Torah On the Move

Adam Mintz [00:01:47]: It’s the week of the V’s.

Geoffrey Stern [00:01:50]: Perfect, Perfect. So, as I said in the intro, we’re gonna discuss a tradition that if any of our listeners, Jewish, non Jewish, observant or non observant, have been to any synagogue, any temple, it’s the one tradition that has survived and that is the Torah gets taken out of the ark. People stand up, a procession goes all the way around. People might kiss it, they might touch it, they might hold it up at a certain point. There are even Reform congregations who will take it out on a Friday night when they’re not even reading from it. This is an iconic, iconic tradition. And if you stay tuned till the end of the episode, we’re gonna find some surprising traditions, including an Orthodox community that doesn’t necessarily stand when the ark is opened. We’re going to find surprising things about the importance of this ritual. But as I said in the intro, it all starts with the first ark, which was the Ark of the Covenant in the temple. Now, I started by saying we are the people of the book. Am hasefer. But if you Google and you go to Wikipedia and you look up People of the Book, actually it comes from an Arabic word, Ahl al-Kitāb Kitab, for those who know Hebrew is Kitav. It’s written, we are the people of the Book. And this was a legal term regarded by Muslims. It was people who have received a divine revelation from Allah generally in the form of a holy scripture. But Rabbi, it is fascinating that we were identified by others, not by ourself, not self identified, but identified by others as people of the Book. And therefore it shouldn’t surprise us that a book or a covenant would be the focal point of this newly created Mishkan.

Adam Mintz [00:03:51]: There’s no question that that’s right. But I mean that’s famous that People of the Book. That’s what the Moslems called us. It’s not what we called ourselves.

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:01]: Although today there is an expression in Hebrew. Am Hasefer. Right. We took it upon ourselves in a less flattering or a less upbeat manner. It’s important to realize that when the Nazi regime began its attack on the Jews, the first thing it did was its famous book burning. Beginning in 1933 Nazi dominated students group carried out public burnings of books they claimed were un German. The works of prominent Jewish liberal leftist writers ended up in the bonfires. I think the flip side of admiring a people as the people of the Book because we were so identified with books and thoughts and intellectual pursuits, this was the first place to attack us as well. But again, it just is fascinating that the Jewish people were so much associated with a book. Which again means that it shouldn’t surprise us that the focal point of our synagogues, the focal point of the Mishkan was this ark that held some sort of written text, some sort of sacred text. So as I said, if you go to a synagogue, when they open up the ark, they go Vayahi Binsoah Haaron VaYomer Moshe. It happened upon the journeying of the ark. Moses said Kuma Hashem VaYefuzu Oyvecha rise eternal. And your enemies were dispersed and your foes were put to fight from before you. So as is typical rabbi of something that we say so often, my guess is that we don’t really focus on the distinction here. It’s talking, it seems less about necessarily a tabernacle which replaced a temple in the desert as much as another tradition that we’re going to find out which was when you attacked your enemy, you took a tent with you that had your. If you were Pagan, your idol in the middle of it. And if you were an Israelite, it had your Ark of your covenant. It’s clear here that he’s saying, rise up and go. So we see first, the thing associated with the ark and the contents of the ark is this traveling concept. And the second is they’re going out to battle. That struck me a lot this year as I was doing my research.

Adam Mintz [00:06:28]: Yeah, there’s no question about it. I mean, that’s a very striking verse. It’s interesting that that verse doesn’t appear here. That verse appears much later in the Torah.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:36]: Yes, but it is talking about the Mishkan, so.

Adam Mintz [00:06:39]: Sure is.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:40]: That gives me poetic poetic license.

Adam Mintz [00:06:42]: That’s right. Means you’re not cheating. It’s legitimate.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:45]: I’m not cheating. And I think most of the time this discussion is held later in the Torah. And I think it’s fascinating to have the discussion where the Ark of the Covenant is introduced. So let’s look at a few pesukim a few verses that relate to the construction of the different vestments, accessories that were in this traveling tabernacle. In Exodus 25:4, which is in our parsha, it says blue, purple and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats hairs, tanned ram skins, dolphin skins, and acacia wood. So this was the Mishkan was made of extremely exotic material, Rashi says, and he says about the shittim wood. But from where did they get this? In the wilderness. Rabbi Tanchuma exclaimed it thus. Our Father Jacob foresaw by the gift of the Holy Spirit that Israel would once build a tabernacle in the wilderness. He therefore brought cedars to Egypt and planted them there, and bade his children take these. He doesn’t quite explain the dolphin skins, but what I’m trying to get at, Rabbi, is it did kind of hit the rabbis in the face that all of these exotic materials would not be typically found amongst nomads in the desert, let alone ex slaves, who had left not even in time to bake their bread. So we do have traditions explaining that when there was the plague of darkness, they took stuff. But there is this element of incongruity, which I will argue certainly towards the end of our talk today, that since the traveling Mishkan was as much a part of later Israel when they went to war, and we find other societies within the ancient near east who had tabernacles that would accompany them to war and would have their idols in it, it’s not all that surprising that you would have these rare materials. This was the rallying point this was taken to battle to let everyone look at it and be inspired and feel confidence. But again, it does have a lot of exotic materials and it clearly had a usage other than just accompanying the Jews and replacing the needs to worship and even to sacrifice of the people.

Adam Mintz [00:09:13]: But we still don’t know about the dolphins.

Geoffrey Stern [00:09:15]: Haven’t figured that one out yet. So in Exodus 25, it continues, and it says, they shall make an ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubics long and a cubic and a half wide and a cubic and a half high. So one of the things that we will hopefully show later is the construction of these tabernacles that they have found is usually 2 to 1. It’s too long and one wide. But anyway, the calculations are important. Overlay it with pure gold. Overlay it inside and out, and make. Make upon it a gold moulding round about. Cast four gold rings for it to be attached to its four feet. Two rings on one of its side walls and two on the other. Make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. Then insert the poles into the rings on the side walls of the ark. For carrying the ark, the poles shall remain in the rings of the ark. They shall not be removed from it. So this starts to get interesting, Rabbi, because if there’s a high chance, I’d love to know your opinion, that this same ark of the Covenant ended up in the temple. But clearly, whether it did or didn’t, the rings, the mobility of it, the fact that this was not something that sat in stasis, became so much a part of it, and it’s part of the construction. It’s like you can have a cabinet and then you can have a cabinet on wheels, and there are different types of cabinets. This was an ark on wheels, so to speak. And so it was for carrying the ark. And then there’s an interesting side.

Adam Mintz [00:10:59]: Well, well, one minute, let’s not lose the fact that you can’t take off the wheels. The poles stay in. That’s very odd. The poles shouldn’t stay in. You should take the poles out.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:12]: You are jumping a little bit ahead of me because. Yes, in the Talmud in Yoma, it says, Rabbi Eliezer said, one who detaches the breastplate from upon the aphod, or one who removes the staves of the ark from their rings, transgresses a Torah prohibition and is flung as it is stated. And he quotes our verse, that the staves shall be in the rings of the ark, they shall not be removed from it. Rav Acha bar Yaakov strongly objects to this. But perhaps when the merciful one said this in the Torah, the intention was to strengthen them and make them fast so that the breast may not be detached. So they’re arguing over whether it’s descriptive or prescriptive. But clearly the Gemara rejects this and it comes to the conclusions. It is written in order that it not become detached and in order that they not be removed. So they believe, Rabbi, that forever, as long as this ark of a covenant exists, those wheels that we were talking about a second ago have to stay on it. They are inherent to the message.

Adam Mintz [00:12:23]: Right. And that’s very striking. Obviously, that’s symbolic, because in terms of its practice, they didn’t need the poles in it when it was stationary. But clearly the symbolism, and this is an interesting point, that the symbolism of the tabernacle is as important as the articles themselves.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:42]: Absolutely. And there’s one other element of it that I had never thought of, which I always thought that it was a temporary structure, not only in its day, meaning to say it could move, but it was temporary in terms of the history of Israel, that once the temple was built, once we reached the land, the Mishkan no longer had any meaning. But the implication from this that says, Hayav Malkus, you get lashes if you take the staves out, would seem to imply that wherever this Aaron Hakodesh was, and maybe it was in the kodesh haKedoshim with staves on it, was implicit to it forever. So just one other example of that. In Exodus 26, it says, you shall make the planks for the tabernacle of acacia wood, and they should be upright. Omdim. So here too, the Gemara in Yoma says, Rabhama, son of Rabbi Chanina, said, what is the meaning of which it is written, ye shall make the bonds to the tabernacle of acacia Woods Standing. This verse teaches that the boards of woods used for the tabernacle should stand in the same direction from which they grew. Alternatively, standing means they supported their gold plating and prevented it falling. Alternatively, standing is written to hint at the following. Perhaps you will say that now that the tabernacle is no longer in use, the hope is lost and their chances abandoned. And after being stored away, the boards will no longer return to us. Therefore, the verse says standing to indicate they stand forever and ever. He’s using a play on the Hebrew word Asher Omdim la olam ulaolamim. So, Rabbi, there seems to be, and I had never noticed this before, this sense that the tabernacle was not temporal and temporary in time, that it played a role, that role was associated with hope of all things, far, far into the future. And that becomes absolutely fascinating. There is a great article in thetorah.com of course, who talks about what did happen to the Mishkan. And it says the text never does state where in the temple the tent was brought. Rabbi Elliot Friedman has argued, based on a comparison between the size of the tabernacle in Exodus and the space underneath the wings of the large cheruvim in the temple’s holy of holy, that it was set up in that space. Rabbinic tradition suggests that it was disassembled and stored in the temple treasury, like the Ark of the Covenant. The tabernacle’s ultimate fate after entering the temple is a mystery, but I had never thought of that. Where does it go?

Adam Mintz [00:15:24]: Right, so let’s just think for a minute. Why is it important that the tabernacle is permanent? It’s like, you know, during COVID many shuls davened outside in a tent, and some people liked it and some people didn’t like it, but you didn’t feel the same holiness, the same sanctity in the tent, because temporariness lacks holiness. You want to be holy, you need to go into a real shul, into a real building. And I think that’s the tension when it comes to the tabernacle. The Torah says, make for me a tabernacle and I will dwell amongst you. Meaning that the tabernacle was the place that God dwelled, but still it’s temporary. So the more you make it permanent, the more you can understand its sanctity.

Geoffrey Stern [00:16:18]: Yeah, no, and I think so. And I think that we are going to be telling generations to come of what it was like to be live during COVID And artifacts from that period are going to take on meaning. But I really do think it’s more than artifacts. I think that we will see that, number one, it was actually used. It had a different purpose because we always associate that purpose with karbonot, with sacrifices and prayer. It had a dual  purpose when they went out to war. But also it had a different message than the brick and mortar. Maybe it was the online version of the temple. It literally, if our episode today is called Torah on the Move, the Mishkan represented that. I’ve talked about that before when we talk about the Sukkot, David Hanofelet, this concept of a building that is falling. Clearly, the temporary nature of the Mishkan lived on in I Kings 8 It says when all the elders of Israel had come, the priests lifted the ark, carried up the ark of God. Then the priests and Levites brought the temple tent of meeting and all the holy vessels that were in the tent. So this is what the scholars say is this is what happened. They packed it up. It’s like a company that has a showroom in the office. And then when they go to trade shows, they have a booth and when the booth comes back, they stick it into storage. But never had really thought about that. So now we can talk a little bit about what actually was in this ark. I talked about the modern day ark. It has a Sefer Torah in it. But what was in this ark. And it was in the holy of holies. So it clearly was the fulcrum, the focus of the whole tabernacle. In our Parasha it says, and deposit in the ark the tablets of the pact which I will give you. That’s the English translation. Vnatata el haAron et HaEdut asher eten elecha Rabbi, Eidut means witness. That’s all it tells us. It really doesn’t tell us what was put in there. The rest is up to tradition, so to speak.

Adam Mintz [00:18:23]: Witness or testimony. The word they use is like Rashi uses there.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:27]: Testimony, testimony, perfect. So Rashi here says, eidut hatorah the Torah in the commentary on the commentary. In the translation it says, look at another Rashi. This means the Ten Commandments, but I’m not going to go there so quickly. He literally says, what was in this Eidut? It was the Torah in Shemot. Later In Exodus 40, we say he took the pact vayikach viten et haedut and placed it in the ark. He fixed the poles to the ark, place the cover on top of the ark. Here Rashi says, et haEdut, Haluchot, you can say that they mean the same thing, but in my research, Rabbi, it’s not altogether clear.

Adam Mintz [00:19:14]: Absolutely not.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:16]: We have wonderful traditions about the whole tablets and the broken tablets. We have traditions of the tablets and a Sefer Torah which Moshe put there. So if you look at devarim at Deuteronomy 31, talking about going later in the Torah, it says when Moses had put down in writing the words of this teaching to the very end, Moses charged the Levites who carried the Ark of the covenant of God, saying, take this book of teaching and place it beside the ark of the covenant of your God and let it remain there as a witness against you. That means that when we Go to synagogue, this Shabbat, and we see that Sefer Torah coming out of that ark. We are as close to an analog of something that was ancient and went all the way back to the Mishkan. And I think that’s part of the power.

Adam Mintz [00:20:09]: There’s no question that’s part of the power. Two points. Number one is, of course, the Sefer Torah, the Torah scroll was only put there at the end of the 40 years in the desert, because there is no Torah scroll now. That’s number one. And number two is there’s a difference between the Ark and the Tabernacle. And our Ark, our ark stands up and the Torah scroll stands up in the Tabernacle, in the Temple, the Ark was flat and the Torah was flat in it. So it’s interesting that we’ve changed our tradition. You have to ask Sharon about the history of arks and the history of art to see whether that was always true. But clearly the our tradition has it like that.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:45]: So in my research for today’s podcast, one of the things that I came across is the Sephardim believe that the Torah has to be standing straight up. And that’s why they put it in those amazing enclosures that they have. The other thing that they do differently, and we’re going to get to this in a few minutes, is they do hagba. They do the kind of climax of the procession of moving the Torah around before they read from it.

Adam Mintz [00:21:15]: Makes sense. It makes more sense because you want to show people what you’re going to read. Why do you show people what you already read?

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:23]: Well, we’re going to find out why the (Ashkenazi) rabbis changed that. But again, what you said triggered that discussion in my mind, because the Ashkenazim lay the Torah down. Whether it relates to how the Torah is in the ark or not, I don’t know. But there’s such a echo of the Mishkan in this particular aspect that it’s just amazing. In the Midrash Tanchuma, it says, rabbi Simon, the son of Yochai, said there is no testimony other than the Torah. So when he talks about the Eidot, he says it’s the Torah as it is. Says, these are the testimonies and the statutes and the ordinance. This may be compared to a king has a daughter for whom he builds a palace. This beautiful Midrash Tanhuma makes the following comment. Rabbi, it says that the Mishkan and the Torah inside of it is like the king’s daughter. And what the king says is, anyone who doesn’t give honor to my daughter, meaning to his Torah is not giving honor to me. And so it truly kind of emphasizes what I was saying before, which is the centerpiece of this Mishkan was that Torah. And that Torah was almost a stand-in for God. And that the honor one gives to that Torah in the tabernacle or in a modern day synagogue is the most important thing that you can do. And I found this amazing study and it’s called the Symbolic Representation of the Torah Scrolls by a Simchum Fishbane at Touro College. It’s a very scholarly work. There’s a link in the notes. He really gets into all of these various traditions. But one of the things that he really says is he talks about the Shabbat service in a Reform synagogue may not include reading from the Torah or may include reading only a few lines, but it includes the Torah scrolls, it includes this Vayehi Binsoah haAron, it includes watching the Torah move around. And it’s an obvious statement, but it also is a statement that makes this concept of a moving Torah and how important it was that much more complex. He also gets in, into this sense that every religion have images. The Babylonians, the followers took an oath by touching their idols. In Judaism, people made their oath by touching the holy book. We did that in our other episode.

Adam Mintz [00:24:01]: Right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:24:01]: The physical contact with the sacred object exposes the juror to divine punishments. Idol worshiping societies would go into battle accompanied by their divine statutes. The idol was carried at the head of the military convoy as a symbol that the deity was leading armies into battle and thus protecting him. It was the Ark of the Covenant and the Torah that accompanied the Israelites to battle. The Mishnah in Sanhedrin stated that the king, who also served as the military chief, carried with him a copy of the Torah. Serving, not. So he has this amazing study where he literally says what we all knew. But sometimes we have to look in the mirror and reflect upon that. If there’s one tactile, if there’s one tangible object that we Jews who believe in an infinite God, who doesn’t have a body, it’s that Torah. And that Torah, it’s the sacred text of our people, takes that place in our society. And I think it’s an obvious idea, but it’s profound.

Adam Mintz [00:25:01]: Right? Well, let’s just stop for a second. The fact that the military, the military chief, the person who leads the Jews to battle, takes the Torah, like that’s the last thing you would take to the battlefield. Can you imagine taking a Torah to Gaza? I mean, what were you gonna do with the Torah? But you see that the symbolism of the Torah is, you know, kind of rises above all of that.

Geoffrey Stern [00:25:22]: And again, getting back to what we say, VaYehi Binsoah HaAron it’s not the only verse where it says, may your enemies be scattered in the next verse and may your foes flee you. In Barmidbar in numbers 10, it says, then when both are blown in long blasts, talking about the shofar, the whole company of fighters shall assemble before you at the entrance of the tent of Meeting. When you are at war in your land against an aggressor who attacks you, you shall sound short blasts on the trumpets that you may be remembered also. You do this on joyous occasions, fixed festivals, and all of it is done at the opening of the tent of meeting. So I would say the biggest, I guess, discovery that I made this week was I always thought in terms of the temple, the Mishkan being a stand in for the temple and the Mishkan being a place for prayer and a place for sacrifice. But in fact, the Mishkan served a complete other need that superseded and transcended the temple, because even when the temple was built, we still needed to keep that mobility in and move it along. And so what I learned, and I want to tell you this with a story. My son and I, Charles, went to Shearith Israel, the Spanish Portuguese synagogue. And you know, I went to Yeshiva, my son went to a Hebrew day school. We think of ourselves as pretty knowledgeable Jews. So they take the Torah out of the ark and at a certain point the chazan is holding it and people are coming up and giving them names of sick people to bless. And everybody sits down. And I guess we had a reflexive action. We’ve been to Reform temples before and we like to think we know better than everybody else. So we still stand because the ark is open and the Torah is out there. So the Gabai, the sexton, comes over to us and I’m sure he’s ready to meet gringos like us every Shabbat. And he says, you have to look at the minhagim (customs). When the Torah is not moving, we sit. And that exactly types upon this concept of we have a moving Torah. The second thing, Rabbi, that I discovered, and I’m going to end with this, is the reason that the Ashkenazim moved hagba to the end of the Torah reading, because you’re right, it should be at the beginning, is because people would only come for this part of the service where you honor the Torah. And they wouldn’t come for the Torah reading, so they made them wait and listen to the Torah reading. And so the Reform have hit the nail on the head. This is the moment that unites our people from 2000 years ago up into today. And we should be proud that we believe in a moving Torah, a moving text that moves us and hopefully the rest of the world.

Adam Mintz [00:28:19]: That’s fantastic. And that thing about hagba is great.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:22]: Good.

Adam Mintz [00:28:22]: I’m never gonna forget that. Thank you, Geoffrey. Thank you, everybody. Enjoy. We get to a whole new part of the Torah talking about the tabernacle. It’s a great part of the Torah. We look forward next week to Tetzaveh. We’ll learn all about the kohen and his clothing. You are what you wear, and we’ll hear about it all next week. Take care, everybody.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:41]: Love it. Shabbat shalom.