Joshua: Chapter 7

How do you rise

after the fall?

What chases behind as you flee?

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From perfect victory we move to abject failure. If before, Jericho's heart melted before the approach of Israel, now the heart of Israel melts before the people of Ai. Joshua's rising fame comes tumbling down, as he "falls on his face" before God.

The opening of the chapter sets into place the reversal that is to come, contrasting Joshua's rising fame with the Children of Israel's desecrations of the herem. All is not well in the aftermath of the miraculous victory of Jericho. What stands out in this context is the conflation of the nation with the individual:

And the children of Israel committed a trespass against the Herem.  

Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the herem; 

and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel. 

The secret sin of Achan is bracketed between two declarations of Israel’s collective guilt. The growth into nationhood is dangerous. Having crossed the transformative passage of the Jordan, Israel has become a single entity, and a problem in a single part can destroy the whole. No more are there incidental details. All is incorporated and impacts the nation.

The herem that closes the previous chapter establishes that the victory over Jericho did not come by human means. The city fell to the yovel call of the Shofar, while the nation was ordered to be silent. Like the Jubilee year, the disintegration of Jericho establishes that "the Land is Mine," and the city is "set aside" (herem) completly to God. Yet how is the nation to move on from this overwhelming revelation,  Joshua's diluted version of Moses' encounter at the Burning Bush?

Joshua attempts to recreate  Jericho by once again sending to spies to "scout out the land." Yet unlike the first scouts, who are careful to look at both "city and land," these second set of scouts immediately zoom in on the city of Ai. And unlike the careful reconnaissance that characterized the approach to Jericho, these  spies arrogantly proceed by approximation: “About two thousand or three thousand..." Not for nothing is Achan conflated with the nation as a whole. There overconfidence reveals that the lesson of Jericho has not been learned. Like Achan, who steals from the physical wealth of Jericho, the nation as a whole steals the aura of the victory over Jericho:  believing their own invincibility, they assume that the city is theirs to win. 

This appropriate of God's action becomes a betrayal as deep, in some ways, as the worship of the Golden Calf in the aftermath of Sinai-- God's exchange with Joshua echoes His words to Moses as he is sent down the mountain.  Desecrating the herem is undoing the covenant. Israel "has stolen and also lied and also taken into his possessions." The attempt to appropriate the herem for oneself makes the herem spread like a contagion. Achan becomes an extension of Jericho, burned with all the possessions that drove him, as well as his family. Israel, which has also become herem, must physically exorcise their connection to Ahan, actively and ruthlessly cutting him out of the body politic.

The meagre objects, and their oversized consequence, become a physical embodyment of the danger of the God of Small Things, who makes no approxumates, and demands a confession of the very specific "this and this." ]

Deuteronomy: Chapter 19

 

Beat the bounds

and know the paths

redeem the space

where blood run

where blood pools

within, without

the boundaries that broader

the boundaries unmoved

[For full chapter, click here
This chapter continues expanding up the key words that appeared in the previous one: k'r'v--within, amongs; d'r'sh, investigate, analyze. Now, two  new leitworts enters: g'v'l--boundary, border; and d'r'kh--path, road. We at last speak of the definitive boundaries that create the sacred space "within" and the roads that form the interconnections. These preservation of these boundaries requires taking responsibility on the most primal level: a care for spilled "blood," for perjury, and a constant maintenance of the sacred space within: "you must burn out the the clean blood within" in a continuous re-calibration.  There must be a "redeemer of the blood" (go'el ha-dam). Even if inadvertent, any act of killing is "murder" and demands a complex play of redemption and refuge.

The return to Sinai in the previous chapter also returns us to the laws given in the aftermath of Sinai: "He that hits a man and dies shall be put to death; but if he did not lie in wait, but God brought it to his hand, I shall appoint a place where he shall flee" (Exodus 21: 12-13). These laws are  reiterated in this chapter, but now grounded in the earth "which you are about to enter." Characteristically for Deuteronomy, the laws are now focused on humanity rather than on God: "designate for  yourself three cities within your land."

And it is only in taking this responsibility that the land will truly become "yours." The chapter open by emphasizing that the land does not yet truly belong to Israel: "when God shall cut off the nations whose land God your Lord is giving to you...and you dwell in their cities and in their houses." Only after taking responsibility for inadvertent murder does that land become Israel's: "You shall separate three cities in the midst of your land, which God gave you to posses."

In taking this responsibility, one can even change and move the seemingly immutable outer boundary. Boundaries are  perhaps absolute on a personal level-- "do not encroach on the boundary of your brother, which  the early ones have bound"--but on a national level, the are flexible, expanding to fit the nation's commitments: ": "If God your Lord expand your border...designate another three cities of refuge." ]

Deuteronomy: Chapter 18

the desire for absence

to be not

to circle the gaps of the unknown "no"

[For full chapter, click here

This chapter is dominated by the same key words as the previous one: k'r'v-- close, within; and d'r'sh, to investigate, analyze; d'v'r--thing, saying. It too focuses on to'eva--usually loosely translated as "abomination"; it too places it in opposition to tamim --pure, without blemish.

Thematically, the two chapters are  related as well, as here we further define the relationship of center to periphery and the space "within". The "chosen" (18:5) tribe of Levi is intimately linked  to the place that "God will choose," and so cannot have "an inheritance amongst / within [k'r'v] his brother" (18:2)--he cannot truly be part of the space between the periphery and the center. Coming into the land will bring a to a new leadership that will come from among (k'r'v) the people: "I will raise them a prophet from amongs (k'r'v) their brothers, like you [Moses]". This leadership will draw directly from Sinai,  the place where all the nation "heard the Lord."

Yet rhetorically, this chapter is dominated by the negative: it opens with a sonorous "no": "lo yihiye--there shall not be."  This negative is balanced by the positive "ze yihiye--this shall be" in the next subsection, but the negative floods once again at the closing, with the return to Sinai. The prophet who will come to replace Moses will come to preserve "not": "let me not hear again the voice of God" "let me not see this great fire." Too much Presence leads to complete absence: "so I not die." 

The coming prophet will straddle the line between the known and unknown, between yes and no: "the prophet who will speak in My name that which I have not commanded, that prophet shall die.... that which the prophet spoke in the name of God and was not (lo yihiye) and will not come (lo yavo), that is the thing which God has not spoken..." Hu ha-davar asher lo davro--that is the thing that God has not--the negative here gains a positive presence, becomes an actual davar, thing, object, speech act.]

Deuteronomy: Chapter 10

Can you go back 

to the first

Recreate what is gone

Remove the scar tissue
hardening your heart
Soften the stiffness of your neck
and turn around...

[For full chapter, click here
After the digression of listing Israel's various rebellions, Moses continues the story of Sinai and its aftermath, coming to the last of the series of "forty days and forty nights" that he spent with God on the mountain. Again, the passage of year--and the presence of the narrator--are highlighted. Forty years in the future, time wraps, and events separated in time merge into a single continuum. The sin of the spies becomes a side even in the central drama of the Golden Calf. Aaron's death, which was decreed at the same time as Moses' own, is here redefined  as a result of the  Calf, as an after effect of God being "very angry at Aaron, to destroy him." The appointment of Levi is also recontextualized. They become part of the broader ripples of he Calf, an added level of protection for the second Tablets, placed within the Ark.
Once again, Moses role is highlighted, emphasizing his place as speaker. The second set of Tablets is to replace the "first which you [Moses] broke." The chapter emphasizes again and again that these Tablets are to replace "the first"--in a kind of play back reverse in which Moses will "go up" as he once "went down", once again "holding the two tablets in my arms." Yet time truly be reveres, and what was done cannot be undone. These Tablets are not like the first. Rather than being "God's writ," these Tablets are a joint creation. After being the destroyer, Moses must become a creator. His involvement is highlighted by the staccato series of verbs: "and I made...and I sculpted... , and I went up..." Here, the involvement is so intense, that all middlemen are cut out, and it seems that Moses himself created the ark, without the involvement of Bezalel .
The chapter closes with Moses' paean to God,a rising poetic exhalation that moves from the absolute to the specific. From the omnipotence " Lord of lords and God of gods, mighty and awesome," God becomes the God of small things, who "gives justice to the orphan and the widow and loves the stranger..." And through God's care for the stranger, Israel can learn  to love an accept themselves: "therefor love the stranger, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt."
Moses closes by returning to his denunciation which opened his retelling of the Exodus and Sinai. Israel was not righteous--Israel was "stiffnecked." Not for nothing has Moses retold the story "of that time" (ba-et ha-hi). It has implication for "now" (ata). On "this day" (, ka-yom ha-ze) Moses hopes for a change. Like the Tablets remade, he hopes that Israel will be remade, learning  to "circumcise the seal from your heart, and be no more stiff necked". ]

Deuteronomy 9: In Writing

watch the

slow

mute

tumble

of a world exploding

hear the smash

silence

susurration

of myriad shards

shattered in your eyes

glistening down the mountainside

In the mist

fist your mistake

and grind it down

to dust, to dirt

to dew

it seeps back

through the cracks

take a step 

and stumble 

off a path that wanders

off, every day 

tumbling up

again and again.

so quick bright things

flit and froth 

away 

Deuteronomy: Chapter 9

Falling down,  down,  down...
What you break, 

what you see shattered.

To know it is not
you

Fall into the lacuna
and be consumed

[For full chapter. click here

This chapter opens with an anaphora that links it to the previous chapters: "Hear, O Israel." We return, yet again, to Sinai. But this is almost a reverse presentation. If before, Sinai was the proof of a binding, consuming love, here it is a proof of failure, of a foaming, consuming anger, Sinai now comes to warn Israel not to  "think in your heart... ‘Because of my righteousness God has brought me in to possess this land.’ 

This doubling is thematic to the chapter, which highlights again and again the doubling of the Tablets of Law, which are held in Moses' two hands, and the opposition between "ascending" (a'l'a) and "going down" (r'd). The tablets engraved in stone are broken. Everything changes quickly (m'h'r) and easily. All concrete symbols are disintegrated. "The sin"--embodied by the Golden Calf--is ground up by Moses, in an act that echoes the shattering of the Tablets. 

Yet the "going down" is not only a failure, but also a source of strength. The ground up dust of the calf is sprinkled on the water "coming down" the mountain; Moses "falls down" (etnapel) before God, in a reflexive form of the verb that can suggest "attack" or struggle. 

Here, Moses moves center stage. If before, he was the conduit between God and the people, here he becomes the active party: It is he (in God's accusation) who "took" Israel out of Egypt; it is he who stands between the burning mountain and the people; it is he who stands between God and Aaron; it is he who dashes the tablets, written in God's own writing, to the ground, in a series of four decisive verbs ("and I took hold...cast down...broke...fell")

If this chapter comes to teach Israel they have have earned nothing within themselves, that the relationship comes from without, Moses closes with the other side of this argument: "Yet they are Your people and Your inheritance, whom you brought out with Your mighty power..," In rescuing Israel, even if for no inherent virtue, God has created an unbreakable bond. It is destiny because it it is unearned. ]

Deuteronomy 5: In Writing

Faced with your face

who retains a face?

What eyes are not

dissolved in your flame?

Immolated to

ash-laden air

burdening clouds,

clustered with flocks

livid flame,

blinding as black

Crushed by a weight

I can’t escape

Tremble in dark dense

fingering a way away

From the vocative

voice

that compacts the flesh

wakes decayed corporality

buried

in the still of my palms

sere as a smoking pyre

I feel the brand

Your face fills the hollows of my face

Deuteronomy: Chapter 5

The extended presence

here and not here

distance or death

In a world of consummation

who will stand between

and leave a space within?

[For full chapter, click here,

Beginning again, Moses once again recounts the story of the covenant at Sinai/Horeb. This chapter continues, develops, and departs from the previous one. The keywords remain the same: an emphasis on sight and sound (re'eh, eynayim, sh'm'a). "Voice" "kol", "come close" (k'r'v); and "guard, keep" (sh'm'r). Now, however,  another root gains prominence:  "life / alive" (hayim). 

If the previous chapter revolved around the dangerous power of direct perception--and so focused on the Second Commandment's prohibition on graven images--this chapter focuses on the aftermath of that perception. It lists the full Ten Pronouncements, but as told over by Moses, highlighting his part. If the previous chapter dealt with the danger of translating an overwhelming experience into a limited pictorial form, this chapter deals with the danger of overwhelming experience itself: 

“when you heard the voice from the midst of the darkness, while the mountain blazed in fire, you came near me…and said: ‘…We have seen this day that God speaks with a human, and he may live.  Now why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we keep hearing the voice of God our Lord more, we will die.”  

The consummation of a relationship with the Divine is literal consummation. Nothing is left from the conflagration of sound and sight. Give me distance, or give me death, Israel demands: "You go close and hear all that God our Lord will say, and tell us…” The text enacts this transformation of Moses transition into a living translator between the people and God: “Then God heard the voice of your words when you spoke to me, and God said to me: ‘I have heard the voice of the words of this people which they have spoken to you. They have spoken rightly..'” The people speak to Moses and God responds, Moses a transparent membrane between.

This chapter is about the value of distance. Moses' position as intermediary translates the divine word into human terms that can be "taught" (l’m’d, another key word of this chapter). The generation of direct perception indeed “die.” This generation of the “living” is still branded by the fires of Horeb, but at a remove. They are virtually both there and not there, both face-to -face and separated:

“God our Lord made a covenant with us in Horeb. …not with our fathers, but with us, those who are here today, all of us who are living.  God talked with you face to face on the mountain from the midst of the fire. I stood between God and you…”

 God’s command to return to the private spaces of “your tents” creates a protective space for human continuity.  Moses, who remained “standing with Me” alone on the mountain,  still remains alone on the mount of Nebo, never to truly come down. He is not one of the “living” but remains in the liminal space between the living and the dead, between the land and the wilderness, between the human and the divine.]

Deuteronomy: Chapter 4

What you see
And what you don't see.

Can you still the fire
Within bonds of form?

See the voice in the heart of the sky
in the depth of the fire

The silence on the other side of Being

[For full chapter, click hereFollowing directly from the description of Moses' view over the Promised Land, this chapter focuses on the power--and danger--of the visual. "Your eyes have seen," Moses says, ""Look!"he commands. "Guard yourself! Carefully guard your soul, lest thou forget the things that your eyes saw, lest they depart from your heart all the days of thy life."Side by side with the need to carefully remember and preserve the "witness" is the equally urgent need to guard against what was not seen.  The presentness of the visual makes it dangerous, leads to drive to "create forms" to hold what cannot be held. 
"You came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven,...And God spoke to you from the fire: you heard the voice of the words, but saw no image; only a voice....Therefor guard yourself, for you saw no image on the day...lest you become corrupted and make a graven image, the picture of any figure, the likeness of male or female,  the likeness of any beast on the earth, the likeness of any winged birds that fly through the air, the likeness of any thing that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that swims the waters beneath the earth lest thou lift up your eyes to the heavens, and when you see the sun, and the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, you should be driven to worship them..."
What is seen is a voice, not a form, a fire that defies any direct gaze. This dangerous tension between seeing and not seeing, having and not having, runs throughout the key words of the chapter: "see" vs. "listen"; "guard/ take care" (sh'm'r) vs. "come close" (k'r'v).Even as Israel prepares to enter the Promised Land, to have and possess, Moses' dispossession echoes beneath, in a triple negative: "God was angry with me for your sakes, and swore that I should not cross the Jodan, that I should not go in that good land...that I  die in this land, and not be (eyneni, lit., nothingness) crossing the Jordan.You shall go over, and possess that good land"
 The delicate balance between seeing more than you see, or forgetting what was seen teeters: "Guard yourself, lest ye forget the covenant of God, your Lord, ...make you a graven image...For God your Lord is a consuming fire, a jealous power." Not having and dispossession looms at the horizon, a loss of both sight and sound: 
"I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that you shall perish from off the Land...God will scatter you among the nations, and you shall be left few in number...And there you shall serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear..."
What is left is only Moses' promise that there is a way out of the "furnace," that what cannot be truly seen can nonetheless be found: "You will seek God your Lord, and you will find Him, if you search for him with all your heart and all your soul."The chapter ends with a chaisatic closing that returns us to the opening of the book: this is the initial message that Moses gave the people. A message laced with pain and resentment--Moses blames the people three times for his death!--yet also with the hope that Moses himself is denied. Unlike Moses, who was told to be silent, Israel will be heard.)

Leviticus: Chapter 27

To bring the outside in 

How deep is possession?


What can be exchanged What not 


Transformed, changed,  redeemed


Being beyond value














[For full chapter, click here
After the grand finale that closed the last chapter "at Mount Sinai," we return--yet again--to Mount Sinai, in a dry rendition of laws of vows and gifts to the Dwelling. 
Yet through these arcane rules, this chapter actually revisits the motifs of value vs. ownership, redemption and the limits of possession. Returning to the opening theme of  a book that comes to establish a place "within the tent", this chapter allows for bringing the outside in through consecration. 
What happens when a person consecrates themselves? Does consecration imply value, or does it engulf the object itself? We move from a generalized (male-centric) valuation of humans, who are replaced with money, without any essential connection to the Temple, and end with a level of "dedication" (herem) so all-encompassing that it cannot be undone, replaced or exchanged. The object itself becomes a source of holiness. Any attempt to replace it simply  consecrates  its replacement: " both it and that for which it is changed shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed." W close with the emergent consecration of tithing, which happens by chance, outside human choice. Here, the outside comes in.]

Leviticus: Chapter 26

A sky of steel

A world of bronze

Chased by a driven leaf

Soul sickness

In a fall

Will you rise?

Don't turn your soul away

O turned face!

What happens in the spaces

between?

[For full chapter, click here

We continue the covenant from "Mount Sinai" seamlessly, in an ever more emphasized structure of "sevens": "I will repay  you seven for all your sins..." Here, it becomes clear that this covenant sums up the structure of the book as a whole, returning to the repeated emphasis on "walking" "doing" "guarding" and the leitmotif of eating.

But here, the focus on the all-subsuming Land becomes ominous. Ignoring the rights of the Land to its sabbaths causes you to be driven off, as the Land completes its own cycles: "then the Land shall have her sabbaths, all the days of desolation when you are in your enemies land." The rejecting land will turn to "bronze" while Israel itself becomes the "seed" to be "eaten" by other nations. 

A terrifying dance of closeness and rejection, carelessness (keri) and a fury of carelessness. The tension between close and far that animates the book becomes clear. Too great an intimacy leads to "soul sickness", as the life force revolts in "nausea / revulsion" ( ge'al nafshi), God against Israel, Israel against God.

Ultimately, the somber hope of redemption is that "I will not be revolted by them (ge'al ) to utterly destroy them.I will remember for them the primal covenant."] 

Leviticus: Chapter 25

Where you are

And where you are going

To rest

and to return

to the space that subsumed

too dear for possession

number the hours, days, years

To redeem

 after the fall

the extended flesh

[For full chapter, click here

After establishing the Dwelling replacement of Sinai, we return to Sinai, to speak of what happens "when you arrive in the Land." Like the Dwelling, this relationship is structured around a series of sevens, with an "eighth"--the Jubilee year, that proclaims "liberty to all the Land." In a play on words, the Sabbath of seven (Shabbat / Sheba) becomes also a "return" (shabtem) of estates to their owners.

The connection to the Land is  inalienable--unlike a city, which disconnects from the "field" and can "be sold to perpetuity," the Land always returns to its original owner. Yet it is also limited, as ultimately "the Land is Mine"--humanity only has rights of usage.    

The all-subsuming, unbreakable, connection to the land provides for "redemption" (geula). The land is "redeemed" back to the family; a poor relation is "redeemed" from slavery; the Jubilee year "redeems" both bondsmen and land.]

Goodbye to Exodus

“And these are the names of the children of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family… Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, and the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, and increased in numbers” Those opening verses set into place the themes of the Book of Names (the Hebrew name of Exodus) as a whole. We have moved from the primordial, archetypal Genesis, that deals with the creation of the individual identity, of the self. Now we must find a name for the nameless masses, the meaning of the self within the context of the many.

The book of Genesis deals with the “chronicles of Man as he was being created.” It revolves around the interrelationship of the individual with the world. Its central metaphor is hands: how do we  handle and manipulate our environment. The key repeating phrase is “ve-yishlach yado—to send forth the hand”: “And now, lest he send forth his hand and eat from the tree of life” introduced the exile from Eden; “Do not send forth your hand against the boy” closes the demand for the sacrifice of Isaac; “I told you not to send forth your hand against the youth” Reuben cries after the sale of Joseph. Letting go versus holding on; learning how to relate to Other. The book revolves around ever-intensifying painful relations between sibling and sibling, and man and woman: the two main patterns of Otherness. It closes with Joseph’s acceptance of the wrong his brothers have done him; balanced by Judah’s acceptance of the fact that Rachel—and only Rachel—holds Jacob's heart. The self has learned to accept the independence of other.  

Exodus is the next stage. Having moved beyond the placement of  self within family (Genesis), we now begin to deal with the birth of a nation. And it is a unique story of nationhood that begins in being stripped of all elements of identity. This is the faceless generation that has no land and has no name, birthing “like animals.” It is a story of nationhood that begins in powerlessness.

 Yet the painful acceptance of otherness that introduces this story opens the possibility of a different mode of identity. Not the certainty of power and choice, but relationship to absolute Other—God.  The key images of this book are “eyes” and “ears”; to “see” “hear” “smell”: from a focus on the hands, we move to a focus on the face. This is the book of learning to communicate “face to face.” Moses, the liminal figure who is “drawn from the waters” remaining always “on the banks” between heaven and earth ,God and man, is central for this connection.

For it is not a simple process. Rather, it requires transformations on both sides. “What shall I say Your name is?” Moses asks, and God changes names within communication—from the impersonal “powers” (Elohim) to the “Almighty power” (el shaddai) to the God of history who will “be what He will be”, and who bears a  personal Name. Israel also is transformed, in a protracted year-long process. The Exodus is dominated by birth-imagery: from the preternatural fecundity of the opening chapter, to the bloody doorways that birth the nation, to the passage through the waters that spits the despairing slaves out on the other side as a free people. “My firstborn child, Israel” “opens the womb,” and all that “open the womb”, whether human or animal, are consecrated.  Birthing a child begins a process. The opening of the womb of the Sea of Reeds is followed by the “testing” of the  terrible twos: tantrums about food  and attention, doubts about love.

The parent-child imagery becomes entwined with metaphors of infatuation and young love (maybe they are not so far apart as we think…) Not for nothing did the prophets describe the Exodus as “the grace of your youth, the love of your bridal days. You followed Me through the wilderness, in an untamed land.” The passage through the wilderness is a dance of approach and retreat, closeness and distance. The lead-up to Sinai is accompanied by a demand for greater and greater closeness, coupled with existential uncertainty: “Is God amongst us or nothingness?” Again and again, God imposes boundaries, which Israel “test”: “and they gazed upon God and ate and drank.”  Yet consummation (both meanings) breeds not certainty, but the need for distance and escape. The relationship is too overbearing, a complete crushing of the self. “Speak you to us, but let not God speak to us lest we die.” In the aftermath of Sinai, we begin the translation of God to humanity, bringing God down to earth.

The creation of the Dwelling is a myse-en-abyme for the book as a whole, a point-counterpoint of self and other, closeness and distance,   the accommodation (in both senses!) of God an humanity. We begin with God’s “pattern,” his “command” to Moses. This is vision dominated by the unified keruvim, locked together, but forever apart, each on a separate side. This must pass through the prism of Bezalel, who will translate it into physicality. Yet the translation of revelation into material brings a counter movement from Israel, who rush in to create the Golden Calf—an attempt at complete closeness, without the burden and threat of Other.

Moses once again steps into the breach.He brings God to acknowlege that “no man can see My face and live.” The relationship to humanity must be slant, to the back, rather than direct revelation. Thus, He accedes to Moses' request for forgiveness “You must walk within us.” God will indeed “be what He will be,” revealed in the walking, in the process, rather than directly.

This opens a space for human action, and in the next chapter, the people begin to build the Dwelling, transforming God’s vision with their own desires and “hearts.” Moses stands at the center, uniting their disparate parts back to the initial ideal that “he had seen on the mountain.”

The book closes when the pieces come together, and the Dwelling suddenly ignites, “a pillar of fire by night.” There is a synergy in the growth of a nation. In the end, the whole is greater than the sum of separate parts, greater than the individuals who dominated the Book of Genesis. Moses cannot even enter the Dwelling that he created. This allows a new unity of God and humanity. Not the painful separated unity of the keruvim, who are of “a single mass,” gazing at each other, but divided by the breath of their wings. Rather, it is a unity that comes of  “walking together”: “when the cloud rose, the people would rise and travel.” In the year that followed the birthing of the nation in the womb of Egypt, a new relationship has been built. "For the cloud of God  dwelt above the Dwelling by day, and fire was over it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys." God and humanity journey together, within "sight" of each other, essentially unknown and Other, but fully present.

Exodus: Chapter 36

To weave a house 
to bring love in 
come close

From conception to fruition
overflowing giving
morning by morning

to be enough

connected to one
twinned,  entwined
complete

[For full chapter, click here

“As God commanded, so they did”. The Mishkan/Dwelling-project is built around this interaction of heaven and earth, the divine “structure” (tavnit) and human action (asiya). It is a chiastic framework, with the story of the Golden Calf in the middle. We open with God’s commands to Moses, a grand vision that begins from the highest—the Ark of Covenant and Keruvim, and gradually moves to include the human component of the kohanim/priest. It is a vision that contains hints of menace, but focuses on the possibility of relationship between God and man. Yet the translation of revelation into material is dangerous. Giving over the two tablets of stone "written with the writing of God" is followed immediately by the creation of the Golden Calf, making a god of gold.

God’s acceptance of this failure, His agreement to “walk amongst us” allows for the actual creation of the Dwelling. The translation from vision into doing causes subtle transformations. First, the overwhelming involvement of the people—here, the overflow of passion is so great, that the people have to be told to stop giving: “The people bring too much, more than the service of the work that God commanded to make… so the people were restrained from giving.” There is a chaotic "coming close of "all who "heart's stirred them to create" rather than an orderly hierarchy. In the actual creation, we begin from the building itself, only then moving gradually into the sanctuary. The keruvim are woven into walls, before they are actually craved of gold. We come from earth to heaven]

Exodus 25: In Writing

Shelter me in the shadow of yearning

The spaces between our gaze

Can I catch your wing with outflung nets

Of interwoven dreams?

Within and without

A box of gold

harbors the answer.

From the edges of being

We watch each other

over infinite expanses of longing

Exodus: Chapter 25

Translations of place

a dwelling within

From the mountain down

A multiplicity that is one

a single shaped solid

Concrete witness, face to face

[For full chapter, click here

We begin a second stage in defining the long term reverberations of Sinai. Revelation is here translated into physicality. If in the previous chapters, Sinai was explicated into the nitty-gritty of everyday life, now it is embodied in the very minerals of the earth. The “Presence of God” that dwelled on the mountain will now “dwell” within the Children of Israel: “And they shall make Me a dwelling and I will dwell amongst them”. Sinai becomes open to human creativity. The “doing” (maase—a leitword of chapter 23) that was to be gathered to the altar, here  forms the very sanctuary itself. 

After the covenant of the previous chapter, we enter a fraught space of shared creativity. The chapter is animated by a tension between freedom and command, human and divine action: “Speak to the children of Israel, and the will take an offering for Me” implies an imposed tax, yet “From every man who’s heart donates, take My offering” continues the verse, modifying the demand to a gift. The Dwelling (Mishkan) is to be “made” (maase) by man, yet defined by the pattern revealed by God, human creativity translating the divine vision into the physical realm.  It is to be a place of “face to face” (panim) encounter. The keruvim have their  “faces to each other”, the showbread is “Face bread” (lehem ha-panim), placed before God’s face (li-pnei).

A joint divine-human work, the Dwelling is a single solid (miksha)—as must be the keruvim and the Menora—but containing multiple parts. The two Keruvim, created of a single block are a perfect  embodiment of this relattionship. Placed on opposite sides (katze), their wings reach towards each other, creating a shade over the space of the Ark, within which lies the "testimony". They face each other, in asymptotic striving, always one, never unified.]

Exodus 24: In Writing

Within the single voice

A pause of emptiness

The one who ascends and does not return

In a sapphire gleam

I drink you down

Swallows your substance

A force eating within

Consuming and consumed

Your blood beats through my feet

Sap rising

Spread of sinew and bone

Can I hold you within

A burning brand?

Exodus: Chapter 24

 Return to the place

You were before

And know it truly

For the first time

Who do you approach

What things do you say?

[For full chapter, click here

After all the translation and explication, we return to the place we were before. Sinai revised, in a chiastic closing that is also a transformation. “Everything that God says we will do” becomes  “we will do and we will hear.” We repeat the pattern of juxtaposing the revelation at Sinai with the creation of the altar. But whereas before, the laws of the altar were cerebral, dealing with stones, respect, nakedness, this altar deals with blood and the animals that played so central a role in the preceding chapter; it is an altar built of twelve stones, representing the twelve tribes of Israel, and is run not by modest priests, but by boisterous youths. This presentation of Sinai bears the marks of the human realm. This time, the overwhelming voice belongs to Israel: “and the entire people answered with one voice.” Aaron, his sons, the seventy elders, and the “youth of Israel” all play a part.   

The carefully maintained boundaries begin to disintegrate, as the nobility of Israel see the “eating fire (esh ohelet) of God” and “eat and drink.

Moses, however, is even more starkly “alone” (levado) against the backdrop. He “ascends to God” and “is there.” If for Israel the Sabbath was redefined as a day of rest for the vulnerable parts of society, for Moses it is here defined as utter communion: “and the cloud covered the mountain six days, and He called to Moses on the seventh day.” The chapter ends with Moses swallowed in the mists for forty days. A consummation—in both senses of the word—but will the nation be able to  survive without their liminal conduit?]