Divine Shards

Abraham Isaac Kook (1865 – 1935) was one of the most influential rabbinic personalities of the Twentieth century. He was the Rabbi of Jaffa in 1904, then became the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, and eventually, the first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine. With the offices he held, his voice in religious Zionism, and his writings in Jewish law and mysticism, he had such stature that in certain circles one can simply say Harav, “the rabbi,” and it is understood that one is speaking of Rav Kook.

Over the course of his illustrious career, there was – through no fault of his own – one hiccup. WWI broke out while Kook was on a trip to Europe, and he was forced to remain in London for the duration of the war. I was fascinated to discover through a classmate of mine, that Kook spent some of his time in London wandering through London’s National Gallery. It is a tickling thought, that someone of such prominence, like any traveler stranded in a strange city, would spend afternoons roaming museums. Later in life, he shared that of the artwork he saw, his favorites were the works of Rembrandt. In discussing Rembrandt’s craft, he drew on the image from Genesis of the creation of light, stating: “Now and then, there are great men who are blessed and privileged to see this light… Rembrandt was one of them, and the light in his pictures is the very light that God created on Genesis day.” (London Jewish Chronicle, September 13, 1935, p. 21) For Kook, a work by Rembrandt was to be appreciated not merely because it reflected his own aesthetic sensibilities. For Kook, it was as if these great pieces of art were beautifully crafted theological statements, opportunities for the spiritual to reside in this world, a shard of the divine refracted through human effort.

You would not be wrong to think that when it comes to investing earthly objects with divine attributes, Jews tread very cautiously. From Abraham’s smashing the idols in his father’s workshop, to the commandment against graven images, to the Golden Calf incident about which we read last week, to compendious legal literature on avodah zarah, idolatry, ours is not a faith that has ever been comfortable with assigning sanctity to physical objects and certainly not to people. For Jews, that which is sacred lies beyond our touch. We pray to a God we cannot see, we perform mitzvot in service to a God who exists beyond our comprehension, and we resist the urge – call it idolatry, call it paganism – to concretize the heavenly in physical form.

And then there is Rembrandt. Better yet, take a moment to think of any artist, any musician, any song, any poem, any anything of this world that you have ever believed to bear traces of that which is otherworldly. For each of us, there are human creations in which the timeless meets the temporal; melodies that stir us, reminding us of what lies under the bridge or over the rainbow. There are poems written in long ago ages that seem to be directed precisely to us. It could be big, it could be small. Hannah Arendt once wrote of Walter Benjamin being moved at the Musée Cluny, admiring two grains of wheat upon which someone had inscribed the complete Shema Yisrael. Arendt explains that for Benjamin “the size of an object was in an inverse ratio to its significance.” (Illuminations, p. 11) The objects that inspire our awe need not be, for that matter, man made. Most often, traces of the divine can be sensed in nature. Philosophers from Berkeley to Buber have urged us to allow for the divine to be felt in something as common as a tree. Large or small, in nature or made by human hand, such instances allow for what William James called “momentary expansions of the soul” – when we can not help but sense that we are in the Garden, with God walking right next to us.

It would indeed be very difficult to appreciate this week’s Torah reading if one did not allow for the divine to be instantiated in this world. So many details, a variety of metals, precise specifications, so much careful design and craftsmanship, all towards the construction of the mishkan, the desert tabernacle that accompanied the Israelites through their wilderness wanderings, a structure that could house God’s presence. As I discussed a few weeks ago, the mishkan, in itself, signals the effort to experience God’s presence here on earth. But the message of this week’s parasha is slightly different. I believe it is altogether significant that while the schematics had been set forth by God through Moses in earlier chapters, the mishkan was not built by God’s hand as was the case in the Creation, not even by Moses or Aaron, but by a hitherto unknown non-union worker from the tribe of Judah: Bezalel. In his upcoming book Open Minded Torah, William Kolbrener asks the age-old and obvious question: What was the special trait that Bezalel possessed? For what reason was he singled out? Kolbrener explains that Bezalel’s calling card was that he was able lahashov mahashavot, meaning that he had the ability to invest the physical with divine character. Bezalel was God’s master craftsman because it was through his human workmanship that God’s spirit was brought down to earth. It is not only that the mishkan was meant to house God. Bezalel was the Rembrandt of his time; his artistry gave cause for the spiritual to reside in this world.

There have been, over the ages, numerous attempts to explain what constitutes a religious life. Let me add my own roughly-hewn effort to the list. As human beings we have, by definition, limitations. Limitations to how long we live, limitations to what we will ever know, limitations to what we can do. And yet because I am so aware of these boundaries, I also acknowledge the possibility that there is joy, wonder and mystery beyond what the eye can see and I can experience. Awareness of human limitation may come with a sting, but I believe it also bears a blessing. For in this world, each of us has been extended the opportunity to do precisely what Bezalel did, to invest the “this worldly” with the divine. We might find it in something man-made like a work of art; or it could be in nature like a tree. Most often, our hearts hear the tiptoe of God’s presence in human creations that will never be in museums, for they are felt by one or at most, two people. The laugh that was a little too loud, the kind word that raised us up at a critical moment, the tear that was not wiped away with ease. The goal of a religious life is not to strive towards some sort of otherworldly transcendence. In spite of all our limitations, or precisely because of them, a religious life is animated by the hope that our souls are sufficiently receptive and capacious to allow for God to enter.

On three occasions in the Torah, God gave of the Divine presence to this world. First, the creation of the world itself – the heavens, the moon, the stars, nature – all declaring God’s praise. Second, and shortly thereafter, the creation of humanity. Every single human being is created in God’s image, each of us somehow an instantiation of the Divine. Jew and non-Jew, created with infinite and equal dignity. And finally, the Revelation of Torah: God’s will made known to the Israelites at the base of Mount Sinai. Nature, humanity and Torah – each occasion was a refraction of the Divine presence. We, the stewards of God’s creation, have been entrusted with the task of continuing this process begun so long ago. We have been given the tools, the code if you will, to repeatedly pull the heavens down to the earth.

Let’s briefly go through the list. Torah: What is Shabbat if not a taste of the eternity “mei-ein olam haba” ? For that matter, what a beautiful way to understand all mitzvot given at Mt. Sinai – opportunities to sense the godly in the everyday. Next, nature. Creation may have occurred long ago, but nature is an enduring sign of God’s presence. I am fond of sharing a story told of Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, the founder of modern orthodoxy in 19th century Germany. In his later years he made a visit to see the Swiss Alps. His students were puzzled why their teacher, one of the great scholars of the day, would make such a frivolous trip, especially towards the end of his life. He explained,“Because, when I get up to Heaven, I want to have an answer when God says to me, ‘Nu, Shimshon, what did you think of My Alps?’” To appreciate nature and to protect it, signals receptivity to God’s most universal act of creation. And finally, humanity. The other night, my wife and I sat down for dinner with one of our four children. While I can not recall a single thing that kid said, in that face, to paraphrase Milton, the Divine. It is not just that human beings are capable of creating works reflecting the Divine will, but each of us is, unto ourselves, an embodiment of the Divine plan. Moreover, it is by way of our actions that we can be God’s hands on earth. In the words of third-century poet Tatian:

As the wind moves through the harp
And the strings speak
So the Spirit of the Lord speaks through my limbs
And I speak through His love.

In his book, Kolbrener shares a fascinating midrash, a rabbinic legend, told of the building of the Temple in Jerusalem, as described in today’s haftarah. King David himself began to dig the foundations. He dug fifteen cubits into the ground when he hit a shard and tried to remove it. This shard, the story goes, spoke back to him and said: “Do not lift me up because I am holding back the deep.” That very shard, the portal between one world and another, became the foundation stone for the holy of holies, the most sacred precinct within the entire Temple. (Open Minded Torah, pp. 12-13)

The Temple no longer stands in Jerusalem and the tabernacle that Bezalel created is but a memory. And yet each of us stands in the presence of the shards that are holding back worlds that can burst forth with religious vitality. We can cultivate an appreciation for the ones already present, or we can, like Bezalel, create them ourselves. The shards of our day are not beneath the ground, nor are they in the heavens. They are strewn about waiting for us to stumble upon them, in nature, in Torah and in the most obvious place of all, within each of us. It is altogether in our power to bring forth the Divine into this world. The only question is whether we will pause long enough to notice the very shards that enable us to bear witness to God’s presence in our lives.