Tag Archives: menorah

Well, welcome, Rabbi. I am broadcasting live from the base of Vail Mountain in Colorado, and I assume you are back in New York.

1:06 – Adam Mintz

And I’m back in New York, but I can’t beat that, so enjoy. I’m excited that you had a good week.

1:12 – GS

I did, and I’m still thinking back to last week. You know, we’ve had some interesting guests lately. Yeah, very good.

1:18 – AM

We’ve done really well recently.

1:20 – GS

But now we’re all alone. We got to do all the hard work ourselves.

1:23 – AM  

Okay.

GS

So, as I said in the intro, it’s such an interesting change. We had Yitro in the giving of the Torah. We had Mishpatim. The rules, and in the very next parasha, we’re starting to talk about building the tabernacle. I mean, these three parashiot really go the gamut of so much in just three parashiot. But here we are. We’re beginning to build the Mishkan. We’re in Exodus 25. We’re going to start here because we’re going to focus, as I said in the intro, on the menorah. And it says, you shall make a menorah, a lampstand of pure gold.

2:05 – GS

The Menorah; the lampstand shall be made of hammered work. It says it should be made of zahav tahor, pure gold, mikasheh ta’aseh. Hammered work is mikasher, which we’ll see also could mean something that’s difficult or hard. But anyway, it goes on and it talks about the six branches. Of course, this is the menorah that’s in the temple, not the one that we use for a festival created many years later that lasted for seven days and has seven branches. But in any case, then after describing in really great detail the almond-blossom shapes of the cups and so forth and so on, it finally says in verse 40, note well and follow the patterns for them that are being shown you on the mountain.

3:04 – GS

U’ra’ei v’asei b’tavnitam asher ata ma’areh bahar. So this is really why I took the concept of paradigm, because this is a striking verse. We’ve kind of discussed it in the past. It’s something that certainly Greek philosophers, Platonists who thought that for everything, there were forms up in heaven. Corresponding to material things down below, but tonight we’re going to focus on just this concept of a tavnit, of a pattern. And I guess we shouldn’t be that surprised, Rabbi, because if you’re involved with architecture or design, you can’t do anything without a plan.

3:48 – GS

So at the most basic sense, of course you need a plan, and this is not the only place where it mentions this. In Exodus 25: 9 it says, exactly as I show you, the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings, so shall you make it. And there again, the key is what I will show you. And it also has this concept of tavnit, this pattern. So this is something that’s kind of striking because it doesn’t say this with regard to other commandments. God commands Moses to do something—put these on your arm, or as frontlets between your eyes—doesn’t get into a design or a pattern.

4:35 – GS

So it is kind of striking that it says that God will show it to Moses. And also it says, like, I showed you on the mountain, You know, the Torah doesn’t normally get involved with Midrash, but in a sense, this is almost pregnant with a story. What do you mean you showed it to him on the mountain? What are your impressions, Rabbi?

4:59 – AM

Yeah, I mean, of course, what this emphasizes is the fact that detail is so important in the tabernacle. It has to be done just so. So it’s all about a model. It’s all about, I showed you, and you need to follow that. The tabernacle is what joins God and humans. And part of the way that it joins God and humans is that God sets the model and we follow that model.

5:35 – GS

I love that because, you know, normally when we think of the tabernacle or the temple as something that joins man and God, we think of it kind of after it’s built. You build it, and God will be there. And I will have my shechina inside of it. But what you’ve pointed out is that what this is focused on is the process. It’s a true interaction between God and man. And that’s what the focus is on here. So it’s not only just at the outcome of the temple that it’s this kind of in-between meeting place between man and God.

6:17 – GS

Here we’re really getting into the nuts and bolts of the collaboration of designing it and building it. I think that’s fascinating.

6:25 – AM

Yeah, I think that’s the idea here.

6:27 – GS

Okay, great, let’s see where we have to go. So, like I said before, the fact that it, in the verse itself, says that you need to follow the pattern being shown to you on the mountain was almost like an open invitation to the rabbis to create a midrash. So we are going to start in a famous midrash, it’s in Midrash Tanchuma, and Rabbi Levi Bar-Rabi said, A pure menorah descended from the heavens. Tahor is pure. Can it also possibly mean simple?

7:01 – AM

Yes, it sure can. I mean, simple is pure, pure is simple.

7:06 – GS

I mean, I think “tom” is more simple, but certainly Tahor is, there’s no embellishments. So he came down with a simple menorah, and it says, because the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses in Exodus, you shall make a menorah of pure gold, he said to him, how shall we make it? So Moses said to God, how shall we make it? He said to him, God said to Moses, of hammered work shall the menorah be made. Nevertheless, Moses had difficulty. So this last sentence is an advertisement for reading the Torah texts in the original Hebrew.

7:46 – GS

Because you have no clue that it’s a play on words. It says, mekashet ta’aseh, you should make it hammered. Af al pi kein nitkashe bo. So even though it was hammered, Moses felt difficulty, though I pointed out in the beginning that the word mekashet can mean hammered, but it can also mean difficult. So, the Midrash is already weaving the tale that built into the word choice, this is something that was difficult for Moses. So, Moses had difficulty. For when he descended, he had forgotten its construction.

8:27 – GS

So, in other words, God had shown it to him, then he came down, and he had forgotten. He forgot its construction. He went up and said, Master of the world, I have forgotten him. It. He said to him, God said to him, observe and make it. Thus he took a pattern of fire and showed him its construction. But it was still difficult for Moses. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, go to Bezalel and he will make it. So Moses went down to talk to Bezalel and he, Bezalel, made it immediately. Moses began to wonder.

9:05 – GS

Hithil Moshe Tame’ha. You know, this reminds us all, of course, of the story when Moses went to Rabbi Akiva’s study hall, and Rabbi Akiva’s talking, and Moses is increasingly becoming upset. Rabbi, what do the rabbis have against Moses? They always are putting him down, and they seem to diminish him at every turn. It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?

9:34 – AM

It’s great. That’s funny that you connect them. You’re right.

9:37 – GS

So Moses began to wonder and said, in my case, how many times did the Holy One, blessed be He, show it to me, yet I had difficulty in making it? Now, without seeing it, you have made it from your own knowledge. V’atah sholo re’ita oto asita midatah. So here we’re talking about process. Moses was shown it three times. The guy gave him a pure example of it. Then he did it in fire. So there’s clearly a difference in the comprehension or in the skill set, or in somehow grasping the understanding of the moment between him and Bezalel, it goes on and says, Bezalel, were you perhaps standing in the shadow of God?

10:33 – GS

It also sounds a lot close to Betzelem (“in the image”), but in any case, it makes a play on Bezalel’s name, that he stood in the shadow of God. And therefore, it says, when the temple was destroyed, the menorah was stored away. So we all know about Titus’ arch, and the rumors that the menorah might be in the basement of the Vatican as we speak. So it’s all here in this beautiful Midrash. Rashi goes on to explain who this Bezalel is. And he said, Bezalel made all that the Lord commanded, even regarding such things which his teacher Moses did not tell him.

11:18 – GS

Hiskimo da’ato l’ma shene’emar l’Moshe MiSinai His own opinion was in agreement with what he had been told to Moses at Sinai. So here again is the parallel to that beautiful story with Akiba, that this concept of halakhala moshe m’sinai or something that comes from Sinai through Moses, it could be that Moses himself was incapable of understanding. So I do think these midrashim are really clearly linked.

11:43 – AM

Um, you have no question about it. I mean, it’s all, it’s all presenting the same idea. Now again, I think it’s all about this connection between God and people. And B’tzalel has that role as being the intermediary.

11:57 – GS

He, like Akiva, has a different skill set, is in a different time, or sees things differently. The Midrash recounts this story in multiple places, and I just want to bring one more variation before we kind of review them all. And this is in the Midrash Tanchuma in Shemini. And it says, three things Moses found difficult, and the Holy One, blessed be He, showed them to him with a finger. And these are them, the making of Menorah, the moon, and creeping things. We’re going to focus on the menorah tonight.

12:32 – GS

And here again, it says, when he, meaning God, showed him the making of the menorah, Moses found it difficult. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, see, I am making it before you. So here, he doesn’t say, I’m showing it to you. Now, in getting back to what we were talking about before, about this collaboration, is that God says, I am making it before you. What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He showed him white fire, red fire, black fire, and green fire. Then from them he made the menorah, its bolts, its knobs, its blossoms, and the six branches.

13:12 – GS

Then he said to him in Numbers, This is the making of the menorah. This teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed him with a finger. But nevertheless Moses found it difficult. What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He engraved it on the palm of Moses’ hand. It’s almost like a football player who writes the play on his hand.

AM like Patrick Mahomes!

GS He said to him, go down and make it just as I have engraved it on your hand. Thus it is stated, observe and make them by their pattern. Even so he found it difficult and said, with difficulty, meqasha will the menorah be made, meaning to say how difficult it was to make.

13:59 – GS

And then the Holy One, blessed be He, cast the gold into fire, and it will be made automatically. So I think what’s interesting, getting back to your original comment about the Torah being this meeting place, this Moed between the divine and people, here we’re seeing that it’s the process of making it, and to make that process much more impactful and powerful, it has to be has to have an element of difficulty to it. I think that’s another aspect of this whole story. But the second midrash really flushes it out even more, doesn’t it?

14:35 – GS

The rabbis were very creative.

14:37 – AM

Very good. That’s really good, that second midrash.

14:40 – GS

I said we’re going to talk about paradigms. So we’re going to talk a little bit now about word choice and history of words. In the Septuagint, and we all know that’s the Greek translation of the Bible, which was sanctioned by the rabbis, and in it, it refers to when we say tavnit or form, it calls it tipos. Typos. And the other translations, Unkelis and Targum Yonatan, also use interesting word choice. Unkelis says, K’demutehen. K’demut is in the image. Again, we’re getting a lot into creation here, similar to in the image of God from Genesis.

15:28 – GS

Here we are creating this sanctuary. But I want to focus a little bit on typos, because there are many Greek words that enter Jewish literature that aren’t that meaningful, and that it’s a one-way street. It’s how they translate, or the Hebrew was translated to Greek, and then it goes out into the world. In the case of this word typos, it actually came back into Judaism in a very powerful way. So if you look at the notes that are pinned to tonight’s discussion and are in the podcast, the word typos means to strike repeatedly in Greek.

16:15 – GS

It’s something forged by reputation. The correct paradigm based on reliable precedent. You know, there are so many concepts here that we’ve started to kind of touch upon. This concept of hitting mikasha and the concept of this pattern, we had not really thought were linked. But if you look at it through the Greek word typos, They are actually linked. This idea of a paradigm is something that is accepted and understood, almost understood by itself. I mean, if we think of most of the paradigm or norms that we have, you can’t really explain it.

16:59 – GS

You can’t write it on your palm. It’s just something that’s kind of there, which is kind of fascinating. The interesting thing is how it lives on also in Hebrew. Variants of typus or defus, which means printing and publishing. Typus is, we’ve already said, is a type of a mark, a type of a thing. If you look in the notes, it’s actually kind of fascinating. I guess when we talk about a book and we say what defus is it in, it’s what edition it’s in.

17:40 – AM

Yeah, that’s correct.

17:41 – GS

All of these words have become so critical to Jewish thinking, and it comes from a Greek word. Now, the interesting thing is one of the blogs that I came upon where he was just kind of ogling over how this word is used. He says, as in English, the Greek typos has both the sense of to strike and a form of kind. He says, I would not have guessed as I type on my keyboard that the earlier meaning is to strike. The word for typing and a typewriter comes from the same word, typos. In modern Hebrew, typus can also mean an unusual character.

18:30 – GS

You know, you see a strange or excentric person on the street… eize typus! but it means a type.

18:37 – AM

I mean, it’s the same word. It means a type in that context.

18:39 – GS

It means a strange type, but it can also mean you should meet these guy. He’s, he’s your tipus. He’s your type of person. So it is, and that is a very common word. So it’s fascinating how it all comes from our parasha. But getting back to this main concept of here we are forming these accoutrements (accessories), these kelim, these objects that are supposed to be so holy and like any other commandment, They have to be exact, they have to be correct, they have to be right. When you look at the traditions that we’ve seen till now, you really get that sense.

19:23 – GS

I mean, God is saying, this is how it has to be, and Moses, for all of his great character and his capabilities wasn’t able to exactly create it, but Betzalel was. So it makes one think that there was only one way to make a menorah. The Ramban takes this in a different direction. He quotes both the Ibn Ezra and Rashi, and he says, you know, they’re just focused so much because it says so many times, and this is how you shall make it, so shall you make it. He says, but I do not know if this is true, meaning to say that there’s only one way to make it.

20:10 – GS

He says, for instance, that Solomon was bound to make the vessels of the Sanctuary of Jerusalem after the pattern of these vessels of the tabernacle. And he goes ahead and he says, the altar of brass, which Solomon made, was 20 cubits long and 20 cubits wide! But the altar that we’ve just had in the miskan was five cubits long and five wide. So the Ramban is a fact checker here. And he goes, this is not the way it was. You’re missing the boat when you look at all of this conversation. It wasn’t about exactly copying something, about exactly executing it.

20:47 – GS

And his solution, I find, is just fascinating. He says the reason it says, thus shall you make it so many times, the purpose of expressing emphasis and eagerness. He says, you shall make it all with eagerness and diligence. So that really puts another bookend on this concept of a paradigm. Is there only one paradigm? Do paradigms change? I think if you look at the Ramban, you would have to argue that it’s the process that’s more important. It’s the eagerness and the passion that you have for doing it, but in fact maybe it does change.

21:32 – GS

And I want to kind of open it up a little bit. We talked about Moses, and on the one hand this seems to be part of another tradition where they seem to be diminishing Moses. I’m starting to think that maybe Moses was too conceptual or he wasn’t practical. Maybe he had skill sets that were just different. And this concept of God having to show Moses with his finger, like put a finger on it, Moses thought differently. And I think that’s part of what a paradigm is all about, that sometimes, you get it, and sometimes you think outside of the box and you have a different paradigm, or you have trouble with saying that there is only one paradigm.

22:18 – GS

What thinks you, Rabbi?

22:19 – AM

I mean, that’s fantastic, you know, that maybe Moses had his own idea. The question is, you know, what do you think Moses’s idea was?

22:30 – Unidentified Speaker

Right?

22:30 – AM

I mean, isn’t that the next question you have to ask?

22:33 – GS

I mean, maybe even with God, he was talking on a different level. You know, the one thing that they seem to associate with Moses in the two stories that we talk about is things are attributed to Moses that even Moses didn’t know. Here it says, Betzalel was able to see things that were given to Moses at Sinai. But you can’t say that without looking at Moses over there standing a few feet away, you know, scratching his head. I didn’t get it. And the same in the Akiva story. I think it’s really, there’s a different kind of paradigm here.

23:12 – GS

There’s a different type of approach. What Moses had was maybe he was giving us the tools, he was giving us the, you know, and I always go back to the example of a parent teaching a child. You teach him how to walk, you don’t teach him where to walk. You teach them how to add, but what they’re going to do with that is beyond your control. But nonetheless, the Moses character, this halakhah of Moses M’Sinai, I think made him almost incapable of putting a cap on it. I just found it fascinating, and I don’t think, at the end of the day, I’m not sure it’s diminishing at all.

23:50 – GS

And when we’re talking about paradigms especially, what it does is it shows you that there can be different paradigms. I mean, Ramban points out the fact that, you know, guess what? Just look at the facts. The measurements and maybe the dimensions and the format of things that were made at one time for the mishkan or the temple might not have been the same at another time.

24:12 – AM

Yeah, that’s really interesting. The fact that there were different interpretations of what God’s house should look like, that’s super interesting. And, you know, I think it’s meaningful. And here, let me just put a little twist on it. And that is maybe what we’re talking about is, is the Mishkan the way God wants it to be, or the way people want it to be? That’s two very different attitudes towards Mishkan.

24:42 – GS

Well, I think that really gets to the crux of the story, because here it’s almost as though God is saying, here, this, so I showed you this way, I showed you that way, I wrote it on your palm, and still man does it differently. And I think it gets right back to the crux of how you started by saying that the Mishkan is this meeting place. And here we’re talking about the creative process meeting place. And I can only think that God smiles when maybe Betzalel did it differently. But maybe that’s what the command was.

25:14 – GS

We all talk about when you assign something at school and the guy who does it totally differently, that’s what the teacher actually wanted.

25:23 – AM

That’s great. I love it. I think that’s great.

25:25 – GS

So the next piece, I really made a discovery this week. I have to say that, and I’m sure most of our listeners have noticed also, that the Chabad Lubavitch menorah is very distinctive. It has no curves to it. It almost looks contemporary, and it is universal. There is no Chabad center or Chabad university house. Wherever they are, they use the same menorah. It has these straight-edged arms coming out on all sides. And I said, if I’m ever going to get to the bottom of it, it’s going to be this week. So I looked up an explanation, and this is what I found.

26:08 – GS

The Rambam doesn’t really have a drawing of the menorah, and he doesn’t actually say that it has to be straight-edged. So if you look at the Sefaria notes, I quote Sefaria and Rambam on Mishnah Menachot. It’s his commentary on the Mishnah. And in the Sefaria, I have a picture of the menorah that they show, and it’s a rounded armed menorah. However, according to this Chabad source, the Rebbe found out that there was in the University of Oxford library an original manuscript of Maimonides, and in it, it had a drawing made by Maimonides himself.

26:55 – GS

And I’ve also reproduced that in the notes. It almost looks like an abstract piece. It’s really, it totally blows you away. It’s got circles, it’s got squares, but it does have these straight arms. So that explains why the Chabad Rebbe said that he believes, and he quotes Maimonides’ son, because Maimonides just made the drawing. He just made, forgive me for the pun, so to speak, he just made the typus, he made the dugma, he made the temunah. He did exactly what we’re talking about here, but only his son say, well, check a look at it.

27:39 – GS

It’s bialachson, it’s in angles and it’s straight angles. So that explains why Chabad like thinks that this is a version of the menorah. But it goes on further, and it says, well, what about the picture on the Arch of Titus? There it’s clear, you can see it, and we already have a midrash that said that the menorah was hidden for a reason, and meaning to say it survived. And why would the Romans go out of their way to show something that wasn’t historically correct?

28:16 – AM

So, the Rebbe goes back… Right, see, it’s different. I mean, the Romans were just describing it. They had no religious interest in it. They were just portraying what they had or what they saw.

28:28 – GS

They didn’t have a kippah in this race, right?

28:30 – AM

That’s correct.

28:33 – GS

So he goes on to say, similar to the Ramban before us, that there are texts that show that there were multiple versions of all the Kli Hamikdash. There were multiple versions of all of the buildings and accessories that were in it, and it is very possible, he said, that they took out one of the variations which was rounded. He says, however, from Maimonides, I can say that they definitely had these that were straight, and then he gives the punchline in my mind. And the Rebbe says, we have a choice.

29:13 – GS

Do we use the rounded menorah that is associated with the exile and the destruction of the temple, or do we use an alternative version that is not captured in anywhere besides this one manuscript? And Rabbi, he’s talking about paradigms. He’s talking about what paradigm should we use. Now, you and I can both come back and say, when I look at Titus’s arch, I think, and we have one now in front of the Knesset, and we’re back home. But the point is that the Rebbe felt so strongly about this because he understood that we live in a world of paradigms.

29:52 – GS

And paradigms mean something. Paradigms help us, give us a vocabulary, a universe of discourse, and without them, or with them, you can see the world differently. One viewpoint of the world is we’re a defeated people. Another viewpoint is we’re a phoenix that has come back to life. I just found that so fascinating, but I had never heard of this story from the Oxford University.

30:20 – AM

That’s a great story. That is an amazing story. The fact that the Rambam actually drew a menorah and the story about going into Oxford, all that stuff is just fantastic.

30:33 – GS

So, I want to end. The person who coined the word paradigm shift was a philosopher of science named Thomas Kuhn, and he brought many examples. The most obvious one is what we call the Copernican switch. Man believed for all of hundreds and hundreds of years that the earth was the middle of the universe. And if there were rotations and eclipses that couldn’t be explained, they would fill up mathematical books explaining how you can recalculate and calibrate. And then all of a sudden, Copernicus came up with a new paradigm.

31:09 – GS

That the world is revolving around the sun. And all of a sudden, all of those computations fell to the side. You didn’t need them anything. It was already explained. That’s what everybody understood to be a Copernican switch. But what Kuhn came up with is that’s a paradigm shift. Once you make that shift, you can’t even have discourse between the old and the new. It’s a whole new way of looking at life. He calls this incommensurability. He talks about the difference between gradualism and sudden change.

31:44 – GS

Before Kuhn came along, people thought that knowledge was built gradually, block by block. And he described in multiple occasions that actually that’s not the way that happens. There is a disruptive moment, a powerful moment that makes people think differently, and after they think differently, they can’t even look back anymore and understand what was before. And I just feel that we live at a moment now, you’re reading every day in the newspaper, you have another talking head….with a new version or vision of “after the war”.

32:16 – GS

Every day in the television in Israel, they have stories of soldiers who wouldn’t talk to each other before October 7th. One was a right wing supporter of Bibi and the other one was a pilot, and they were accusing each other, and now they’re saying the paradigm shift has to occur. We have to push away every politician who builds on division, and we have to come together based on what we’ve seen. And it’s describing a future that you can’t almost understand, and that is the definition of a paradigm shift.

32:51 – GS

And I think that, you know, there were talks about, we were talking in the beginning, Rabbi, about how maybe this crisis is different because you have the Abraham Accords and you have Saudi Arabia out there on the outside. We’re in it right now. None of us can understand what potentially could happen. But I suggest to you that we might be at that moment now where one person sees a picture of the menorah and the other one builds it and maybe one generation can understand what it’s going to look like and the other one does not.

33:26 – AM

This was amazing sources and a great lesson and a great message. Thank you, Geoffrey. Thank you, everybody. Shabbat shalom. Next week, we’ll have a Lunch and Learn, but we look forward to having everybody join us next week and have a great week, everybody.

Shabbat shalom. Be well.

33:41 – GS

Shabbat shalom. See you next week for the Lunch and Learn.