Author: iWe

I was asked recently to explain something that really sticks out in the Torah as, at the very least, a very odd – even disturbing – episode. Indeed, it has often flummoxed me as well just because it is quite difficult to understand both the story and why the Torah shares it with us.

The story itself is only three verses long, and even its translation is not so obvious. (I translate it a pretty standard way at first – feel free to check your own versions to see how others have done so):

At a night encampment on the way, the LORD encountered him [Moshe] and sought to kill him. So Tzipporah [Moshe’s wife] took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched his feet with it, saying, “You are truly a bridegroom of blood to me!” And when He let him alone, she added, “A bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision.” (Exodus 4:24-26)

This whole episode is quite strange on many levels. But if we read the text carefully, and understand the personalities involved, it all comes together to make sense.

First off, we should set the scene: Moshe has been told by G-d to go to Egypt (where he was a wanted man), confront the most powerful man in the world (Pharaoh), threaten him and eventually serve to help free a slave nation from its overlords. Not exactly a trivial task!

At the same time as G-d first talks to Moshe at the burning bush, Moshe’s wife is either very pregnant or has just given birth to their second son. Either way, her husband comes home with the sheep, informs her that he has been charged with this quest, puts her and the children on a donkey, and they ride off toward Egypt. His wife, Tzipporah, had not spoken with G-d. Nor had she (unlike Yaakov’s wives) been consulted by her husband, or given any choice in the matter. So, having just given birth to a baby, she is confronted with the fact that her husband’s mind is not on his wife, or on their sons. And here is how it unfolds, with each phrase connected to how it is used elsewhere in the Torah.

“At a night encampment” The word “Malon” in Hebrew is first used at the time Joseph’s brothers discover they still have the money they should have paid to Joseph for the food they received – and suddenly, everything has gone wrong. And they were terrified by the uncertainty.

Later in the Torah, the same word refers to the grumblings and mutterings of the nation, which is quite an appropriate connection to this episode. At night encampments in the Torah, the situation is quite unsettled, uncertain, and even downright rebellious.

“The Lord encounters him” “Encounters” is really closer to an uneasy confrontation between two people. It is first used to describe Esau meeting Jacob’s messengers who were bringing advance gifts to try to fend off a conflict. (Gen 32:18 and 33:8). The outcome is in doubt. Indeed, whether there is even an open conflict is not clear.

“And sought to kill him”, Here is where the plot thickens. G-d is seeking something, that much is clear. But “kill him” is not quite right. The word “to kill” is found just one verse earlier, when G-d describes killing Pharaoh’s first born. And that word is different – it is the same word as “murder,” the same word first used when murder is invented by Cain when he rose up against his brother (Gen 4:8)

No, the word in the Torah is not “kill” – it is instead “to make dead.” And the first time that word is used is when G-d forbids the fruit to Adam and Eve: “On that day you will surely die” (formed by using the same root word for “dead” twice). But Adam and Eve, despite eating the fruit, did NOT die! Instead, they changed irrevocably. Their old selves, the way they saw the world, each other, their nakedness, etc. all perished. They became entirely different, thanks to changed knowledge. There was no going back to who they were beforehand.

If this is right, then what G-d is doing when he comes to Moshe that night in the unsettled camp, is seeking a transformation. The old Moshe has to go. The new Moshe has to arrive.  What was wrong with the “old” Moshe? He was a family man, working for his father-in-law, supporting his wife and children. That man could not simultaneously serve as G-d’s very mouthpiece to the world. Unlike every Jew before and after, who are called to use marriage as their template for the challenges of relating to G-d, Moshe could no longer be in a mundane marriage.

Tzipporah at this point sees what is happening. And while it may have been possible that she could have transformed as well, she either does not choose to do so, or she was not aware of the choice. She saw her husband crossing this threshold, and she realized that she was going to be collateral damage – that she was already collateral damage, and it was not going to get better. So Tzipporah chooses to get ahead of it, to cauterize the emotional wound of losing her husband.

What she does next, by cutting the foreskin of her son (note the text says her son, not their son) and touching it to Moshe’s feet is a declaration: a declaration of her new status and his: separated. (There is a connection to levirate marriage as described in Deut. 25:9 – the woman also makes a fervent declaration using the man’s foot.)

Tzipporah sees what is going on. And she takes the initiative, because otherwise she undergoes more pain. So she gets ahead of it, declares the division, declares the new status, AND her feelings. She cauterizes her emotional wound.

The language she chooses tells us this: “A bloody bridegroom”. Moshe is not her bridegroom – he is/was her husband! Calling Moshe her bridegroom is to regress the relationship, back to before delivering two sons, back perhaps even to before marriage itself.

The word for “bridegroom” in the Torah is first found referring to Lot’s sons-in-law: they are connected relatives who, when it came down to it, declined to follow their own wives when the core family fled the city. In other words, “bridegroom” in this case is someone who may not be around for long, someone who may be henceforth separated.

Indeed, in Ex. 18, Moshe’s father-in-law effects a reunion, bringing Tzipporah and her two sons to Moshe. The word “bridegroom” is used in this section no less than 6 times in 8 verses – not the word for “husband” or “master.” The division that Tzipporah created in the marriage had indeed become the new reality.

The reference to “blood” is even more fundamental in the Torah. The first mention of blood in the Torah is that of Abel, calling out from the ground to G-d after Abel’s brother, Cain, had killed him. “Blood” refers to the results of murder, a situation in which there is no going back, but an aura of longstanding guilt remains. A life has been taken, and it can never be undone.

Put together, Tzipporah’s repetition of a “bloody bridegroom” is a statement of the damage to their relationship, a separation between them.  

The punchline is the last word of the text: circumcision. This word, “mul,” is quite distinctive, because it does not mean “covenant,” (though it can lead to a covenant) and it also does not always refer to cutting off the foreskin. Instead, the word means a hard separation, even a stark contrast. So, for example, when Moshe dies (Deut. 34:6), he is described as being buried mul – opposite to – Peor, the basest form of idolatry. In death as in life Moshe was always in stark contrast to idol worship. So Moshe’s service to G-d is delineated by this word mul: here, on his way into Egypt, and then again at the end of the Torah when Moshe dies. Moshe is separated, set aside. He is, indeed, reserved just for G-d – and at the cost of other relationships.

When Tzipporah declares that Moshe is a bloody bridegroom “because of the mul,” she is saying that the circumcision was not just that of her son’s foreskin. She is declaring an eternal incision that would forever divide that marriage, a setting aside of Moshe. Indeed, it is also a separation of Moshe’s sons; they stay with their mother.

There is a reason why Jews bless our children to be like our forefathers and mothers – but not like Moshe and Tzipporah. Theirs was not a marriage for ordinary people to emulate. Tzipporah vanishes from the story until her father brings her and her children back to Moshe, reminding Moshe of the “bridegroom” reference all the way. And while Moshe and Tzipporah remain married afterward, it seems they are never again intimate. G-d comes first.

I think the Torah is telling us something very important by relating this episode: everything comes at a cost. True, Moshe was the greatest prophet in history. But he paid dearly for that role for the rest of his life. It is an insight into the level of commitment Moshe was to display for the rest of his life – as well as the pain that his wife felt as the world she knew was swept out from under her. Tzipporah becomes a sympathetic figure, loyal – but separated – until the end.

Credit: I worked this out with @ishottheserif and with my regular Torah partner, @susanquinn

I don’t think there is a civilization on earth that does not at least pay lip service to the ideal of a just society. I think this is in part because even despotic rulers know that in order to keep their reign intact, their people need to somehow feel that justice has been done.

And while definitions of what constitutes Justice differ radically between different ancient and modern laws, there actually is not that much of a distinction between humanists and Catholics, atheists or Jews.  This is because, as far as I can tell, the Torah requirements for justice have been widely adopted and even taken for granted.

Swept away, for example, is the ancient idea of Greece and Rome that there are (at least) two bodies of law: one for the native and one for the “other,” the barbarian or heathen. Instead, the modern world assumes that everyone should receive justice under the same body of laws. “Decide justly between any man and his fellow and a stranger.” (Deut. 1:15) Similarly,  though capricious and “might makes right” despotic regimes certainly exist – and I count “cancel culture” among those – reasonable people the world over share the ideal that justice should be blind to the status of the petitioner: “You must not pervert justice; you must not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the rich; you are to judge your neighbor fairly.” (Lev. 19:15), and “You shall not be partial in judgement: hear out low and high alike.” (Deut. 1:17).

But what IS the foundation of justice? I’d like to make a radical argument: in the Torah, justice is not necessarily underpinned by a code of law, not even a Torah one. Sure, there are the principles we have already repeated: justice (as opposed to tyranny) is a critical building block for any righteous society, and it requires equality under the law.

But when you look at the use of the word “Tz-D-K”, the Hebrew for justice in the Torah, you discover something quite surprising. The first time it is used is to describe Noah, a “just man in his generation,” and the second refers to a king-priest who greets Abram after his victorious battle. His name was Malchi-Tzedek (the second half of the name forming the root word for “justice”.) And although Abram’s allies don’t perceive a divine hand in the victory (we see, after all, what we choose to see), Malchi-Tzedek immediately credits G-d: “Blessed be the most high G-d who has delivered thy enemies into thy hand.”

What do these two people have to do with Justice? Why is Noach called just and Malchi-Tzedek has the word for justice in his name?

I think the answer is clear in the text: Malchi-tzedek was able to see things from Abram’s perspective. He could see things from the point of view of the other person.

And Noah? The very first thing we know about Noah through his actions was that he was able to hear G-d. THIS is what made him “righteous in his generation.” Noah heard G-d’s voice.

Which beautifully explains to us for both within the Torah and for all time immemorial what justice actually means: it means hearing each person, making them feel valued and appreciated. A good judge is someone who cares about people, who is sensitive to their feelings and need for respect. That is the single biggest prerequisite for justice to be done.

I am not saying that a justice and a society do not also need laws (the Torah certainly gives us the principles for a detailed set of laws), but I am saying that the laws are ultimately only worthwhile if justice is seen to be done, if petitioners feel that they have been heard fairly.

That is why “justice” in the Torah is not given to us in the name of a Torah scholar. Instead, the two people associated with justice, Noah and Malchi-Tzedek were not even Jewish. The lesson in this is incredible to me: the Torah is not only telling us that we have to treat fellow-Jews and non-Jews the same under the law. It is also telling us that the torch-bearers of the concept of justice were indeed themselves not Jewish.  This is a shockingly egalitarian revelation to me, both for the ancient world and for the modern one. The Torah credits not G-d and not the forefathers for inventing justice, but two outsiders, thoughtful and empathic men, men who could hear a non-corporeal voice and who could see a situation through the eyes of other people.

Justice may be codified in a body of law, but that body of law is worthless unless people validate it and feel valued within it. This is why Moses commands that his justices “hear out your fellow men and decide justly… hear out low and high alike…. And any matter that is too difficult for you, you shall bring it to me, and I will hear it.”

Within the Torah, judges were hierarchically assigned, with the first tier judge hearing all cases within his local cohort; just ten men formed that unit. That judge was not a legal giant; he was instead a man who wanted and needed to peacably coexist with his cohort. So his first goal would have always been to try to find a compromise, a settlement that minimized resentment. Doing his job well meant taking the time and energy to truly listen to the petitioners, hear them out, see their point of view, and even (as Noah did) to hear what may not be spoken out loud. Only after someone feels they have had their day in court can a just decision be reached. 

Listening is the foundational aspect of justice: being able to hear G-d and man alike, being able to truly see things from the perspective of the other person. The Torah tells us that this is a critical virtue, one that we learned from non-Jews and in turn must apply it zealously within our own society as well as seeking to make it a universal virtue across all the lands and peoples of the world.

The Torah is full of references to the “ketores,” the incense used in the Tabernacle. There are specific rules – the incense, for example, had to be continuously produced, a constant presence. But the meaning of the incense, and why it is so very important, is not directly explained in the text, nor widely understood.

I’d like to propose a very simple explanation for why incense is so critical for the tabernacle, the sine qua non for the gateway to holiness: it is the reminder of the basic building block of the relationship between Man and G-d. Here’s why: G-d blew the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils. The instrument we use to smell is where G-d connected to Adam, and so connects to each of us.

The incense, then, is constantly smoking because it is to constantly remind us of our creation and our connection to our Creator. Awareness of our connection to G-d is the precondition for building a relationship with Him.

In the Torah, nothing is good or bad in itself: what matters is how it is used. Incense is a link, a reminder of our creative origin. But the Torah uses the word for incense first when describing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah:

and, looking down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of the Plain, he saw the smoke[incense] of the land rising like the smoke [incense] of a kiln. (Gen: 19:28)

Which is precisely what happens when mankind is destroyed; that link is incinerated, the divine investment in mankind is lost.

We are commanded to be holy. The incense, reminding us of G-d blowing life in through our nostrils, reminds and aids us in that journey.

It seems like a simple enough question, with an obvious-enough answer: the opposite of holiness is surely the profane. After all, we know that Moshe was buried “opposite” Pe’or, a cult that worshipped human effluence. And if Moshe stood for holiness (since, after all, G-d tells him that the place where he stands is holy!), then surely the Torah would also tell us that the opposite of holiness, elevation, would be debasement.

Except that it does not.

The Torah tells us repeatedly that we, G-d’s people, are to be holy, because G-d is holy. But only one time does it contrast the word for “holy” with an opposite:

And that ye may put difference between the holy and the common (“chol”), and between the unclean and the clean; (Lev. 10:10)

G-d is telling us that we are to separate between the holy and the common. But what is the meaning of the word, chol? Though it is often translated as “common” or “mundane”, the principle is that the best source of translation is the Torah itself.

The root of the word, chol, is found in the beginning of the Torah, in several instances.

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth (Gen: 6:1)

And Cush begot Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one in the earth. (Gen: 10:8)

Chol does not mean common or mundane at all! It actually means what came first.

The way the Torah defines chol in the verses above is a raw state, a state of nature, of pre-civilization. It is a world before mankind started to improve on it. It is the beginning state.

Indeed, chol is the world the way G-d made it. So in the Torah, G-d is telling us that the world, as He made it in the first six days, was chol, that it was the very opposite of holiness. Why? Because nature is unfeeling, unthinking. It has its own rules, and absent input from G-d or man, it merely exists. Nature, the way the world was created, is essentially a very large and complex automaton. And that automaton, a universe in which neither G-d nor man is involved, does not fulfill any useful – holy – function, because it is incapable of improvement by itself.

In order for the chol to be improved, it needs the addition of creativity, of the application of G-d’s creative powers, expressed directly from Hashem – or, even better, through a combination of G-d and man such as through sacrifices in the Beis Hamkidash or through mankind’s direct act, as in the dedication of the firstborn. In these ways, we can create the most holy things identified in the entire Torah.

The Torah is telling us that the chol state must never be confused for holiness. The untrammeled natural state is not holy – they are to be kept separate, contrasted with each other! After all, worshipping something in nature is pure paganism: we are not supposed to confuse nature with its creator!

Our purpose, that of Judaism following the Torah, is to complete the G-d’s creation of the world, by creating, nurturing, and reinforcing the connections between the physical world and the spiritual world.

So while Moshe did indeed stand opposed to the religions that wallowed in filth and did not know the difference between human waste and divine service, even those religions are at a higher level than a pure, animalistic state of nature. The opposite of the holy is not the profane: it is the natural.

The Torah tells us of three broad categories of commandments: chok, mishpat, and torah.

A chok is a simple command. These commandments are the most common, and they deal with the widest range of “dos” and “don’ts”. We are forbidden to eat certain animals. The priest cannot drink on duty. Don’t mingle certain threads. Observe the Holy Days. Essentially, a chok is a statute, something that does not change, an ordinance. These commandments are all symbolic, and they exist to connect us.

Every chok can be explained as a commandment that connects man to G-d, or man to himself. It is good to be able to explain a chok: understanding why we do something certainly can enrich the experience and relevance to our lives. But we do not need the explanation. One could think of a chok, perhaps, as good hygiene: the benefits confer to practitioners, even if the person who washes their hand does not know that microorganisms exist. Nevertheless, understanding the symbolism gives it meaning.

A mishpat, on the other hand, deals solely with interpersonal relationships: the laws concerning family, of torts, of servants. Because every person is different, a mishpat is meant to be a guideline for how we should behave, but it is not “strict” law like a chok. A mishpat may, for example, tell a court how to deal with a thief, but the court has significant discretion when it pursues justice and mercy. A mishpat is thus a signpost, a direction of travel for how people are supposed to relate to one another, to handle and massage all of the imbalances and inequalities in our connections to each other.

In order to perform a mishpat, it is necessary to have a grasp of the reasons for the commandment. If a chok represents the letter of the law, a mishpat is all about its spirit, and so knowing why the law exists is essential to intelligently and sensitively applying it.

A torah, on the other hand, is quite different. A Torah is a recipe, a guide. It is a pathway or a means to growth. Hence we have “The Torah of a Chok” in the Torah. And it means that the document is itself a guide, a how-to manual for growth and holiness.

 

Terach is seemingly a bit player in the Torah. Mentioned only in a few verses, he seems to be of little significance, except as the father of Avraham.

But as others have pointed out, Terach must have been someone quite important. We know that Terach had three sons: Avraham, Nahor, and Haran. All of those sons ended up becoming part of the Jewish people: Avraham was, of course, the founder of Judaism; all of our foremothers, Rivka, Rachel and Leah, were Nahor’s descendants; Sarah, Ruth and Naama were descendants from Haran. So every one of Terach’s children had Jewish offspring.

Why? What made Terach so special? Why is he such a great man that, alone among all the people in the world, Judaism came from every single one of his offspring?

The answer is hidden in plain sight:

And Nahor lived twenty nine years, and fathered Terah; And Nahor lived after he fathered Terah a hundred and nineteen years, and fathered sons and daughters.  And Terah lived seventy years, and fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran. (Gen: 11: 24-26)

Terach does something nobody had ever done before: he gave his son his father’s name.

We must not underestimate the magnitude of this. If we look at a line of gravestones in any Jewish cemetery in the world, every family line shows the connection between the past and the future through the repetition of names: from grandparent to grandchild, great-grandparent to great-grandchild.  We use names as the link between the past and the future, the anchoring of new life in the solid foundation of those who have come before us.  It is how we, as Jews, keep the flame and memory of our ancestors alive, by giving them an ongoing stake in the future.

And this is the very first thing the Torah tells us about Terach. He may have been, in all other respects, an idol-worshipper, but this single act made all the difference. It is why Avraham, and then Isaac and Rivka insist on their children marrying other descendants of Terach. Because to be a Jew means to be connected to thousands of years of our ancestors, and to be their link in the chain to the future. By giving a name that comes from our past, we proclaim that our lives, and our mission, do not stand alone.

This is why the first book in the Torah ends with the beautiful story of Yaakov blessing his grandchildren, Ephraim and Menasseh. The story of the Jewish family starts with a man naming his son after his father. And the end of this story, just before the Jewish people start to become a nation, is marked by the grandfather directly skipping a generation, explicitly bonding a grandfather to his grandsons.

I know plenty of people who truly are happy alone, or perhaps with one or two other friends in the whole world. 

And I know lots of people who invest in everyone around them, in their marriages In their children, in team members at work, in our collaborations. It seems so obvious that we really should desire to be among the latter, gregarious group, than the former. But we also know that relationships hurt.

When I first became a father of a two year-old, I grappled with the fact that a piece of my heart was attached to an idiotic toddler who was perfectly capable of leaping off a bookshelf or running into the street. It scared me silly. And if some things had not gone just right, I would now be like my parents were for decades: in a state of grief.

Investing in people can be like throwing yourself into care for late-stage cancer patients: you pour in love and care and your very soul, only to get burned time and again. Eventually, you have to withdraw or you end up being sucked into the maw of despair. It may be better to have loved and lost: but boy, losing still hurts.

I think this is true for all kinds of relationships: with a spouse, with dear friends, with parents and with children. It is also true in religion: loving G-d deeply often comes with wrestling with the Big Questions, like, “I have been good. Why am I being pummeled?” 

With loving comes loss – at best. At worst, we have betrayal, in all its forms. I recall certain relationships that just make me want to curl up and cry; there is literally nothing I can do to make things better. All I have is the hole in my heart. And it will always be there.

Perhaps this is even an argument for mortality. At some point, we get tired of the pain, and then we really stop living. I think this happened to Jacob in the Torah: at some point, after a string of close scrapes, and deeply (if unequally) loving his wives and children, and even tending to flocks for 21 years (a process in which the shepherd invests in – and identifies with – the sheep as they live and die), Jacob stops being a man of action. He becomes only a reactive person, only responding to what others say and do. And then Jacob starts talking about death. He gets deeply bitter, and he keeps talking about death, expecting to die, seemingly hoping for it. At the end of his life, Jacob finished saying what he wants to say, he pulls his legs into the bed, turns toward the wall, and Just. Lets. Go.

It all hurt too much. And Jacob was done.

The alternative, as I said before, is choosing NOT to invest in others. There is safety in solitude. That way the only person who lets you down is you.  And we are pretty good at letting ourselves down in ways that are reassuringly depressing. 

How do you keep yourself able to reinvest?

[another @susanquinn and @iwe production]

“I am the Lord who took you out of the Land of Egypt”

If there is any single defining event in Jewish history, it is the exodus from Egypt. We are never allowed to forget it – when we get dressed in the morning with tzitzis, or pray with tefillin, the justification given is that we must remember the exodus. It is true, of course, that the Exodus was a national birth (Gelernter has compared the splitting of the sea as analogous to the birth canal), and so to form the connection to leaving Egypt only seems logical – doing G-d’s commandments is the duty a child owes to his parents. It can be expressed as simply as this: because G-d took us out of Egypt, we owe Him everything. Many of the incidences of “I took you out of Egypt” are clearly understood in this vein: all of the commandments surrounding Pesach, for example, are about explicitly reliving the exodus, and connecting with our past. 

But there are quite a few exceptions to this rule, and the notion that we somehow are indebted to Hashem does not explain why the phrase “I am the Lord who took  you out from the Land of Egypt” punctuates a host of commandments throughout the Torah, seemingly at random. Until now, I have always been frustrated by these references – we know that nothing in the Torah is accidental, yet I have not previously seen a convincing explanation of why specifically these commandments (and not others) come with the “land of Egypt” language. 

I believe that the answer is found by looking at the Exodus as a campaign. The Torah tells us explicitly that Hashem has several distinct goals: to bring the people out; to bring them into Israel; and to make the world “know” His name.

It is making people “know” that is most intriguing, because it is the least definite of the goals. Either the Jews are in Egypt or they are not, but whether or not the Egyptians (or the rest of the world) have heard of G-d is a far more subjective goal. It is, after all, akin to a marketing campaign, and one with several targets. In Shmos 9:14 Hashem explains that the reason he is going through all the steps of the plagues and the Exodus is that “you shall know that there is none like me in all the world…. Show you My strength and so that my Name may be declared throughout the world.”

A god, of course, is anything that we worship. We hold that even a stick can do miracles if enough people believe that it is a deity; the power to create gods is intrinsic within our own creative power. By worshipping, we create gods in our own minds and that, too, is a reality. And it is in this reality that Hashem emerges in Shmos, a reality wherein nobody could deny that the sun was a god – that was obvious, if for no other reason that people considered it to be one. So in this world, Hashem could not hope to convince non-Jews that Hashem was in fact the only real god. The most that could be achieved would be for the Egyptians, and indeed any righteous gentiles,  to understand that G-d is greater than their gods. 

This is hinted at before the plague of hail – some of the Egyptians, who had learned to fear G-d, brought their servants and cattle under cover, and those who had not yet accepted that Hashem was capable of overriding their native deities suffered the loss. The plagues and the destruction of Pharoah are meant to be understood by the Egyptians and others as proof that Hashem is greater than all the other deities – and so was the splitting of the sea in front of two idol-landmarks (Horus and Baal). Nobody who was aware of these events could say after the fact that their god was greater than the G-d of the Jews. And it is made explicit when Yisro, Moshe’s father-in-law comes. 18:11 “Now I know that Hashem is greater than all the gods.”  For all that he recognized G-d, Yisro still compares him to other gods, not embracing the Jewish idea that there is a qualitative difference between Hashem and all other deities. So the target audience of the Exodus was every non-Jew in the world, and the message was simple enough: Hashem is the greatest G-d of all.

But this is not the purpose of the marketing campaign to the Jews. To us, the Exodus was meant to be understood as a fulfillment of a historic destiny, and as proof of our debt to Hashem forever more. But it was also meant to be a defining moment, the moment when we understood that Hashem was not a mere tribal deity (as he could have been understood in the days of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov), nor indeed was he a great G-d on the scale of the other deities of the ancient world. Hashem never tells Moshe that he wants to be considered greater than the other gods by the Jewish people, because to invite comparison suggests that there is a comparison to be made! 

Instead, the conclusion reached by the Jewish people is that G-d cannot be compared to other deities: in the song sung after the Exodus they sang, “mi kamocha b’elokim Hashem?”, “who is like Hashem among the gods?” does not tell us that G-d can be placed on a number line, several spaces ahead of Baal and one space behind Ra. It tells us that G-d has nothing in common with other gods at all – he is Hashem, and on an entirely different metric.

Our G-d is not a regional or tribal or ethnic deity. While he is our G-d, He is also the creator of the world, available for a potential relationship with all those who are made in His image. But he cannot be compared to any other G-d, which means that His commandments are not just quantitatively different from the worship of other deities, but they are also qualitatively different. Instead of merely serving a deity by offering sacrifices, or having specific feast days, we acknowledge that Hashem uniquely spends a great deal of time concerned with commandments that can be conventionally understood as imposing a system of morality upon us. And these commandments are the ones that are connected to “I am the Lord who took you out of Egypt,” they deal with being kind to one another, and commandments to “be holy”, not commandments to serve G-d in any way that would have been recognizable to a pagan in the ancient world. So when Hashem tells us to do something because He took us out of Egypt, we can understand the Egyptian reference as a reminder: the commandment is not similar to the worship of any false god, because, as he showed in the exodus, our G-d is not similar. He is Hashem.

P.S. This also answers a common question: why doesn’t Hashem do open miracles anymore? The answer is that the nations of the world already know his name – He is the G-d of the Jews.  Righteous gentiles already know that he is greater than all other gods. And Jews already  know, thanks to our tradition and Torah, “mi el kamocha” – there is no comparison. The purpose for which Hashem revealed himself publicly in Egypt was completely achieved, so there is no need to ever do those acts again. 

The Torah is an extraordinary text in no small part because it devotes many chapters to describing what things ought to look like, but never has so much as an accompanying sketch to help the reader along. A single picture certainly can be worth a thousand words, especially when conveying an architectural plan. But we are given no such thing.

In the text, Noah’s Ark, the tabernacle and many of its appurtenances are described with dimensions and materials requirements – and very little besides. Even when we dip into the Oral Torah, we find a dizzying array of possibilities and no visual certainty. Which, if you think about it, is unnecessarily imprecise. After all, if one were to start with a vividly-described description of a landscape written by a superb author, and ask a panel of artists to paint what the words describe, the resulting paintings would look quite different, one from the next. Translations between mediums are inherently inexact.

The traditional explanation of how the Tabernacle was crafted is that Moshe and/or Betzalel were given a detailed and precise vision of what the item in question was supposed to look like. Thus unburdened by having to make actual decisions, the craftsman would simply “plug and chug”, copying the image in their head into the tangible world. Skill was required to do it well, of course, but the craftsman would not need to be creative. The resulting product would be a divine creation, with the role of the people limited to translating the spiritual vision into the physical realm. In other words, the tabernacle would be more like a superb forgery (true to the original) than an original work of creation.

The problem with this suggestion is that it runs counter to the text of the Torah itself! Ex. 26-30: “You shall erect the Tabernacle according to its manner, as you will have been shown on the mountain.” Or at least, that is a common translation. A closer examination will show that the word used for “according to its manner” is “k’mishpotei” which is itself comprised of two words: mishpot, and the prefix “k’”.

A mishpot is not a simple law, a command to be blindly followed. Instead, it is a guideline for how we should behave, but it is not “strict” law. A mishpot may, for example, tell a court how to deal with a thief, but the court has significant discretion when it pursues justice and mercy. A mishpot is thus a signpost, a direction of travel for how people are supposed to relate to one another, to handle and massage all of the imbalances and inequalities in our connections to each other. This requires a deep sensitivity about the parties involved, a mind that is constantly seeking wisdom and guidance in situations regarding the human condition, when the path forward is not clear.

In order to perform a mishpot, it is necessary to have a grasp of the reasons for the commandment. If a chok represents the letter of the law, a mishpot is all about its spirit, and so knowing why the law exists is essential to intelligently and sensitively applying it. One cannot merely do a mishpot. Once must instead seek connection and understanding before trying to see the way from the present into a better future. There is no easy way out: fulfilling this kind of commandment requires a full and intimate engagement.

All of this, of course, strongly suggests that the craftsman needs to treat any vision, even one that is received through direct revelation, as a guide, or an inspiration, but most assuredly not as a blueprint. The vision is not meant to be what is actually created. If it was, the Torah would have used different language. The Torah, in this example as in many others, provides the boundaries and perhaps even the skeleton: the rest has to come through our personal connections to ourselves, each other, and to G-d.

Divine inspiration is not meant to provide the masterpiece which a forger can carefully copy. We learn this also from the k’ prefix (also discussed in other contexts here). k’ is used in the Torah to mean something that has a shared quality, but is clearly NOT the same thing.

“And G-d said: “Behold, man is become like [k’] one of us, to know good and evil.” (Gen. 3:22)

We may indeed be able to know good and evil, in some qualitative way, but I very much doubt that the text is telling us that we have the same level of understanding as G-d.

Another example: k’ coming as a prefix was G-d’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would be k’ the sand of the sea and the stars of the heaven. We perhaps are, in a qualitative or metaphorical way, k’ those things – we are clearly not numerically or in any exact way the same as the sand of the sea or the stars of the heaven.

The k’ is the qualifier: it means that there is some shared commonality and similarity. When k’ is used, it means that the two things are similar but clearly not the same.

So when the text reads, “You shall erect the Tabernacle according to its manner, as you will have been shown on the mountain,” we should read it as: “You shall erect the Tabernacle guided by the inspiration that you have been shown on the mountain.” Which means that the Torah is explicitly inviting the builders of the Tabernacle to tap into their own creativity.

The fact that the Torah uses words and not pictures tells us that we are enjoined to think for ourselves, to engage our imaginations, at every level. Being a Jew does not mean obediently going through the steps: it means engaging with G-d and ourselves in order to jointly build G-d’s home. The challenge of building is not the negation of the self: it is the responsibility and challenge of both understanding and interacting with a divinely-inspired internal vision and one’s own soul, and building something that is the synthesis of the vision of both G-d and man.

The tabernacle is not merely holy because it exists: it is holy because we build it. The investment of human capital – both physical and spiritual – is required to build a home suitable for G-d.

In this way, we can answer the original question: having the Tabernacle (and much else besides) described using merely words is not a “bug”: it is a feature. Many of our sages compare the creation of the Tabernacle by mankind to the creation of the world by G-d: there are many deep and beautiful parallels, from the connections to Shabbos, to “man and woman” mirroring the angels on top of the ark, to a “measure-for-measure” partnership between G-d and mankind. When we build the Tabernacle, we echo G-d’s own creative act.

The first words of the Torah begins with creation: Bereishis barah Elokim, usually translated as “in the beginning, G-d created”. Hebrew is a rich language because of all the ways in which things connect, one to the next. The word we translate as “in the beginning” shares the source word, the shoresh, with the word meaning “head” (see Gen 3:15). Which means that “in the beginning G-d created” can also be read as, “In/with the head, G-d created.”

The creation of the world was an act of imagination – G-d’s imagination. And so when we create in turn, emulating G-d’s creation of the world by building His home, we are to involve our own imaginations, our inner visions. The Torah does not paint us a picture for a simple reason: the Tabernacle is not fully designed in heaven. We are to be full partners in that act of creation, engaging both our physical bodies and our spiritual souls in the act of making something new and beautiful so that He may dwell among us.

People often have a tendency to think linearly: to assign a numeric value, for example, to a qualitative value. Think of the descriptors: “the best doctor,” “the best dancer,” or any other. In actuality, when describing different colors, it is almost entirely meaningless to understand the color “red” or “green” in terms of what percentage of black or white they may be.

The same is true for relationships, and for the laws that govern those relationships. Though there is no denying that some marriages are better than others, it would be silly to say that a particular couple has the best marriage. Nobody in their right mind would really want to be in someone else’s marriage; each of us necessarily has our own inputs into a relationship that makes it work (or not) for us as individuals.

By the same token, it is not accurate to suggest that priests, Cohenim, are more holy than ordinary people. But it would be right to suggest that their proximity to the mishkan, the tabernacle, means that they have a different kind of relationship with G-d. Cohenim are, for example, less free than other Jews to serve G-d through creativity and improvisation. And they have a different set of rules than those which govern other Jews.

Among those rules are those dealing with marriage. A normal Cohen could marry a widow, but not a divorcee. And the Cohen Gadol, the High Priest, was forbidden from even marrying a woman who had even ever intimately known another man. Many people mistakenly conclude that virgins are superior, or that these laws explain how Cohenim are more holy than are other Jews.

But this is a misunderstanding. We don’t celebrate virgins. Indeed, Judaism is all about intimacy between man and wife, mankind and G-d. Men are meant to desire their wives in an ongoing intimate relationship, because a marriage is a much deeper and more developed thing than a mere wedding. So why does G-d require that the Cohen Gadol marries a virgin, a woman who has never loved any other man?

We must remember that all marriages are reflections of our respective marriages with G-d. Tip O’Neill (not a man frequently quoted in words of Torah) said that, “All politics is local.” He could well have been channeling the Torah, for whom the message is that “all religion is personal.” Yes: G-d is the King of Kings, and the creator of the world. But we relate to Hashem through our personal marriages. We are inspired to holiness in our relationship with G-d, through the pursuit of holiness in our relationship with our spouses.

And the Cohen Gadol had a qualitatively different relationship with G-d than does another Jews. The Cohen Gadol served in the Mishkan, the place where the divine presence, the shechinah dwells (mishkan and shechniah share a root). The shechinah is different from the other attributes of G-d who are available to the world: the shechinah is precisely like a woman who has only ever known her husband: the shechinah is the aspect of Hashem that has never loved anyone else.

A man, in Biblical Judaism, is allowed many wives. And so it should not surprise us that Hashem has relationships and involvements with many different nations. The Torah itself tells us that certain lands are not for the Jews, because they are reserved for other nations. And we certainly believe that G-d can be involved in the events of this world, even the ones that may not directly affect Jews.

And so, too, the male aspects of G-d, especially Elokim, have been known to the world ever since G-d revealed himself as Elokim to the Egyptians. G-d touches many people, not just Jews. The Torah does not pretend otherwise: G-d talks to non-Jews, and he even prophesies through people like Bilaam.

But the female aspect of Hashem is not like the male aspects. Unlike a man who is out in the world interacting in the public square, the classic Torah woman is someone who creates a home, an environment of love and nurturing, of specialness and intimacy. And while women may well be divorced, or have known many men, the Cohen Gadol needs to see his marriage as the mirror image of his relationship with the shechinah (the name of Hashem that is in the feminine form) – and so he can only be married to a woman who, just like the aspect of G-d that he knows, has never loved any other people, has never been intimate with another man.

A regular Cohen can marry a widow, but not a divorcé. I would see this as a reflection of the fact that while G-d “dwells” in the Beis Hamikdash and the Mishkan, he is most intensely found in the holy-of-holies, the place that only the Cohen Gadol goes. A regular Cohen may not be as close to the shechinah, but he, too, must understand through his terrestrial relationship with a woman who never ended a relationship with a man, that G-d has never, and will never, end His relationship with us.

P.S. To be true, the Gemara tells us of many ways in which we, too, can interact with the shechinah – and our marriages are not exclusively to virgins. But unlike the Cohen Gadol, this interaction is voluntary, and on a case-by-case basis. This may be a spiritual reason why men prefer to marry a woman who has not known other men; it may enable access to facets of a relationship with G-d that are not available to a man who marries a divorcé.