Pekude, Exodus 38:21-40:38

The Breastplate of Aaron; the Garb of the Priests

The skeptics have told us flatly, "There is no scientific evidence that crystals are conduits of magical energies useful for healing and protection," and that we "can dismiss the pre-scientific belief" in the magical powers of crystals, gems, and other sorts of stones. Yet, the ancients--and many moderns--still believe otherwise, that rocks in their various natural and crafted states, have unique powers that human beings can utilize.

I’m not so dismissive as the skeptic, nor am I a scientist capable of explaining electromagnetic forces; I certainly look upon the sellers of magic wands and body-therapies based on hot rocks with something of a raised brow. If stones offered us nothing other than their beauty, this would hold considerable emotional and spiritual power over our consciousness, and in some ways that’s enough.

Today’s Torah portion, Pekude, is redolent of blue, purple, and crimson dyes, fine linen cloth and leathers from animal-skins, yarns spun of gold threads. The sacred robes the priests  wear are being designed for the moment these men open the sheet of the Tent of Meeting. The costume they wear can only be described as splendiferous.

For those who love to watch the Oscar’s and fashion shows, there is an incredible surge to seeing beautiful or handsome human beings dressed exquisitely.

Lapis Lazuli

In nature, it is usually the partner who wishes to attract a mate that is the most gorgeous in coloring and design, and as the reproductive season intensifies, so does depth and clarity of color, the fullness and shine of a coat. And is there not a kind of magic in this?

Just what were the priests up to in their fine frocks? After leaving Egypt, what a rag-tag army we must have been crossing the desert floor in our late-gathered rags of enslavement. Wouldn’t we want to have a nice new dress for our recovering faith?

And that breastplate. The subject of many mystical and not-too-mystical speculations throughout the years. Fixed into three rows were three sets of unusual stones, each one to become identified as one of the 12 tribes of Israel. Seen by some to have been the beginning of the birthstone concept.

Well, humans are makers of meaning, and creatures of fantasy, spinning yarns of the imagination along with the fabrics we have woven. If the properties ascribed to stones by the ancients, with their formulas of wisdom, did not meet the rigors of scientific verification, we do not have to deny the magic that rocks held for our ancestors and for us.

I think, here, of all my ancestors--the Jewish ones with the breastplate of Aaron and the resting stone for Jacob’s ladder--and my Celtic and British ones, with their amazing standing stones found throughout western Europe, undecipherable in their ultimate meaning. 

It takes a lot of work to create a gem from a raw, rough-edged rock, and it takes a lot of work to lug megalithic stones miles from the quarries where they were found to places where the become Stonehenge or the Ring of Brodgar. I have to put my faith in the power that motivated these peoples. They were trying to attract some kind of raw energy. Perhaps, God?

Poems for New Beginnings

B'resheit (In the Beginning)

For the Dedication of Temple Sinai's New Chapel, October 1, 2010, Oakland, California

In the beginning

we read the words

“in the beginning”

and it was all good.

Before light, darkness,

before land, seas

before all Beings, a void.

then stars breaking

light across the planet,

stars and a great sun,

a splendid moon.

In the beginning,

a place of perfect

balance, a garden

of perfect sustenance

with all good in it.

A giraffe and a lion,

a palm for giving oil,

a palm for giving dates,

a palm for shelter.

In the beginning,

a home of balance,

a place of sanctuary.

In the beginning,

where we, each other, 

All and God 

called ourselves
One 

in the beginning
and it was all then,
as it is all now, 

all good.

Amen.
by Jannie Dresser, copyright October 1, 2010


Prayer

Asked to be the prayer
not the words that contain it
not the fumbling at the fringes of the tallit
or the pressing open the thin pages of the Siddur--
the thing itself
written on the walls of the heart
where morning light and sunset light
converge at this place of meeting    singing    praising.
Asked to be this, together, and then left alone
as the chanting ceases and silence comes in
through the window and the door
to take its place beside us,
as those standing re-seat themselves
as those worrying restore themselves
as those mourning take comfort.
We    each     together,
are alone again in the elegant moment:
prayer radiating from the beat and breath
of the pulse of the heart,
for memory’s sake and God’s completion,
asking to be the prayer
and the sayer of the prayer.

by Jannie Dresser, copyright October 1, 2010

THE CHILDREN’S MAP OF THE WORLD 
For my teachers and fellow students at Temple Sinai’s Shabbat Torah Study

The globe was made by many small hands;
suspended above our study tables it is imperfectly
perfect in cerulean irregularity.

Strong brown twine drops it from the ceiling,
under the skylight which lets in the light
and the vision of fog swirling outside shul.

I know preschoolers shaped it, cut it from
butcher paper: two spheres, jaggedy-edged,
pasted and colored around the rim.

Their brushes shaped oceans aqua-marine
and navy blue; for the continents
the children discovered vermilion, burnt sienna.

Here are lands where children are born,
and birds, beasts, and all manner
of creeping things arise into being.

Fishes too, phosphorescent in slimy orange.
On Shabbat, we grown-ups gather here
under this beautiful lopsided world.

We open our Holy Book to read, argue, and speak.
We offer the barucha for our time, for the book;
we offer thanks for water and bread.

by Jannie Dresser, copyright October 1, 2010

 
Inexhaustible
For Shekheina on Shabbat

I met her at the well where she drew
water of such blindness
that I was seen at once for who I am:
supplicant in yellow robes,
walking this alkali earth
in dusty devocation,
ullalating grief like a
war-torn mother.

Her hand was a dark brown reed
tending crimson rope.
On every finger she wore
a golden band which signaled
she was wife to many, lover only
to some. I watched as she pulled
with gentle force, earth-fingers
laced around the cord, then
she let it go.

I heard the bucket pound down
lightning strike to the pool below,
it hit bottom with inexhaustible blow.

When our eyes met, mine faltered.
I could not drink her gaze,
although I am certain it took hold
until I weakened, poured through
liquid diamonds of her breath,
her bosom, her boundless heart.

Then, with a touch,
so full of yearning, I felt
her kiss me
moistly
once.

by Jannie Dresser, copyright October 1, 2010

 
The images are Artist Trading Cards, copyright by Jannie M. Dresser, 2009.

Out Beyond the Field of Right and Wrong is a Snake-Bitten Jew: Me

Today I am a bad Jew. It is Yom Kippur, the Holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and I am at home, not attending services and barely contemplating my “sins,” as they may be. My sister, Marianne, a convert to Buddhism (does one convert to Buddhism?), once wrote a piece about being a Bad Buddhist, so I can’t say my self-judgment as a bad Jew is anything original.

In Judaism, concepts of right and wrong do hold a central place in the religion‘s history--particular as it is filtered through the Deuteronomist priests who wrote some of the most important books of the Pentateuch (yes, I subscribe to the notion that the Bible was written by human hands, not God's--so sue me!).

My sense of much of Jewish law is that though it may have been relevant to Israelite practitioners several millenia ago, a lot of it is now out-dated, even unethical by modern standards (such as condemning homosexuality or prescribing that a witch be stoned to death, or considering cross-dressing a serious offense). I do ascribe, however, to the interesting concept (more rabbinic than of the Torah, per se) that we human beings have two inclinations: the yetzer ha tov and yetzer ha ra, the good as well as the bad (actually, ra is more frequently translated as "evil"). Unlike my more secular relativist friends, I do believe that good and bad exist.

The concepts of yetzer ha ra (the evil inclination) and yetzer ha tov (the good inclination) do not define individuals as All-Good or All-Evil, but rather judge actions and behaviors: condoning or condemning the deed, rather than the being. To the extent we ARE our actions and behaviors, however, we become good or evil people, and it is my understanding of Judaism that doing and being are intertwined as we become ourselves: I do this (i.e., study Torah), in order to be that (i.e., a good Jew). I'm just not sure how many yetzer ha ra's one must rack up before you are an evil person, and the system of atonement is a practice of reckoning up, forgiving and asking forgiveness, and cleansing oneself a year-at-a-time.

By such logic, not attending services and doing my annual atonement on Yom Kippur, would very well condemn me as a Bad Jew, at least give me a flying leap towards the yetzer ha ra as I begin the new year. (Maybe next High Holy Days, I’ll be able to balance the scale.)

As a Jew-by-choice who has taken her place in the most liberal of the Jewish denominations, the Reform movement, I hold individual conscience in high regard and must negotiate around halacha (the law) with a certain relativism. In truly Orthodox circles, I wouldn’t be considered a Jew at all, especially if they caught wind that I sat out Yom Kippur by working at home on my computer, writing, and enjoying a huge breakfast of bacon-homefries-and-eggs. (But then, they wouldn’t consider me a Jew anyway for a variety of reasons: 1) I wasn’t born of a Jewish mother; 2) I did not have an Orthodox conversion; and, 3) I married a Gentile and have disobeyed the commandment to "be fruitful and multiply" since I specifically chose not to have children.)

I was raised a-religiously, with a mother and father who only symbolically identified themselves as Christians, taking us to church for Christmas and Easter. My mother, the descendant of Presbyterian ministers, did send us to Sunday school a few times and once to summer Bible school, but she also said, on a quite regular basis, that she could pray just as well sitting on the pot as in a pew; my Southern dad made a big deal out of his Episcopalian heritage, but only when he was on a bender and rather perversely trotted us down the aisles of the upscale St. James Cathedral in our best Sunday dress. While I loved the pomp and music of the Anglican tradition, I felt out of place, ashamed and lonely in that cross-town church. Fortunately, Sunday church-going was never routine in my family.

When I formally converted to Judaism, one of the rabbis on my beit din (the council that oversees Jewish conversions) impressed upon me the importance of joining a people as much as joining a religion. I took this somewhat alien concept (to me) to heart and started synagogue-shopping, finally settling in at Temple Sinai in Oakland where I have been involved in an off-again/on-again fashion for nearly 15 years.

When I am “on-again,” I am very much devoted to my community, as an active member of the social action committee (where I helped launch a volunteer literacy program), and as a participant in our Temple's sisterhood and other committees. I am a regular at our weekly Torah class, and last year, I participated in a Shabbat Initiative program designed to make Shabbat more meaningful for Temple congregants.

In 2010, I participated in our Temple’s sisterhood Shabbat service, writing some of the liturgy, and I have joined a new committee taking on responsibility for providing ritual burial for our congregants. I've also organized several Shabbat evening celebrations for Temple members and continued my Torah study, occasionally giving the weekly drash, or Torah commentary. I’m hardly a back-bencher when it comes to community involvement. And, I think of myself, express myself, and engage in daily life as a firmly committed religious Jew, a committed Zionist in the sense that I believe in the right of a Jewish state to exist, and an outspoken member of my community, both within a synagogue's walls and without, frequently facing and defying the anti-Semitism I encounter due to the fact that I don't "look" Jewish and people will say things in my presence because they don't know that I am Jewish. I feel deeply committed as well, to learning Jewish history, studying Torah, and trying desperately to know God through this rich and varied tradition.

When I opt out of High Holy Days services, it is in part because ritual is the least important aspect of my Judaism. Although I love sitting in a room full of singing, praying, reading Jews, I grow weary after about an hour and often come home feeling drained. It is partly the result of being in a large crowd, meeting and greeting friends before and after the service, and having to sit in one place for three hours that wears me out. But it is also the consequence of my chronic depression and the low-energy I experience for social gatherings. Put me in a classroom or movie theater, and I can last a little longer.

I can’t feel too badly about being a Bad Jew this New Year. I intend to continue in my weekly practice of studying the Torah, applying its lessons to my life. I am committed to taking my 93-year-old friend Shirley to our Saturday Torah group most weeks and I am happy to organize Shabbat dinners. I have taken responsibility for drafting a Tahara manual for our Chevra Kadisha (the committee doing ritual burial), and have written drash’s and poems for service programs as requested. Yes, I even occasionally attend services and special events at the synagogues and love the music and the people, the rabbis and the food.

My parents treated their Christianity as a once-a-year kind of thing and were not at all community-minded. Their actions left our family in complete isolation as we experienced the roughest years of my father’s violent alcoholism, our financial struggles, and other nuclear-family traumas. While I have adopted my mother’s and father’s indifference to religious ritual, I’ve eschewed their indifference to being part of a community--both the giving to it and receiving from it. I am part of a large synagogue where I am known to many and feel love and nurturance whenever I am in a room with my Jewish family.

If I feel like a Bad Jew, it is usually on these high points of the Jewish ritual year. The rest of the time, I am rather consistently involved in Jewish community and activities. Perhaps, I am a better-than-average Jew, after all. What I hope most sincerely, is that in the eyes of God, I am seen as someone who deeply loves her community, its history and literature, even if I often opt out of the events that draw the largest crowds. Often those crowds are full of people I don't recognize because we never see them at shul the rest of the year. 

Bamidbar: Take This Hammer (Pad it With a Silk Scarf)

Bamidbar (Numbers 1:1-4:20) is one of those Torah portions people like to skip. The word itself means "in the desert."It refers to the Israelites gathering and organizing themselves in their wanderings in the wilderness. Filled in its initial verses with genealogies of men organized into militias, the portion has an adamant left-brain energy. But at its conclusion, there is a description--one of many in Torah--of the portable tabernacle that accompanied the Israelites in their desert wanderings. This brief section is full of wonderments and sensory details of vessels and pans, colorful cloths and strange materiels. The writer of this section presses the point that only the specialist, the assigned priest, can enter the tabernacle, further elevating Bamidbar’s strangeness. I offer the following commentary about the building of the mishkan, the tabernacle, in a more poetic approach and ask readers to relax and receive it with a softened mind and ear tuned toward the Great Mystery. There will be no test at the end, except the one we are daily undertaking as we struggle to live meaningful lives.

The mishkan is unlike any other abode

with its gold, silver, copper pans,
with its blue, purple, crimson dyes,
with its goat hair and dolphin skins
stretched along the branch-lines of acacia
scented like baby’s breath, milky clean.

Yet, we have had to give up
even this shelter, to go within, to find
the true center, where the light
of the everlasting flame singes our hearts,
the way a spark scrapes the branch
into aromatic incense.

What shall we do after forsaking
the letting of blood, the gouging of the mollusk
to make our purple dye?
The torment of the sea-beasts to weave
fabric for our tent of meeting?

One must go out to come in again,
changed.

The pan of oil reflects the fire that burns within,
oil strained through goat hair and cloth,
the blood of ten-thousand generations.
The pan of copper mined in hard labor.

The closer we approach,
the more concentrated the fire,
the more consecrated the fire.

Fire of our souls awakened as in a dream,
gasping for breath like a new-born baby,
gasping for hope, reaching for God.

***
We released the Sky God;
he was only a blue balloon
held on a very flimsy wire.

We watched him slip through the hole
in the immense blue veil of ozone.

Goodbye Osiris, goodbye Baal, goodbye Zeus, goodbye Odin.

We had to forego the psalmist’s prayers for revenge.
Don’t you remember the disembodied tears raining down on us at the Sea of Reeds
when we shook our timbrels and chanted our victory song?

We followed an elusive rainbow, its glittering prism 
that seemed to shoot
in every direction except the one 
where we were headed.

God of the tabernacle, the sanctuary,
God of the Tent of Meeting,
God of the desert,
variegated smoke leading us on.

Some of our ancestors tried to give God a home,

a stone altar sprayed with sacrifice,
a Temple,
Yerushalyaim.

But the Temple become the mistress of the rulers
and their all-too-obedient priests.
The Temple, fixed to land, was burned to ashes,
the way our lambs and doves, sinew and fat, were burned;
the Temple was sacrificed to God.

It taught us: God is not in the land
     any more than God lives in the sky.

I tell you, it used to cost a fair shekel to visit the Holy Place,
and nobody could go inside.

This made God anxious;
our God will not be a kept God:

       we must go out to come in.

The tabernacle voyages with the people,
an ark, a ship of the desert,
a prairie schooner carried on our shoulders.

The tabernacle went with us,
to shtetl and farm, to factories and foreign lands,
to Shanghai and Manhattan and Palm Beach.

The Temple demanded that we come to it,
made us alien to the center
of our own holiness;
it kept men on retainer, men who wore magical vestments and gems,

who spoke in code.

The tabernacle let us know
we had a center where ever we roamed.
***

We Jews have given the world
the important gift of knowing
that wherever we live
God dwells among us, within us, around us.

But old habits--slow to accrete--take as long to discard.
We Jews have learned you must become a
resilient
flexible
portable
prepared
people.

We Jews have learned
to take comfort
in strange lands;
we are still learning
that hospitality is the pathway to peace and prosperity,
that culture is a two-way street
that must be paved with mutual respect.

We Jews have learned from others:
how to make new menus from strange foods to sustain life
how to make new medicines from barks and herbs to heal disease.

We’ve learned new words from our foreign hosts:
like “trust in God but tie up your camel first,”
like “be sure to read the small print,”
“a penny saved is a penny earned,“
“silence equals death.”

    like you must go in
    to come out.

Sometimes you have to abandon
family, spouse, children, friends, pets, house, your country.
Sometimes you must allow
family, spouse, children, friends, pets, house, country
to take their leave of you.

***

In haste, lech lechah, we are told
to pack
to go
to flee
to take that new opportunity
to head west, north, south, east
to Africa, Argentina, Canada, California.

Yes, we have to go very deep within
to find the honest road that can take us farthest out.
We may lose track of everything that
was once important:
    it wasn’t.

We must discard what cannot accompany us:
    everything but our truth must go.
We say goodbye for the moment:

    It will be there;
    it is always right where we left it,
    in the last place we look.

Through the archways and the drawn curtains,
through the long empty passageway,
the column of our souls
where smoke lingers,
where all the encumbrances

between soul and God

are stripped bare
leaving us space for our safe
our very safe
return.

Jannie M. Dresser, copyright May 2010

Zechariah: The Rancher Prophet

The best way to read Scripture is as a Rorschach of our own mental, emotional and spiritual state, as well as for its history of generations of people in Western culture -- Jews, Christians and Moslems alike -- who have all been inspired by the Bible and have attempted to create themselves in response to, and through the creation of, this grand literary amalgam.

Literature is never purely entertainment; we go to it to stimulate our imaginations as much as for relaxation; we go to it for transport out of the ordinary of our daily lives. The wisdom literary traditions (the Hindu Vedas and Upanishads, the Greek pre-Socratics and birth of Western philosophy, the Tao te Ching, the Bible and Koran, etc.), are all sources human beings have created and turn to for guidance and meaning. But to a great extent, the pond we look into reflects back to us our own image: a Christian reading a Bible verse is prone to seeing it as Christ-centered, apocalyptic and church-relevant; a Jew sees the mythical and very real history of her people and nationhood, as it unfolded in a relationship with God. An atheist may just see a chaotic but interesting tale.

The only way we can come to grips with Who or What is God has been through our literary traditions and personal, sometimes intuitive and mystical, encounters which are as varied and fascinating as human beings themselves; I love hearing and reading conversion stories and Bible interpretations, and can only wonder at the vast range of meaning-making we have generated out of our encounters with one another, the planet and its living beings, and that great Source, what some experience as a Holy Being or Divinity.

When “interpreters” take on a voice of authority and proscribe their meaning onto these fantastical and challenging works it creates distance between us, particularly when that authority is rigid and didactic, certain of its own claim to meaning. Out of this we get the Crusades, pogroms, the Inquisition, and suicide bombers.

Zechariah is a relatively late book in the Hebrew Bible, post-exilic which means it was recorded after the Jews had been captured and exiled by the Babylonians. The marker for this period in Jewish history is 586/587 BCE when the Temple--the center for ancient Israelite ritual life. The book of this prophet has led to many wild interpretations and attachments of meaning, as a book of prophecy is often wont to do. In Torah class, a student commented that “We are projecting our own idea of God back on an earlier society.” Ah yes, and the fact is that the canonized scriptures were also a projection of an idea of God layered over earlier ancient religion. In each generation, we take the raw materials of our culture and come to terms with their value for bringing us closer to each other, our selves and our souls, and our idea of God.

As a daughter of the American west, growing up around farms and cattle ranches with livestock and horses, it is not surprising that I “project” my interpretation of Zechariah as a rancher. Here’s the background and the initial images of this book, written around 520-518 BCE.

The Jews of ancient days were roustabouts by their own choice and the choice others made for them. In fact, the Bible stories have sometimes been seen as a representation of a society moving from one phase of its development as nomadic herders to an agricultural, therefore more “grounded” one.

It seemed, every time we got a bit settled down, some power came and upset the apple cart. First the Egyptians and their Pharoahs, then the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Hellenistic-Syrians, and finally the Romans. The first five books of the Bible tell how ancient Israelites became a relatively settled people who made a covenant with one particular God whose name is unutterable.

Alas, the ancient middle/near east was not a quiet place and the land was coveted by others. The Babylonians became a great power and conquered Judah, destroying the Temple and carrying off the population to Babylon. Years go by, Jews survive, that’s what we do. Quite a few were comfortable and thriving in the Babylonian centers. But another power arose: this time, the Persians, who were both liberators and instigators for Jews to return to the Holy Land. There is some evidence that not everyone wanted to go back.

Darius appointed Zerubbabel as governor of Judah. Jews were allowed to return and to rebuild the Temple, thus restoring the priesthood and the old religion. Zechariah and Haggai arise as prophets during this time and share the job of exhorting the Jews to return and rebuild Jerusalem. But, traumatized people don’t usually want to move: they hunker down, dig in, try to keep their heads down and their movements circumspect. Zechariah, one of the last in a series of prophets in the Hebrew scriptures, is considered by many as a prophet of restoration. His name means “God has remembered” and his preaching is a kind of “round-up” of recalcitrant Jews not so eager to go home.

Zecharias’ book begins in medias res, as the prophet converses with an angel; the prophet sees a man on a bay-colored horse, with three horses standing beside, bay, sorrel and white. “What are these, my Lord?” he asks and the angel/man standing among the myrtle trees, tells Zechariah, “They are the ones who will go throughout the earth.” In fact, they tell the angel/man (it isn’t clear if there is more than one “man,“ or if the angel is a man, or if the horses are also doing some of the talking) but the reply comes: “We have roamed the earth, and have found all the earth dwelling in tranquility.”

The angel speaks out and asks God how long He is going to be angry with his people. Adonai, Lord of compassion says that he is very angry with those who punished Judah and promises to restore Jerusalem. There is a bit of irony to this since the exile, as seen in the story of the Bible, was punishment for straying from God‘s rules; it was as much an instrument of God’s wrath as the oppressors themselves. But, here at least--whether God is showing signs of remorse or the overlords screwed up on God‘s Stanley Milgram experiment--we now see that God’s plan is to restore us to our beloved Jerusalem.

Zechariah sees “four horns” which are explained as the horns that scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem. Next Zechariah sees four craftsmen who have come to terrify the “horns of the nations that scattered Judah” and who will now be punished in their turn. A man/angel being appears, bearing a measuring line and says he is going to measure Jerusalem; he is reminded by an angel that the new Jerusalem will be a place without walls because there will be so many people in it, and that God  Himself will be a ring of fire around Jerusalem.

Messianic religion takes prophecy as a signal for the rebuilding of the Temple and the coming of the Messiah (in Christian terms, the Second Coming of Christ). In Zechariah, there is a foreshadowing of this given by the report of the man on the horse who found peace and tranquility throughout the earth. For Jews, the Messiah will only appear when the earth is at peace and all humankind is perfected; this is a quite different vision from the world of chaos and destruction imagined in the Book of Revelation as the precursor of the return of Christ.

Zechariah 3 presents the prophet’s vision of the high priest Joshua; he is wearing filthy and torn rags and Satan, the Accuser, is standing beside Joshua and attempting to restrain him. God rebukes Satan, pointing to “a brand taken from the fire.” The angel affirms that if the prophet and the people walk in God’s ways, they will be restored to Jerusalem and to God living among them.

The imagery of Zechariah 1:1-3 is of someone familiar with horses, horns (as on bulls), and brands. That’s why I think ol’ Zechariah just might have been a rancher or cowboy. His job is to round-up the disparate Jewish from their places of exile and corral them back in Jerusalem which will be “fenced off” by the flames of God’s spirit.

Zechariah claims he is from a line of priests, but in exile, priests had to turn to other professions. Is it possible he took up ranching? What I love about this idea is that ranchers make uneasy truces with the wild: they work with domesticated animals but fear the predators that still share the wild pasturelands; they keep fences but must turn their herds onto untrammeled fields to gain the nutrition they need; the act of branding binds an animal to them, reflects their ownership, but to brand an animal is to inflict pain and wariness on the very ones you seek to possess and protect. The prophet speaks in beautiful natural imagery, of horses, horns, brands and myrtle trees. In my view, these early chapters of Zechariah, the restoration prophet, God can be understood as the first steps of an exiled people being ranged in and returned to their Home on the Range.

Ezekiel Was the Wheel

Ezekiel’s name means “God strengthens,” and a good thing since Ezekiel was a priest in ancient Jerusalem when the first Temple, Solomon’s, was crushed by the invading forces of the Babylonians. The Israelites were sent into disarray and exile, with Ezekiel himself becoming one in a “community of exiles” forced into residence in the foreign land of the Chaldeans (Babylonians).

Our Judaism, which is mostly understood through the lens of the writings of Rabbis and philosophers after the two significant Temple destructions and diasporas (586 BCE and 70 AD), nevertheless overlays a very ancient tradition which fixed God in physical place. In Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths, religion scholar Karen Armstrong describes the predilection of our ancient ancestors for locating God in physical space: each of the many gods and goddesses worshiped in the Holy Land had their own altar stone, tree, holy site or geographical magnet, and our God (Yahweh/Elohim) resided in Jerusalem where the Temple Mount is located. God lived in that temple and held His 'meet and greets' there; it was where the Israelites brought their offerings, came to be instructed by Torah, and witnessed sacrificial smoke billowing forth from the ritual pyres.

The Book of Ezekiel, is perhaps the strangest and most dramatic in the Bible. I like to think of Ezekiel as the action-picture or horror filmmaker of our literature because of his sharply drawn imagery, dramatic language, and frightening vision, a vision that combines elements of both the science fiction and horror genres; for those who love imaginative literature, it should not be missed as a classic.

Two aspects of Ezekiel’s vision are crucial: the first is his vision of the Temple which has become desecrated through the wayward behaviors of the people and their priests. The major sin in early Judaism is that of straying from single-hearted worship of our God; in fact, the first “utterance” is that of having no other God before Me, which in its grammatic formation (Elohim is plural) actually acknowledges that there are other gods, but that the covenanted relationship is between this One God and this Am Israel; in the very crux of our monotheism, we are forever united. The Temple is the Holy Place where formalizing rituals brought God together with His people.

The second aspect of Ezekiel‘s vision is most intriguing: it is his description of several “cherubim” who descend, with their accompanying Segways and the chariot-throne of God, into the Temple. Now these are not your Renaissance cherubim pink-pastry babies. They are hybrid beings who combine human and animal forms, and are often terrifying in aspect. Etymologically, the Hebrew word kerub may be related to the Akkadian karibu, ‘an intercessor guardian creature.’ Only later did cherubim join the choirs of angels; in their original incarnations in Torah and the Netivim, the prophetic books, cherubs were not creatures you would want to meet on a deserted highway, unless of course you had been extraordinarily bad and in need of a kind of shock therapy in order to change your ways. This, I think, is exactly how the Bible is using them. In Ezekiel 1 and 10, they become the power by which God’s chariot-throne is able to fly, kind of God’s helicopter. And, God is greatly displeased.

So, here’s the thing: Ezekiel’s vision describes these intercessors of God as having taken arrived in God’s holiest place, the Temple. There is a case to be made for seeing the Book of Ezekiel as first haunted house story. And considering that the Book of Ezekiel ends with a description of a rebuilt Temple, it gives one pause to think that such an easily occupied and horrifying House would ever be desired, but there are those who think Yahweh’s vision won’t be complete, and the Messiah won’t come, unless it is reestablished. I for one, would vote against any kind of rebuilding, particularly in light of the geographical contest that marks the locale of the Temple Mount. And, I think there is particular danger in establishing any one House of God as the right one, the most Holy. This may be part of what Ezekiel is telling us subliminally.

Here’s a brief rundown of the physical characteristics of the four visiting cherubim as described in Ezekiel 1 and then again in chapter 10.:

* The cherubs are hailed in fire and are accompanied by fire, like torches, and they can put their hands into fire. Many painterly depictions of this scene in the Bible emphasize the firey aspect of Ezekiel’s vision.
* Each cherub has four wings, and under the wings the hands of men. The wings are two above--I think lifted up--and two at the sides of the cherub’s bodies. The wings can raise and create lift-off from the surface of the earth.
* Each cherub is accompanied by four wheels, one traveling beside each cherub; the wheels gleam like beryl stone but all have the same form, ‘as if two wheels are cutting through each other,’ and they move in any direction. The wheels travel with the cherubs whenever they move, and can rise up as the cherub rises up.
* Each cherub has four faces, one facing each direction: in chapter 1, the cherubs have the face of a lion (right), an ox (left), a human (front), an eagle (back); in chapter 10, they have a cherub’s face (whatever that is), a human face, a lion’s face, and an eagle’s face. The cherubs move in the direction of one particular face at a time, with the wheel coming along beside them.
* Each cherub has a single calf’s hoof rather than a pair of feet.
* Perhaps strangest of all, the bodies of the cherubs and the wheels are covered all over with eyes.

Deep within the most sacred of places, we have this vision of powerful, mobile, energetic creatures, vividly described. Ezekiel’s vision of the cherubim is associated with the manifested presence of God. They bear the message that the people (we) have been false and unfaithful and are to be sent into death and exile. This is a crisis moment, a moment of supernatural terror when we are confronted for our terrible wrongdoing. It is a message meant to frighten us. We are in the ultimate haunted house. The strange thing is, Ezekiel’s vision occurred after the destruction of the Temple and while he, and we, were in exile already. So, if it was meant to shake us up enough to preserve the Temple and our lives in the Holy Land, it failed to do so.

In Jungian archetypal psychology, the house is frequently understood to be a symbol of the complex psyche, the individual Self. Levels of consciousness are represented by movement within the house: going down into a basement often is described as going into a deeper unconscious Self while rising to a tower or attic is aspiring to something higher, Soul-driven. In Ezekiel’s vision, the cherubim are in the heart of the Temple, and relegated to the southern part of the Temple, the direction of intransigent Judah.

As a house represents an individual psyche, the Temple might be inferred to represent the collective psyche of the Jewish people. Twice destroyed, and, for the reason of our bad behavior and insistence on turning away from God and God‘s prescribed way of living. If nothing else, the Jewish people have been consistently willing to “own“ its sin, to accept guilt for its bad behaviors. The soul of the religion, howevr, is to provide us with methods for redemption, for making right the wrongs we inevitably commit, because that is what God wants us to do. Rather than focusing on victimization, Ezekiel aims at a vision of taking responsibility.

In spite of having our home destroyed twice in marauding and bloody conquests, the Temple’s only remaining wall still standing in Jerusalem is a magnet, drawing Jewish worshippers from around the world, as a place they understand to be sacred soil where God resides. Never having been there, I cannot imagine what it is like, but from every report by those who have made the pilgrimage, standing at the Wall is a transformative experience.

However, exile, diaspora, and assimilation into other cultures has, in my opinion, led to a broader understanding of God and our relationship with God. Most of us have lost the primal concept of God dwelling in any particular place; God became more abstract and mobile, carried in our imaginative consciousness rather than being rooted in a special plot of land. This differs from earth religions, but does not have to be seen as contrary to them. For me, God is an abstraction but an omnipresent, omniwhere abstraction or Being with a message of sacredness that resides within each living thing, and that we can consequently carry with us; in this way, God is everywhere and nowhere. It’s a much harder concept to wrap the mind around, but for me it feels more honest and complete, and removes the temptation to worship an object, a person, or a place as the touchstone for experiencing God.

The cherubim are a frightening, horrific manifestation called into being by a betrayed God. Just as a science fiction movie may warn a society that its technology or tampering with nature have gotten out of control, or a haunted house story warns that even our place of supreme safety, our home, can become abruptly terrifying if we neglect the signs of change, the Temple cherubim are meant to scare us “straight.”

At this season, we are given a chance to redeem ourselves, in the form of Yom Kippur’s instructions of forgiveness, compassion, judgment, setting things right.

Choose Life, But Practice Holiness

Nitzavim-Vayelech
Deut. 29:9 Nitzavim” “we are standing”
Deut. 31:30 Vayelech: “and he went”

“ I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life--if you and your offspring would live--by loving the Lord your God, heeding God’s commands and holding fast to God.” Deut. 30:19

Sometimes while reading Torah, it seems I am watching a movie from its very beginning, one that I have seen before and know how it will end. God, especially, has seen this film play out over and over, and anticipates great displeasure; I would even say, God experiences great anxiety, knowing what will come. Yet, this Torah portion has a comforting note; the Presence that heals and restores, brings life, will not completely forsake us.

We are standing at Sinai, near the end of the beginning of our journey; the scene opens with the Israelites at the border between enslavement and exodus and the freedom and prosperity that comes from settling into a new home. God recounts what He has done for us and restates the covenant: “for us and our children ever to apply all the provisions of this Teaching” and forever to be bound under God’s outstretched arm. We’ve all been here before.

The stakes are high. God has seen the future and is not too happy about it. As we prepare to join Joshua--the new leader appointed to succeed Moses--we are admonished for future misbehaviors. But it is not an endgame: through the giving of social rules and protective laws, God offers a way back. In fact, we hold in our hands the very thing that will allow us to be returned to emotional stability when once again “the Lord will delight in our well-being.” But what we have in hand, must be inscribed in our hearts.

What we have is the Teaching: “Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea . . . No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart to observe it.” Deut. 30: 11-14

A clear contractual relationship arose in the days of our oppression and our freedom is not built entirely on faith, nor is it lacking in responsibilities at our end. Our freedom rests on laws to care for the weakest members of our society, hospitality rules for treating strangers with respect and kindness, laws to honor the dignity of animals, to care for the earth and the land, and laws for the proper execution of ritual. All of these commandments intend to preserve us in life.

One of the most famous passages in Torah, quoted above, is expressed in Nitzavim, which is followed with the final instructions to Moses, including a poem he must recite to remind us to “give glory to our God!” and that “There is no god beside Me. I deal death and give life; I wounded and I will heal.”

It’s one thing to read the book, another thing to live it. As a Reform Jew and humanist, it is also imperative to come afresh to each law and plumb it for its original meaning and intent, not to follow the rules blindly. Even if we are in a spiritual version of “Groundhog’s Day,” the film with Bill Murray and Andie McDowell where a hapless weather reporter is destined to re-live the same day over and over again until he learns what is important and how to behave, we have guidelines to go by. These must eventually be written in our heart because in that act of repetition, of practice, living a holy life begins to take on the clarity of making a crystal glass sing a fine high note through multiple rubbings on its rim.

This Torah portion is customarily the one just before we enter the Days of Awe, which commences with S'elichot and Rosh Hoshanah.