The Ark of the Covenant

As practically all of the book of Leviticus, this week’s Torah portion, acharey mot (Leviticus Ch. 16-18), lists numerous rules regarding how Aharon, the chief priest, is to conduct himself while he is in the Tent of the Meeting (another name for the Tabernacle).

For the Hassidic rabbis, these are just codes for how one should conduct oneself during prayer. The “Tent of the Meeting” is not a physical place for them; it is the deeper realms of one’s consciousness. Entering the Tent of the Meeting (ohel mo’ed) is entering that place within oneself, where one meets one’s Maker.

Here is how Rabbi Benjamin Ben Aharon from Zlositch, author of Torey Zahav (תורי זהב), interpreted one of these instructions. The text says:

וְכָל אָדָם לֹא יִהְיֶה בְּאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד בְּבֹאוֹ לְכַפֵּר בַּקֹּדֶשׁ עַד צֵאתוֹ וְכִפֶּר בַּעֲדוֹ וּבְעַד בֵּיתוֹ וּבְעַד כָּל קְהַל יִשְׂרָאֵל:

No person shall be in the Tent of Meeting [the Tabernacle] when he comes in to atone for the holy, until he goes out. He shall make atonement for himself and his household…. (Leviticus 16:17)

Rabbi Benjamin Ben Aharon from Zlositch writes:*

In the book Duties of the Hearts** [hovot halevavot, by the 11^th century Rabbi Bahya ibn Paqquda] we are told that a person should regularly practice lone meditation [hitbodedut [התבודדות, separated from other people. You should reach the state that even when surrounded by a thousand people, you are able to maintain your attachment to God. Nothing should divide you or separate you from that attachment (Sha‘ar Heshbon ha-Nefesh 3).

Thus I interpret our verse…. We know that before praying you should be stripped of your corporeal self. Your thought should cleave to the exaltedness of God, as though you were standing in the upper worlds among angels, rather than surrounded by people. When you forget that you are among people, you are able to pray with great intensity, without any false motives. This is [what is meant by] No person shall be in the Tent of Meeting. That refers to the synagogue or house of study, the place where people gather to pray. No person shall be there in your thought; you should be so stripped of physical selfhood that you forget you are standing among people. As you come in to atone for the holy: the time of prayer, which takes the place of atoning sacrifices. Until he goes out: from the beginning to the end of prayer. He shall make atonement for himself and his household: prayer of this sort is surely pure.

Thus I also interpreted the sages’ saying “In a place where there is no man, try to be a man” (Mishnah, Pirkey Avot 2: 5). When you stand in that place of teshuvah, strive to be more than an ordinary man; enter the upper realms, where there is no other person. Before you perform a mitsvah, set your mind to be attached above, as though there were no person present….

* * *

The Hassids were not the only mystics that took ancient stories of entering the tabernacle or the temple to mean entering one’s own Holy of Holies. A story that I told earlier in this blog is fit to be told here, since this we are approaching the holiday of Passover, even though it is coming from the New Testament. The story comes from the Gospel of Luke:

Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover.  And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival.  When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. (Luke 2:41-47)

Commenting on this story, Meister Eckhart, the great 14^th century mystic who deserves, in my eyes, to be called “a Christian Hassid”, had an interpretation of this story that reminds one of the Hassids.

For Eckhart, this story is a metaphor for one’s search for God. When one lives unconsciously, one is so self-absorbed that one does not know whether or not one is connected to God. This is symbolized by the fact that “the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it” (the parents, in this story, symbolize the seekers).

As life progresses, one notices that something is missing, but thinks that the solution is near, and one is bound to stumble upon it sooner or later in the natural course of one’s life. “Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey.”

It does not take long for an introspective soul to realize that one has to look deeper. One may not be ready for a radical change yet—one still looks for God in the familiar—but the intensity of one’s search increases. “Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends.”

When that fails, one decides to be much more focused and serious. One starts devoting all of one’s energy to the search, engaging in prayer, meditation, and holy practices. This, Meister Eckhart says, is what is meant by the fact that the parents returned to the holy city, to Jerusalem, and looked for boy Jesus within its walls. But even after three days of constant searching in the holy city, they could not find him. In other words, holy, religious pursuits in themselves are no guarantee for finding God.

Where do they find God eventually? In the temple, which for Eckhart is a metaphor for the deepest level of Self, the deepest level of one’s consciousness. When one finally steps into that inner realm, one realizes that God has been there all along, teaching.

* * *

Happy Passover!

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*Green, Arthur; Leader, Ebn; Mayse, Ariel Evan; Rose, Or N. (2013-07-09). Speaking Torah, Vol. 1: Spiritual Teachings from around the Maggid’s Table (Kindle Locations 5327-5336). Jewish Lights Publishing. Kindle Edition.

**חובות הלבבות

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

A few verses into the portion, the Torah specifies the effect of building the mishkan:

וְעָשׂוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם:

And they shall make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them. (Exodus 25:8)

The verse seems to suggest, that the tabernacle, the mishkan, will enable God to dwell (lishkon) among the people of Israel. But that is absurd: God confined to a tent? And does that mean that before the construction, God is not able to dwell among them?

As King Solomon said in his prayer after completing the construction of the first temple:

הִנֵּה הַשָּׁמַיִם וּשְׁמֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם לֹא יְכַלְכְּלוּךָ אַף כִּי הַבַּיִת הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר בָּנִיתִי:

Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! (1 Kings 8:27)

And as the prophet Isaiah declared:

כֹּה אָמַר יְהוָה הַשָּׁמַיִם כִּסְאִי וְהָאָרֶץ הֲדֹם רַגְלָי אֵי זֶה בַיִת אֲשֶׁר תִּבְנוּ לִי וְאֵי זֶה מָקוֹם מְנוּחָתִי:

Thus says YHVH: Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is my resting place? (Isaiah 66:1)

But the verse may be saying something else. Firstly, the Hebrew word for “among them” is betocham,( בְּתוֹכָם), which means “within them.*” And it does not say betocho (בתוכו), which would mean “within it”, referring to the mishkan; it says within them, referring to the people of Israel.

The mishkan spoken of here is primarily a structure within the psyche. Each one of the people of Israel was enjoined on building a space within themselves, open themselves up in such a way so as to allow the divinity within them to shine through, to occupy the psyche. And then, God will dwell within them, within each and every one of them.

Some midrash commentaries support this understanding. We are told by the midrash hagadol that the structure of the mishkan parallels the structure of the cosmos as well as the structure of the human. It is not talking about the physical structure of the human, but the interior one: the one that is made of 248 limbs and 365 tissues, which parallel the 248 positive mitsvoth (commandments), the “do’s”, and the 365 negative mitzvoth, the “don’ts”.

Thus, the mishkan is truly an interior structure that comes into being when one lives according to YHVH’s will. And then YHVH is found to be dwelling in that structure. Even if an exterior, physical mishkan exists, it was only a sensory representation of the internal structure.

This is very reminiscent of the ideas of sacred architecture of both the Hindu and the Buddhist traditions: both model their temple according to their understanding of the human psyche, with the idea that the structure of the temple mirrors both the structure of the psyche and the structure of the universe.

According to these traditions, the actual physical experience of walking into the temple, from its outer boundaries into its sanctum, is said to be a mirror of the process of meditation, through which one realizes the divine Self within. Said differently, the structure of the temple points one to the fact that through meditation one creates this structure within one’s consciousness.

This Torah portion further describes the function of the mishkan:

וְנוֹעַדְתִּי לְךָ שָׁם וְדִבַּרְתִּי אִתְּךָ מֵעַל הַכַּפֹּרֶת מִבֵּין שְׁנֵי הַכְּרֻבִים אֲשֶׁר עַל אֲרֹן הָעֵדֻת אֵת כָּל אֲשֶׁר אֲצַוֶּה אוֹתְךָ אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל:

There I will meet with you, and I will impart to you—from above the cover, from between the two Cherubim that are on top of the Ark of the Pact—all that I will command you concerning the people of Israel. (Exodus 25:22)

These words are addressed to Moses, but Moses is a metaphor for each and every one of us. For each of us to “hear the voice of God” within us, we need to construct this structure within ourselves, to created that sacred space within us through meditation so that we can be in tune with our deepest interiority—which is not different from the interiority of the universe.

* * *

This Torah portion is the first of five that deal entirely with the details of the construction of the mishkan. In fact, from now until the end of the book of Exodus, the Torah deals with nothing else.

Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, in his book “Seven Years of Talks on the Weekly Torah Portions,” points out that the number of verses that the Torah devotes to the construction of the mishkan is 450; in contrast, the number of verses that the Torah devotes to the “construction” of the world in the book of Genesis is 31.

And that reveals the status and purpose of the Torah. It is not a book about cosmology, neither is it a book about history. It is a book that aims primarily at providing a map through which human awareness can align itself with the divinity within. And it is in this light that everything in this text should be interpreted and understood.

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*See a similar comment in the commentary on vayigash

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

Up to now, in the book of Genesis, the first book of the Pentateuch, the history of the Jewish people is told through the story of one family. And indeed, the first few verses in Exodus remind us that Jacob came to Egypt with his extended family of seventy strong. But the Torah almost immediately fast forwards a few hundred years, by which time the people of Israel have become so many that the new Pharaoh is afraid of them and proceeds to enslave them as a precaution.

This is the starting point of a narrative that will unfold in the coming four books: the drama of the People of Israel’s miraculous liberation and exodus from Egypt, and their equally miraculous sojourn in the desert on their way to the promised land, the land of Canaan.

This story is the backbone of Judaism. The history, theology and modes of worship of the Jewish people can all be traced to this story. A Jew’s relationship to this story determines his/her relationship to Judaism; it is, indeed, the source of the collective memory of the Jewish people.

Which is why it is worth repeating what was already mentioned earlier in this blog: that in the Passover hagadah, the formalized recitation of the story of Passover around which the Passover Seder is conducted, we are commanded:

בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאלו הוא יצא ממצרים.

In each and every generation one is obligated to regard oneself as if one had come out of mitzrayim.

And that has been understood by rabbis of all ages as an internal journey of the soul from bondage in duality (mitzrayim), the land of sorrow and boundaries, to liberation in unity (kna’an), which this parashah describes as–

אֶרֶץ טוֹבָה וּרְחָבָה… אֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ

a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 3:8)

 

It is a journey into the depth of one’s own consciousness, into one’s own Self, for the sake of self discovery and self purification and, ultimately, the liberation of the soul.

* * *

In the story of this parashah, we are told that God attracted Moses’ attention through the burning bush. The Torah tells us:

וּמֹשֶׁה הָיָה רֹעֶה אֶת צֹאן יִתְרוֹ חֹתְנוֹ כֹּהֵן מִדְיָן וַיִּנְהַג אֶת הַצֹּאן אַחַר הַמִּדְבָּר וַיָּבֹא אֶל הַר הָאֱלֹהִים חֹרֵבָה: וַיֵּרָא מַלְאַךְ יְהוָֹה אֵלָיו בְּלַבַּת אֵשׁ מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה הַסְּנֶה בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ וְהַסְּנֶה אֵינֶנּוּ אֻכָּל: וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אָסֻרָה נָּא וְאֶרְאֶה אֶת הַמַּרְאֶה הַגָּדֹל הַזֶּה מַדּוּעַ לֹא יִבְעַר הַסְּנֶה:

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of Y-H-V-H appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a thornbush; he looked, and the thornbush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ (Exodus 3:1-3)

 

Moses had the presence of mind and the ability to appreciate the miraculous. Perhaps a modern person in the same scene would have exclaimed “wow, that is far out!”, then the iPhone would be pulled out, a few shots would be taken, and soon the Facebook universe would be privy to this fantastic experience. And life would go on.

What kind of awareness do we need today in order to look at the ordinary and see the miraculous? The same awareness that Jacob had when he woke up from his dream and exclaimed—

אָכֵן יֵשׁ יְהוָה בַּמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה וְאָנֹכִי לֹא יָדָעְתִּי

Surely Y-H-V-H is in this place—and I did not know it! (Genesis 28:16)

This is a change of awareness that we are all called to: from being caught up in the boundaries of our own mind to experiencing the liberation of our Self, here and now. We are called to leave mitzrayim behind, and start walking towards the Holy Land.

* * *

So how does the Exodus story become a living reality in one’s life right now? How does one bridge the gap between the historical narrative, which is about something “out there”, and one’s life? In the true Hassidic manner, I’d like to illustrate this with a story of one Passover Seder celebration in our family four decades ago.

My non-observant family owned a pastry business—a bakery, a pastry shop, and a café—in the center of Tel Aviv. Passover was a very important and busy time of year for us. As you may know, Jewish dietary rules require that no leavening is used in the preparation of Passover breads and pastry, so kosher Bakeries either shut down for the holiday, or go through a grueling process of cleaning and purifying their establishment in order to get the all-important rabbinical stamp of approval, “kosher lepesach”, fit for Passover. My father chose to take the latter route, because of the brisk business in Passover. But that meant that he had to stay up all night for a few nights in a row in order to prepare his business for the holiday without shutting it down during the day.

To top it off, on the day of the Seder my parents were on their feet from dawn catering to what seemed like an unending stream of customers who came to shop until the very last minute before sunset. My parents then rushed home, exhausted, and my mother somehow still managed to put the Passover Seder together. We would recite the portion of the Haggadah leading to the meal, and the celebration would pretty much be over after that.

It so happened that in 1973 both my father and I learnt to meditate, and by Passover of 1974, we had almost a year or regular practice under our belt. Meditation had given my father an extra boost of energy and calm, and by the time we sat down to the Seder table, one could already sense that things were going to be different.

Once we started reciting the Haggadah things really got interesting. My dad and I looked at each other with glowing eyes. It was clear to us that the text was not just speaking of some fantastic events in the past that we had a hard time rationalizing. Rather, we had a visceral sense that the text was describing our experience and our own path of self purification and self-discovery in a way that made the story of the Haggadah feel relevant to our lives there and then. The excitement was palpable and infectious. This was the first time that our family we celebrated the Seder wholeheartedly, and told the story of the Exodus as if we were hearing it for the first time.

My father, Zvi Harmelin, passed away 22 years ago this week. This d’var torah—a discourse on the Torah—is in his memory.

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Note: I may not be able to publish a commentary on next week’s Torah portion, since I will be away from a computer until the end of December.

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

Giving thanks is fundamental to Judaism. In fact, it is built into its name. The Hebrew word for “Jew” is “yehudi” (יהודי), which means “belonging to the tribe of Judah, or “yehudah” (יהודה). The name literally means “I thank Yah (God)”. Leah, Jacob’s wife, chose this name for her fourth son in gratitude to God for his birth. Therefore, beyond the myriad of do’s and don’ts and the great tradition of learning, the essence of Jewish life—in fact the essence of Jewish identity—is gratitude towards God. It is what gives us our name and what defines our path and our goal. We are yehudim, a nation of thanks-givers to the Almighty.

We are not special in this regard. Many other religions see gratitude to God—and its resulting humility—as the essence of spiritual/religious practice. Not just our close relatives, the Christians and the Muslims, but also, cultures and traditions more remote from us.

In Buddhism, for example:

The unworthy man is ungrateful, forgetful of benefits [done to him].
This ingratitude, this forgetfulness is congenial to mean  people…
But the worthy person is grateful and mindful of benefits done to him.
This gratitude, this mindfulness, is congenial to the best people.
Anguttara Nikaya i.61

And in traditional African religions:

One upon whom We bestow kindness
But will not express gratitude,
Is worse than a robber
Yoruba Proverb

Gratitude is particularly relevant to Hanukkah. Hanukkah is a rabbinical holiday, i.e., one decreed by the rabbis rather than given as an injunction in the Torah, and is therefore considered less important. It commemorates the successful rebellion against the Greeks and the re-dedication of the temple in Jerusalem as a Jewish house of worship. But the Babylonian Talmud mentions that the only reason for celebrating and commemorating the miraculous events of Hanukkah is to cultivate gratitude.

Another point of similarity between Hanukkah and Thanksgiving is that they both commemorate gratitude to the Almighty for supernatural abundance. In the case of Hanukkah, the fact that one-day’s worth of oil for the sacred lamp (menorah) in the temple lasted for eight enabled the light in the temple not to be extinguished until new supplies arrived from the Galilee. Thanksgiving arose out of gratitude for the abundant crops collected by the new settlers during their first year in America.

* * *

The supernatural abundance that is associated with Hanukkah is part of a bigger theme that is found often in the Bible and in other religious texts: if you trust in God, all your needs will be taken care of. That is, of course, the major theme of the Psalms:

יֹשֵׁב, בְּסֵתֶר עֶלְיוֹן; בְּצֵל שַׁדַּי, יִתְלוֹנָן.
אֹמַר–לַיהוָה, מַחְסִי וּמְצוּדָתִי; אֱלֹהַי, אֶבְטַח-בּוֹ.
כִּי הוּא יַצִּילְךָ, מִפַּח יָקוּשׁ; מִדֶּבֶר הַוּוֹת.
בְּאֶבְרָתוֹ, יָסֶךְ לָךְ–וְתַחַת-כְּנָפָיו תֶּחְסֶה; צִנָּה וְסֹחֵרָה אֲמִתּוֹ.

You who live in the shelter of the Most High,
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
will say to Y-H-V-H, ‘My refuge and my fortress;
my God, in whom I trust.’
For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
and from the deadly pestilence;
he will cover you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. (Psalm 91:1-4)

מִזְמוֹר לְדָוִד: יְהוָה רֹעִי, לֹא אֶחְסָר.
בִּנְאוֹת דֶּשֶׁא, יַרְבִּיצֵנִי; עַל-מֵי מְנֻחוֹת יְנַהֲלֵנִי.

A Psalm of David. Y-H-V-H is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters. (Psalm 23:1-2)

The story of the manna that nourished the people of Israel in the desert and the story of Elisha filling the widow’s jars with oil are two examples of this theme in the Jewish collective memory. And of course, it goes beyond Judaism: the story of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana, or feeding five thousand from five loaves and two fish, are two more examples. And as Jesus himself said:

Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’… But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:31,33)

In the Indian epic, the Mahabharata, Queen Draupadi is dragged forcibly into an arena full with people by the evil Dusashana, who is also trying to remove the sari from her body and thus humiliate her further. Draupadi prays to Krishna one-pointedly and desperately, and a miracle occurs: the more Dusashana is trying to unfurl it, the longer her sari becomes, and before long the Arena becomes filled with silk. Finally he gives up, exhausted.

* * *

Did these stories “really” happen? Was there one-day’s supply of oil that turned into eight-days’ worth? Did Draupadi’s sari really become infinite in length?

A question that we need to first ask is what we mean by “really happened.” In our day and age, only that which happens in the realm of time and space is considered “real”. This is a fairly new development that started with the scientific revolution around four hundred years ago, which discounted subjectivity and considered it an obstacle to reliable knowledge. But the scriptural stories that we are talking about were composed (or revealed) at much earlier times, when the inner world was considered just as real, if not more real, than the measurable realities of time and space.

Indeed, ancient writers of history lived at a time when information was processed in ways that are very different from how we process them now. In other words, they had an altogether different relationship to reality—not better, not worse, just different. The event, and the mode of recounting it, were primarily meant to effect a change in the listener rather than attempting to give an account of an objective truth. Asking if the oil was “really” sufficient for eight days, from the point of view of a modern human, is like asking whether you can fly to your next vacation in the airplane you dreamed about last night. These two levels of reality don’t mix.

A few words from Herman Hesse are relevant here. In his book Steppenwolf, the narrator introduces the manuscript left by Haller, the hero of the story, and says the following:

It was not in my power to verify the truth of the experiences related in Haller’s manuscript. I have no doubt that they are for the most part fictitious, not, however, in the sense of arbitrary invention. They are rather the deeply lived spiritual events which he has attempted to express by giving them the form of tangible experiences.

The miraculous events described in those ancient texts have been accepted as historically real by millions of people for thousands of years, and as such they have become part of the collective memory of those who have taken them to be their history: Jews with regard to the Torah, Hindus when it comes to the Mahabharata, Muslims with regard to the Qur’an, etc. But again, what we mean by “real” today is very different from what was meant as real in the past, and the two should not be conflated. Even today, our ability to agree on what constitutes reality is far from uniform, since we have learned by now that “reality” is always context dependent. This was famously depicted in Akira Kurosawa’s movie Rashomon, in which one event was experienced and described differently by each of the characters.

This difference between the modern and ancient modes of perception was brilliantly explained at the beginning of the last century by the German mystic Rodolf Steiner in his lectures on Genesis. Steiner sought to convey that the opening words of the Hebrew Bible, “bereshit bara elohim et hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz” (בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ), effected the ancient listener in a way that has little relationship with the literal translation of the text, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” He said:

What was it like — this inner world which lived in the soul of the pupil? We can only compare it with what can take place in the soul of a man to whom a seer has described the pictures he experienced on looking into the spiritual world. … If he wishes to translate what he sees there into the language of the physical world, he can only do so in pictures, but if his descriptive powers suffice, he will do it in pictures which are able to awaken in his hearers a mental image corresponding with what he himself sees in the spiritual worlds. Thereby something comes into existence which must not be mistaken for a description of things and events in the physical sense-world; something comes into existence which we must never forget belongs to an entirely different world — a world which does indeed underlie and maintain the ordinary sense-world of our ideas, impressions and perceptions, yet in no way coincides with that world.

Steiner has brilliantly captured the Hassidic spirit of approaching scriptural interpretation.

Perhaps herein lies the key to understanding why the number of people who find relevance in scripture and in religion is dwindling. On the on hand, we have become very sophisticated, and can no longer accept dogma as truth without question. On the other hand, the linear, scientifically-informed information processing with which we relate is inadequate when it comes to reading scripture, because it obscures the spiritual aliveness of these texts which it is supposed to enliven in the listener/reader. The miraculous is not rational and will never be.

We can not go back to the ancient mode of perceiving reality, nor should we want to. And it’s not even necessary. But we do need to re-establish access to the sacred. Barring mass miracles on the order of the events of Mount Sinai, perhaps the only way to achieve such a re-enlivenment of trans-rational modes of perception and understanding in the 21^st century is through meditation practices. Such practices reestablish a direct connection with the sacred and enable us to directly perceive the timeless truth of the ancient traditions.

How does this happen? During meditation, as one assumes no relationship to one’s thoughts, emotions, or sensations, one becomes aware, to whatever extent, that one’s identification with mind as self is illusory. With time, as one becomes increasingly aware of the sacred dimension of one’s consciousness, one realizes that the mind operates as an automatic machine. The illusion of the solid reliability of the mind as the only source of knowledge becomes thus gradually more apparent, allowing for deeper modes of knowledge and cognition to emerge. It’s not that we stop using our mind. It is still an invaluable tool for understanding the world and interacting with it, as well as expressing our creativity. But the tyranny of rational thinking as the only possible mode of knowing is loosened.*

The rebellion of the Maccabees was provoked by the Greek rulers’ attempt to do away with Jewish practices and religion, permitting only Greek customs and culture. Now the rebellion has to be internal, against the tyranny of rationality as the only mode of perception. Without a direct experience of the Absolute dimension of reality and the relative nature of rational thinking, the “Greeks” within us will be victorious. We better do something about it.

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*Could the warning to not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil mean to not rely exclusively on the mind as the source of Truth?

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

Jacob escapes his parents’ dwelling place in Beer-Sheba in order to avoid the wrath of his brother, whom he had deceived. His journey is long: we are told that he is headed to Haran, a town believed to be in Turkey just off the Syrian border. A long journey, no doubt, yet we only hear about one episode on the way. The text tells us:

וַיִּפְגַּע בַּמָּקוֹם וַיָּלֶן שָׁם כִּי בָא הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ וַיִּקַּח מֵאַבְנֵי הַמָּקוֹם וַיָּשֶׂם מְרַאֲשֹׁתָיו וַיִּשְׁכַּב בַּמָּקוֹם הַהוּא.

He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. (Genesis 28:11)

Significantly, the text volunteers no details about the exact location but calls is just “a place.” The Hebrew for “he came to a certain place”, is vayifga bamakom (ויפגע במקום), “he stumbled upon a place”, which emphasizes the randomness of the location. The text also makes sure that we know that the only reason Jacob stopped at that place was “because the sun had set” and for no other reason.

Then comes the fantastic dream: he sees the ladder between heaven and earth and angels ascending and descending on it. And he hears God speaking to him, giving him a vision of a glorious future and pledging to support him forever.

Notice what happens right after the dream:

וַיִּיקַץ יַעֲקֹב מִשְּׁנָתוֹ וַיֹּאמֶר אָכֵן יֵשׁ יְהוָה בַּמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה וְאָנֹכִי לֹא יָדָעְתִּי. וַיִּירָא וַיֹּאמַר מַה נּוֹרָא הַמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה אֵין זֶה כִּי אִם בֵּית אֱלֹהִים וְזֶה שַׁעַר הַשָּׁמָיִם. וַיַּשְׁכֵּם יַעֲקֹב בַּבֹּקֶר וַיִּקַּח אֶת הָאֶבֶן אֲשֶׁר שָׂם מְרַאֲשֹׁתָיו וַיָּשֶׂם אֹתָהּ מַצֵּבָה וַיִּצֹק שֶׁמֶן עַל רֹאשָׁהּ.

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely Y-H-V-H is in this place—and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. (Genesis 28:16-18)

These words are important: “Surely Y-H-V-H is in this place—and I did not know it!” But where is this place? Any place. It’s just somewhere, anywhere, between Beer-Sheba and Haran. And the stone that he put under his head as a pillow is just a stone, any stone. What has changed, then? His consciousness has changed, his perception, his awareness. The place is the same place, the rock is the same rock, but it is Jacob’s internal transformation that allows him to realize the truth of the maxim propagated by the Zohar, the Book of Splendor: leyt atar panuy miney (לית אתר פנוי מיניה), “there is no place where He is not.” Or, in the words of the Breslav Hassids:

הכל מכל עצם זיו חיות אלוקותו יתברך ממש

Anything and everything is, in actuality, the very essence of the radiance of the liveliness of Him, the Blessed One.

Jacob’s symbolic response is to take the rock and pour oil on it. He anoints a rock. It’s an expression of a deep recognition of the fact that even a piece of inert matter is, in its essence, the one and only Reality, the ONE.

Only then does the text tell us that, in fact, this no place in the middle of nowhere had a name. We are told that Jacob named the place Bethel (lit. House of God), instead of its original name, Luz.

וַיִּקְרָא אֶת שֵׁם הַמָּקוֹם הַהוּא בֵּית אֵל וְאוּלָם לוּז שֵׁם הָעִיר לָרִאשֹׁנָה.

He called that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first.

Where is this Bethel, this House of God? Anywhere you are, so long as you are open to recognizing it. What transforms any old place into a sacred house of God is your own recognition, your own attention, your own consciousness.

One cannot think of a more important message for the Torah to convey. It’s one thing to say that God is omnipresent. It’s much more implicating and challenging to say that He—or She or It—is nearer to you than your own breath. But this is precisely the message that this story conveys, a message that is later elaborated by Moses as he speaks to the people of Israel:

כִּי הַמִּצְוָה הַזֹּאת, אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם–לֹא-נִפְלֵאת הִוא מִמְּךָ, וְלֹא רְחֹקָה הִוא. לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם, הִוא לֵאמֹר: מִי יַעֲלֶה-לָּנוּ הַשָּׁמַיְמָה וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ, וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ, וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה. וְלֹא-מֵעֵבֶר לַיָּם, הִוא:  לֵאמֹר, מִי יַעֲבָר-לָנוּ אֶל-עֵבֶר הַיָּם וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ, וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ, וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה. כִּי-קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר, מְאֹד בְּפִיךָ וּבִלְבָבְךָ, לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ.

Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. (Deutoronomy 30:11-14)

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The immediacy of divine presence is a fundamental teaching of all major religions. Prophets, saints, enlightened founders of religions and realized teachers throughout the ages and in every culture have been trying in every way to help their followers grasp this simple fact: God is nearer than near, and only our insistence on His/Her/Its distance and inaccessibility makes God distant and inaccessible.

But the Truth is as radical as it is simple. In Jesus’ words:

The Kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:21)

In the Qur’an Allah proclaims:

وَنَحْنُ أَقْرَبُ إِلَيْهِ مِنْ حَبْلِ الْوَرِيدِ

wanahnu aqrabu ilayhi min habli alwareedi

We are nearer to him [man] than his jugular vein. (Surah 50:16)

The Upanishadic sages of India sang:

Brahman shines forth, vast, self-luminous, inconceivable, subtler than the subtle. He is far beyond what is far, and yet here very near at hand. Verily, He is seen here, dwelling in the cave of conscious beings. (Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.7)

In the Adi Granth, the Sikh sacred text, it is said:

Ever is He present with you—think not He is far.
By the Master’s teaching recognize him within yourself. (Majh Ashtapadi, M.3)

In the Buddhist Parinirvana Sutra we read:

It is only when all outward appearances are gone that there is left that one principle of life which exists independently of all external phenomena. (XXXIX)

In the Shinto tradition we find the following:

Do not search in distant skies for God. In man’s own heart is He found. (Shao Yung)

There is the famous quote attributed to Confucius:

” what the undeveloped man seeks is outside, what the advanced man seeks is within himself.”

And the list goes on and on.

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Reckoning with the Truth of the immediacy of the divine presence poses some deep philosophical and practical questions. What does it mean about external acts of worship? One Algerian Sufi teacher, who is considered a saint by his followers, proclaimed that he does not pray. Praying would make him a kafir (heretic), he said, because it would suggest an existence of God separate than himself.*

So is it a free-for-all? And what is the difference, then, between someone who does not pray because she asserts non-separation from the divine, and another who does not pray because she does not believe in God, or believes but feels lazy?

While philosophically, the omnipresence (and therefore nearness) of God is unconditional, it only becomes a living, experiential reality in us when we choose to make it so. There’s a saying, “The God you don’t believe in does not exist.” And that applies here too. Which is why the Psalm says:

קָרוֹב יְהוָה, לְכָל-קֹרְאָיו, לְכֹל אֲשֶׁר יִקְרָאֻהוּ בֶאֱמֶת.

Y-H-V-H is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
(Psalm 145:18)

Our attitude, our faith, is what makes the truth about the immediacy apparent in our lives. Here’s how the Muslim Hadith Qudsi describes the “leaning in” that is required, and what it leads to:

God has declared: I am close to the thought that My servant has to Me, and I am with him whenever He recollects Me. If he remember Me in himself, I remember him in Myself, and if he remembers Me in a gathering, I remember him better than those in the gathering do, and if he approaches Me by as much as one hand’s length, I approach him by a cubit, and if he approaches my by a cubit, then I draw nigh to him by two hands’ length. If he takes a step towards me, I run towards him. (Musnad-e Ahmad Hanbal)

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It is interesting to note, that in this last quote, the Arabic word used in the text for “remembering” and “remembrance” is dhikr. In the Sufi tradition, this has come to mean not just memory, but a whole host of meditative practices that are aimed at taking the awareness of the devotee, or aspirant for truth, from his normal state of mundane perception to the point where he would perceive any mundane place as Bethel and any rock as an object worthy of anointment.

Indeed, if God can be found most easily and most readily within, one could argue that meditative and contemplative practices should occupy a more central place in serious religious life. Psalm verses such as lecha dumiya tehileah (לְךָ דֻמִיָּה תְהִלָּה) “Silence is praise for Thee” (Psalm 65:2) or harpu ude’u ki anokhi elohim (הַרְפּוּ וּדְעוּ כִּי אָנֹכִי אֱלֹהִים) “Be till, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:11) should not be seen as merely poetic expressions of a devoted ancient king but as practical formulas for entering union with the divine. Such meditative practices are the most effective way to “hear” the kol dmama daka (קוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּה) “The sound of subtle silence”**(1 King 19:12) through which God appeared before Elijah. And then we too can realize, “Surely Y-H-V-H is in this place—and I did not know it!”

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*This was told to me by a follower of his. I regret that I do not remember the name of the person, nor do I have a reference.

**Commonly translated as “a still small voice.”

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)