Vayakhel: An Exercise in Subtle Juxtaposition

There's really no good way to follow up The Brooklyn Boy's last post because it was so hella good, especially since I was at the NC Hillel Statewide where he first unearthed his penchant for rhymin' d'vars (and I was one of the enthusiastic minions; or was it minyans?). Well done, sir.

I'm not sure if you've ever read through this Parsha (Vayakhel; Exodus 35:1 - 38:20), but it's what I would call ... laborious. It starts off with Moses reminding the Jewish people, fresh off of the Golden Calf disaster, that God has commanded them to observe Shabbat or they will be put to death:

And Moses assembled all the congregation of the children of Israel, and said unto them: 'These are the words which HaShem hath commanded, that ye should do them. Six day shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you a holy day, a sabbath of solemn rest to HaShem; whosoever doeth any therein shall be put to death. Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day. (Exodus 35:1-3)

Makes you wonder at which point in Jewish history they stopped putting people to death for not observing Shabbat ...

Then, suddenly, verse after verse for the next three chapters -- more than 100 verses total -- the Torah offers a step-by-step blueprint about how to build the Tabernacle, or Mishkan, the physical center for the ancient Jewish religion in the desert, all the way down to the details of the lengths and colors of the curtains, and the number of bars of acacia wood on each side. No one ever said the Torah read like a novel.

The stark juxtaposition of God's decree about the Jews observing Shabbat being paired with the description of how to build the Tabernacle is striking, and also intentional. If you read through the verses following the decree, it describes in detail the different tasks of how the Mishkan is to be built, and even who God thinks should build it. These tasks involve mundane activities like sewing, casting metals and cooking: all acts that involve the creation of something. And it's no small coincidence that these are the very acts that are forbidden on Shabbat.

The Tabernacle was built to give the Jewish people a physical "dwelling" place for God's presence. Centuries later, after the Israelites had conquered Canaan and established Jerusalem as their capital, the Mishkan was housed in the Temple, which would be the central place of ancient Jewish worship until its most recent destruction in 70 CE.

So here's the reason for the text's juxtaposition. During the workweek, the ancient Jews had a physical structure accompanying them in the desert to remind them of God's presence. Through the various "creative" activities described in the Parsha, they were given the task of actually building the Tabernacle, making those once-ordinary tasks holy.

Why then, on Shabbat, are those very same acts of creation forbidden? It's because on Shabbat, God rested from his creation of the Universe. Everything that it took to build God's desert house was halted on Shabbat in the Israelites' best effort to emulate God. We don't necessarily need to be around a structure that houses the Divine Presence because, on Shabbat, we are immersed in it. Different from the ancient sacrifices and rituals that could only be conducted near the Tabernacle or at the Temple in Jerusalem, Shabbat can be observed anywhere on Earth, and that's what makes it beautiful. Shabbat is the one time during the week where we as Jews can focus our spiritual energy and not create, but just be.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not going to be self-righteous here. I definitely create on Shabbat in the classical sense, as I'm sure many of us do. I'm a child of modern America, I work for a computer company and do weekend work sometimes, I play drums in two bands, and I love taking long Saturday morning drives.

Does this detract from my Shabbat experience? Maybe, if you're thinking solely on a traditionally Jewish level. I guess I don't need to do all of those things. But even if I stopped "creating" and unplugged, put the sticks down, and simply walked around the southern part of Heaven for a day, I don't think it would make a big difference for my personal experience. It's great to try every once in a while, and I have before. But for me, Shabbat is about the re-creation of the self, and working on bringing a sense of peace back to ourselves and to our broken world. And I say thank God for that.

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Creation: Redux (B'reishit)

We gon’ pick up with creation: the redux
and check the influx of new narrative focus
as we switch from God by himself and add humans in a locus
to drive central themes forward.

God makes man anew, in explicit detail
from the dust of the earth and a divine kind of gale:
the breath of life – nishmat hayyim –
which gets mentioned just once in the Torah, it seems;
this proves the uniqueness of the human being,
seeing that God gave life directly to each person now breathing.

But back to the story – now there’s a garden in Eden
and god placed the man amidst a tree den
with plentiful food, one tree of life and one from which bad and good
could be understood.
One made you immortal and the other one would
give you perspective on what you should
decide independently about how you act presently,
though Ibn-Ezra targets this sexually,
saying carnal knowledge is textually
represented when shame’s manifested like it will be sequentially.

But first, a quick break, for a little geography.
Four rivers cut through the idyllic topography:
first, Pishon, in Havilah with gold.
Then Gihon in Cush and the Tigris we’re told;
the latter east of Asshur, a city of old.
Last is the Euphrates, not qualified, but bold.

Now that we know where Eden was at,
the narrative boomerangs and we’re suddenly back
in the garden, where we now find the man,
who’s intend to till and tend all the land.
So as we use the earth, we’re meant to revamp
the damage we do because we’re more responsible
for what we’ve invested in to.

But then God issued a warning of a thing not to do.
We remember the tree that knows good and bad?
Don’t eat from it, fool, or there’s no life to be had!
This commandment can be looked at two ways:
Tradition says it’s a chance for the human to stray
by making a choice in which he has a say,
but a more modern look might contemplate
on whether this was a warning on how life complicates
with full knowledge separating man from the apes.
And as for the death threat, it might follow in league:
Ramban says it hinted you’ll know mortally
is how you’re days are numbered
and no other animal is with that thought encumbered,
which is why God sought for man literally
“a helper corresponding to him”
not one to subordinate or for facilitation.

They couldn’t find it with animals, so God soon stole a rib
after Adam, now named, passed names to the beasts
and found himself asleep while God took the piece,
created a woman
and prompted a cry when God brought her to him.
He called her Ishah to his Ish,
words similar sounding but they have different roots,
implying equality, making sexism moot.

And as the chapter closes with a narrative boot,
the author inscribes
that a man leaves his parents in search of a wife,
a return to one flesh and a different time;
a union of persons, in love so sublime
that it’s not about reproduction
but an introduction of wholeness missing since the beginning.

Now for a quick reconstruction of the issues at hand:
God made all the animals, but held special status for man,
provided he kept tilling and tending the land,
gave him a warning, but provided companionship in female form
because lonely’s not good at keeping you warm
when you lay down to rest.
And you should treat your females well
because we know they’re the best
or equals with men, which we see when the pieces complement.
So sexism, fellas, needs to get bent
thrown off to the side
disposed of, discarded and never realized.

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B'reishit: How? Why? Written by Whom?

When I sat down to write on the first Parsha in the Torah, B’reishit, the story’s synopsis was not the first thought to come to mind. Instead, I remembered two books in which the infamous creation story is referenced, each offers unique insight into questions often asked when speaking of the text.

I. Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design

Written by Michael Shermer, this book grapples with the various incarnations of creationism that have manifested over the year. Shermer, editor-in-chief of Skeptic Magazine and evangelical Christian turned defender of evolution, admits that his task is not an easy one. Combating faith with science (and vice-versa) leaves no one satisfied, and Shermer's book emphasizes that there is no level playing field for evolution and creation to be debated, let alone allow anyone to proclaim a winner. Like any good scientist, Shermer creates a model, the Separate-Worlds Model, to better explain his central thesis.

... science and religion are neither in conflict nor in agreement but are non-overlapping. Before science began its ascent four centuries ago, religion provided an explanation for the natural world in form of various cosmogony myths. Since the scientific revolution, however, science has taken over the job of explaining the natural world, making obsolete ancient religious sagas of origins and creations ... (page 120)

While I agree with much of what Shermer claims in his book and consider myself an evolutionist, the model outlined above polarizes religion and science instead of letting them live in separate worlds, as his model’s nomenclature would suggest. I believe that B’reishit and evolution answer fundamentally different questions. While much of the literal Genesis story can be discounted by evolutionary theory, the question of why the Earth was created cannot be scientifically proven. Evolution and various other theories such as the Big Bang explain how the Earth was created and how life developed on this planet. However, the why is a supernatural question, to which Shermer would concede: “Science is not equipped to evaluate supernatural explanations for our observations ... science leaves their consideration to the domain of religious faith.” (page 98)

The null hypothesis of all Western religions is that God exists and created the Earth; until science can disprove said hypothesis, religion will always have relevance. Shermer ends his book with his own creation story, using a skeleton of the Genesis story almost satirically:

And God created pongids and hominids with 98 percent genetic similarity, naming two of them Adam and Eve, In the book in which God explained how He did all this, the Bible, in one chapter He said He created Adam and Eve together out of the dust at the same time, but in another chapter He said He created Adam first, then later created Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs. This caused confusion in the valley of the shadow of doubt, so God created theologians to sort it out. (page 162)

II. Ishmael

Written by Daniel Quinn, this novel personfies his teachings through a series of lessons taught to a man by a telekinetic gorilla in order to save the world. Quinn’s central thesis is that there are two distinct societal norms throughout human history: "Takers" and "Leavers." Takers are those that use Earth's resources as if a birthright, with no real consideration for other life forms or the Earth itself. Leavers are those that live in harmony with other life forms and do not see themselves are rulers here on Earth.

Quinn asserts that the Taker society began when food began being kept under lock and key, spurred on by the Agricultural revolution. Quinn sees no problem with subsistence farming, but points to B’reishit as the beginning of Taker society. God punishes Adam and Eve for eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil by banishing them the Garden of Eden. Quinn explains that eating the fruit of the Tree provides the gods with the knowledge they need to rule the world - the knowledge of who shall live and who shall die. The fruit nourishes only gods, but they realized that if Adam ("man") were to eat from the tree, he might think he gained the gods' wisdom, and - in his arrogance - destroy the world and himself: "And so they said to him, you may eat of every tree in the garden, save the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for on the day you eat of that tree, you will certainly die." (Genesis 2:16)

Ishmael makes the point that the story of the Fall of Man, which the Takers have adopted as their own, was developed by Leavers to explain the Takers' origin. If it were of Taker origin, the story would be one of liberating ascent, and instead of being forbidden to Adam, the fruit of the Tree would have been thrust upon him.

Ishmael and his student go on to discuss how, for the ancient Semitic herders among whom the tale originated, the story of Cain killing Abel symbolizes the Leaver being killed off and their lands taken so that they could be cultivated. These ancient herders realized that the Takers were acting as if they were gods themselves, with all the wisdom of what is good and evil and how to rule the world. As a result, the gods banished these people from the Garden and they were brought from a life of bounty in the hands of the gods to one of being the accursed "tillers of the soil." (page 173)

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Sparking the Lineup (B'reishit)

It’s time to bat leadoff, put our feet on the ground
and start to explore this Torah scroll we’ve unwound.
With just the first letter, we’ve already found
deeper levels available – here, let me expound:
B’reishit has started, and with no further adieu,
that letter’s a bet, No. 2 in Hebrew.
It’s closed on three sides and open on one,
forcing us to move forward, now that we’ve begun.
And though we haven’t started at the beginning,
Midrash says it’s encouragement to show us that winning
is possible when your head is spinning
by being thrown into whatever is sitting
on your plate at the moment,
and that despite any confusion, you can still own it
by looking forward, not back and putting the onus
on not the “why” of existence, but rather the “how”
and what you can do if you focus right now.

So let’s start with a God of transcendent being,
for whom time and space are tools he’s wielding
to create a world with life that is teeming.
This creation (barah) is solely divine,
and beyond capability for the human mind.
God started his work, saying, “Let there be light,”
and split that from the day, to create the first night.
It was good, and with Day One in the books,
God turned to the waters,
creating the sky to separate the two proper.

With seas and the rain with sky in between,
Day Two is the only one God fails to deem as good,
which should scream with symbolism –
in the Midrash, it means
separation sometimes is necessary, though not always good
and God twice blessed the third day, so we’ve understood
this tells us that Tuesday is a day on which we should
schedule big events on for luck and success,
but now we move on – the events of Day Three are next.

The seas get gathered and dry land is blessed
with vegetation because God moved to divest
some power into the Earth, so it could manifest
seed-bearing plants and trees of all kinds.
God called this good twice and put Day Three behind.

God moved to Day Four, starting the cycle anew,
reflecting the first three, but with motion imbued,
starting with stars, so we’d at least have a crude
way to tell time as our lives moved on through;
so sun during the day, and at night the moon.

This was all good and we shift to Day Five,
when God commands the waters to bring forth much life,
from sea monsters below, to birds in the sky;
and blessed them to give birth so they could multiply.
God saw it was good with animals up in the mix,
so he had the Earth bring forth cattle and a few creeping things –
and while he was at it, wild beasts
on Day Six.

This was good, too, but not quite enough,
so God made man (adam) in our image –
a collective pronoun, indeterminate, with no limit.
Midrash guesses are puzzled, infinite:
maybe a secret cabal of God and the angels,
or maybe God and the animals created perfect strangers –
evolution’s highest art, by co-working painters.
Humans are given nature to rule,
male and female together are intended to pool
their efforts, be fertile and increase,
and eat vegetarian – there’s no mention of meat.

This was all very good and God was appeased,
so on Day No. 7, God finally ceased
the act of creation though it wasn’t complete.
The Vilna Gaon tells us this means
we should put aside work when we come to the Sabbath
and just live in this world we’ve come to inhabit
because God blessed Day Seven, declaring it holy –
a timely decision that historically only
serves to contrast thoughts of Babylonian origin about creation
because they built a temple to allow veneration
at the end of their own creationdom epic.

So the quick recap in 27 words:
Light, night, sky, seas, dry land and herbs,
sun, moon, stars, time, things swimming and birds,
cattle, wild beasts, man, woman in turn,
the Seventh Day rest – that’s all we’ve observed.

Now that this interpretation is done,
let’s all relax and step back,
because we’ve only begun.

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Continuing Creation (B'reishit)

You know what's awesome? Food. Tonight, make sure you enjoy your last meal for a day. You know what else is awesome? Jumping the gun. Sweet Tea was so hype for our relaunch that he beat B'reishit to The Watering Hole by two weeks. Here's his Yom Kippur-themed D'var:

Ahh, creation. Never do I feel as accomplished as when I’m able to stand before something I’ve built out of nothing into something … remarkable. Actually, I’ve had a lot of moments these past few weeks: My father and I have been finishing the inside of our barn, putting up ceiling and insulation and such. Each day we walk away from it, a little bit more gets done, and it adds fiber to my life.

So if that’s how I feel doing some simple insulation, I can’t imagine how a human being would feel after creating the earth. I’ve been told by Rabbis that G-d’s capacity to handle emotion is much greater than ours, so He’d probably be able to handle it better than I (although I challenge anybody to feel more strongly about Carolina basketball than I do).

But through all the hammering and cutting, one word stuck to me like Gorilla Glue: commitment. In some things in the everyday, one doesn’t need to be committed. Great, so you caught the football game on Sunday. You could miss it the next week, and it would still go on, and you would still care as much about it as you did before. But in order for other things to happen, like building a barn, you can’t half-ass it. Or you spend two hours looking at a bunch of wood.

As I read the portion online this week (is nothing sacred?!), there is a sensitive deliberateness in the creation of Adam that illustrates this facet of commitment. It is written ... ahem …, “Ad-noy El-him then formed the man, dust from the ground, and He blew into his nostrils the breath of life. And so man became a living soul.” What I like so much about this, is that Adam as an entity existed before he was alive. He was formed out of dust, but not alive until G-d literally breathed life into him. This wasn’t a simple act, but a two-parter: He had to build him and then bring him to life.

Whether you are or are not a Believer, this falls outside of that debate. The point being that in order to build the amazing things that you will in life, you can’t idly create them; you have to build on top of the foundation.

Now, there are many tomes written about the meaning of dust and air, but I want to connect to something else. For us as the new working order, we came from college - where often we would take classes that didn’t demand too much from us or hold positions that didn’t require much either. After graduation, most of us took entry-level jobs that didn’t challenge us much either. And that’s where most of us find ourselves right now - treading water, doing tasks most high school students could probably handle. What’s next?

Well, I was recently given this fantastic book by a friend, and it didn’t change my perception about this part of my life, but rather reinforced it. At first take, it appears to be a book about how some sob-story, middle-class kids couldn’t find their calling in college, and decided that instead of joining the real world, they would go on a road trip interviewing "success stories." The book pretty much becomes a collection of interviews, including the Founder of Dell, a shoe designer for Michael Jordan at Nike, the director of Boiler Room.

But regardless of the motives of the guys behind the Roadtrip adventure, it’s impossible not to be captivated by the stories of the people they interviewed. Many of them had no direct path, but they found something they enjoyed, and stayed committed to it, even on the brink of poverty, failure, and family pressure.

I think this story in the Torah is one of the most delicate and inspirational, especially during Yom Kippur. At what other time do we really sit back and muddle over our lives? Do we even do it during the holiday? It’s tough for sure. It takes enough just to wake up, get through the day, and then have enough energy for our friends after.

I do believe that most of us strive to build our own "Adams," our contribution to the notion of creation. But how many of us are really breathing like into our lives, and how many of us are just building hollow shells that have the appearance of livelihood, but no soul. It’s easy to check. Just ask a Magic 8-ball.

Pretty soon, some of us are going to wake up on a Saturday, and think, “Wow, I’m 40. Did I enjoy how I spent the past 20 years?” Well if you spent it having casual sex, then probably. For the rest of you poor married souls, pretty soon making tough choices like pursuing what we really want to do, and having the ability to follow it up with the commitment it will need to flourish will become even tougher.

Happy Holidays! If you are fasting, hope it’s easy. If not, Hooter’s has boneless chicken wings for $7.95.

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