, holiness and separateness are best expressed by the bronze basin. R. Meir Simkha MiDvinsk writes about the basin in his commentary, Meshekh Hokhmah (Shemot 38:8):

They made the bronze basin... from the mirrors of the women who stood - In the command it is written: And you shall make the bronze basin for washing and you shall place water in it (Shemot 30:18), but there is no mention of washing in the description of the execution of the command. Only in Pekudei is it written and he placed water in it for washing (40:30). This points to the passage from Midrash Tanhuma later cited by Rashi, that Moses did not want to make it out of the women's mirrors and the blessed Lord told him that he should make it from them, that they were the means of the Israelites' being fruitful and multiplying and [the women's] being like gardens locked up for their husbands. That is why the sotot [women suspected of adultery] would drink from the basin and they would be cleared and would become pregnant. If so, He revealed to him that the water would also be for the sotot to drink; not only for washing, but also for drinking, and that is why he did not write for washing here.

We again find the principle of binding and separation in its most human and touching form. The author of Tekhaelet Moredekhai adds: "It is not enough that the daughters of Israel offer such contributions - they designate that the mirrors be used solely for the construction of the basin. From there, from these mirrors of the evil inclination, the priests will sanctify their hands and feet."

The basin is the only artifact in the Tabernacle - besides the Menorah - for which no measurements are given. It is thought to have been circular, but the Torah itself gives no explicit indication of its shape. People who try to reconstruct the details of the Tabernacle assume that it was circular because none of its measurements are given by the Torah. The word "circular" [agol] appears nowhere in connection with the Tabernacle or indeed anywhere else n the Torah. If it were not for the written statements of Scripture, we could imagine a circular Tabernacle, a circular altar, a circular Ark, and a circular table, and we could invent beautiful explanations about that perfect shape...

However, as is well known, reality is different. The Tabernacle is entirely constructed from lines, angles, height, width, breadth, and especially directions, beginning and end, similar to the incense in the oil of holy anointment: flowers, stalks, and roots. And just as we find in the Sabbath: reception of the Sabbath with lamp oil, the first Kiddush with spiced wine, marking off, binding together, directionality - so too is the history of the People Israel: from exile to crystallization, wilderness to exaltedness, independence to service of God. And if independence fails as it did fail, we are granted a second cycle and a third cycle, this last one perhaps pointing to the final redemption, since it was the cruelest exile in the most trying desert.

When Moses went up to heaven, our ancestors had just witnessed the splitting of the Red Sea, the victory over Amalek, and the theophany at Mount Sinai, where they heard the "direct" speech of God, making them ready to enter the Land of Israel. However, they lost their patience and wanted "Moses Now," "Israel Now," and "Comfortable Life-Style Now." In a certain sense, they had lost their faith in God but not their need for some god or another. Therefore, it was only natural that they asked Aaron, the man closest to Moses, who was the man closest to God, to get up and make us a god!

This is a legitimate request when coming from the mouths of an enslaved nation, a nation crippled by a lack of faith in the ability of human beings to confront their fate and the difficulties of the wilderness on their own.

Aaron returned them to the event that had just transpired and which still echoed throughout the world. He returned them to the theophany at Mount Sinai, where they saw the sounds; he directs them towards their ears and their wives' and children's ears - those same ears which had heard Torah directly from God. He asked them to detach themselves from schemes [mimizimot], from the schemes of their ears [nimzei ozneikhem - usually understood as the rings in your ears] and they understood it in literal, tangible terms. It was from those nimzei oznayim that the calf was formed.

The Sages disagree regarding Aaron's role in the sculpting of the Calf. Did Aaron actually choose to give it the shape of a calf, or did the wizards from among the mixed multitude - and not the Israelites proper - bewitch the lump of gold, making it take the form of a calf? The latter view explains why the verse reads, these are your gods, o Israel rather than these are our gods.

What could be created from nimzei oznayim, which are agilim [earrings], if not an egel [calf]? Not a circle [igul] as a set form, but rather a calf as the making of a circle, and a circle dance [ma'agal] - the calf and the dancing.

That is what emerged from the furnace into which Aaron threw the gold earrings: a circular form and a circle dance. I can imagine to myself a ball that is spherical but not a number [sifra], the complete opposite of the Tabernacle - a ball closed within itself, without direction, without connection between interior and exterior, without a Tent of Meeting, without a process, a deviation from the path. That is why the Israelites had to drink the water into which the ashes of the Calf had been thrown. They were like a woman who has deviated [sota– more specifically, a woman suspected of adultery] from her role and loyalties, who also has to drink of the bitter waters.

According to some commentators, the Calf received its shape accidentally within the furnace, as Aaron said, I threw it in the fire, and out came this calf. In the Tokhaha [speech of warning and rebuke] it says: If you treat Me as happenstance... I shall angrily treat you as happenstance. Happenstance, the circle in which every point is equivalent to the others, is entirely a matter of coincidence and randomness. Randomness is the complete opposite of tikkun olam [mending the world]. It opposes the ability of the People Israel to engage in tikkun, and it opposes the opportunity for tikkun offered by the Tabernacle, which represents God's presence in the world.

The Calf is called Egel HaZahav [literally: "calf of the gold"]. It is not called Egel shel Zahav ["calf of gold"]. Gold is Torah. When Torah is contained in a circle [igul], the Torah becomes closed-up, belonging only to individuals who close themselves up in their own closed circles. Such a Torah is neither studied nor interpreted. That calf is a masekha [molten-image or mask], as we read in Psalms (106:19): And they made a calf at Horev, they bowed before a masekha. This Torah made "circular" is closed in on itself, it hides its face behind a mask [masekha]. That mask is different from the veil worn by Moses. Moses donned a veil to protect those who saw him; the mask protects the one hiding behind it from showing his true face. A mask deceives, and so does the Calf: the grand deception continues unto this day.

In contrast to the mask, Moses' veil protects the onlooker, for the skin of Moses' face beamed [with light]. The veil invites the onlooker and draws him near. While the mask blocks, the veil filters and draws near.

The Sages find a connection between the Golden Calf and the Red Heifer: "Let the mother [heifer] come and clean up its child's [the Calf's] excrement." A kid and its mothers' milk is the archetype for the prohibition of mixing milk and meat. Rashi, following the Sages, writes: "The calf and the lamb are included under the rubric of ‘kid'; ‘kid' is just a term for ‘offspring.'"

For our culture - in contrast to cultures such as that of India - both the flesh and the milk of the cow are dietary staples. Judging from the sacrificial rite, we may conclude that cattle and tzon [sheep and goats] "starred" a more or less equally in the lifestyle of our ancestors in the wilderness.

The kid and the calf symbolize the complete opposite of Israel's destiny as it was presented in the Brit ben Habetarim ["Covenant of the Severed Pieces"]. Israel's destiny is enduring and directed towards tikkun and the Messianic Age. In contrast, the calf and the kid together constitute the "Wheel of Fortune," happenstance. They also stand in contrast to the cow [para], which symbolizes fertility [poriyut]. The "mother" of every kid or calf does not merely symbolize, but rather actually constitutes continuity and directionality.

After Moses prays and God is appeased, the Holy One blessed be He does not want to take any additional risks with the Israelites, the stiff-necked people who had lost their finery which they had received at Horev, so He speeds them on their way to Canaan. He destroys the Amorites and the other nations which had caused the Israelites to pass time in the wilderness and He gives the Israelites a number of commandments that would be essential for beginning their new lives in their own land: the destruction of idolatry, the organization of time and space, and no less important - the strengthening of Moses' position as leader, together with Joshua, so as not to leave the Israelites in the circle of the wilderness, but rather to direct them towards positive activity in their land. All of this was cut short by the Sin of the Spies, which overturned everything.

Facing, on the one hand, the danger of the Spies' call for a return to enslavement and defeat in Egypt, and the possibility of using the Tabernacle to fortify the people in the wilderness on the other, God chose to allow the Israelites to contend with the wilderness and holiness that the Tabernacle engraved into their memory.

In conclusion: these events offer an encounter with two worldviews, two paths. The first is represented by the Tabernacle, with its precise details, its measurements, its lawfulness. This lawfulness is thrust upon it in the manner of the expression "When you see it like this, sanctify it" when the "this" refers both to that which is seen and He who points it out. The other, more natural, path is represented by the Calf. It is the way of happenstance, cyclicalness, and primitive drives, described by the Torah in the verse, and they ate and drank, and got up to carouse.

If so, the purpose of the Tabernacle is to "square the circle."

Dr. Yossi Hatav is a psychiatrist. He treats children and youth and directs the pediatric department of the Etanim Hospital

 

The Cherubs: Facing each other or facing the Temple?

How did they stand? R. Yohanan and R. Elazar [disagree about it]: One says they faced each other, the other says they faced the Temple. How does the one who says they faced each other deal with the verse, and they faced the Temple (II Chronicles 3)?

There is no difficulty - one refers to times when Israel does God's will [and they face each other] the other refers to times when Israel does not do God's will. How does he who claims that they faced the Temple deal with the verse and they faced each other (Shemot 25)? [The answer is that] they turned slightly away [to look at each other]. It is taught: Onkelos the Convert said: The cherubs (II Chronicles 2:3) were formed like children and they turned their faces [to the Ark] like a student taking leave of his teacher.

(Bava Batra 99a)

 

Rabbi Binyamin (Ben) Hollander, z"l

Our member, Rabbi Binyamin (Ben) Hollander, passed away on Sunday the fifth of Adar Aleph. In the midrash about the Cherubs quoted above, the Sages emphasize the link between facing each other and the performance of God's will. Similarly, we read in a brayta (Ketuvot 103b): "If he died laughing - that is a good sign for him; if [he died] crying - that is a bad sign for him. If he faced upwards - that is a good sign for him; if he faced downwards - that is a bad sign for him. If he faced the people - that is a good sign for him; if he faced the wall - that is a bad sign for him."

All those who were acquainted with Ben know that he was always "facing the people" and that he knew how to laugh, to offer encouragement, to instill hope, and to console others even in the most difficult of times.

Alongside his good temper, his winning smile, and his pleasant and welcoming way with everyone, Ben was also a relentless fighter for peace and human rights. He believed with all his heart that a day would come when members of the Jewish People and members of the Palestinian People would be able to live in peace in this land, and that although that day may seem far off, everything must be done in order to bring it closer, in accordance with the verse seek peace and pursue it - "seek it in your place and pursue it elsewhere."

As a disciple of Nehama Leibowitz, he taught Torah in many places in Israel and abroad and he believed that the seeds of Torah that he sewed would germinate and bear fruit. Indeed, the many friends and students who attended his funeral validated that faith.

What a pity we have lost him!

We offer our condolences to his children Ilana, Eli, Devir, and Netanel. May Heaven console you!

Pinchas Leiser, Editor

The staff of Shabbat Shalom

The Board and members of Oz veShalom

 

 

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