Yeshayahu Leibowitz

The last part of the weekly Torah portion of naso (Numbers 4:21-7:89), which is the longest portion in the Torah, is an elaborate and long description of the inauguration of ohel mo’ed, the “Tent of the Meeting” (the tabernacle)—the “place” where Moses “hears” the voice of God and receives the instructions.

Let’s remind ourselves: the first time we hear about the Tabernacle is in the Torah portion of trumah, which opens with God’s instruction to Moses:

וְעָשׂוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם:

“They shall make me a tabernacle, and I will dwell within them.” (Exodus 25:8)

As a number of Hassidic rabbis commentators remarked: “within them” should be understood as “within each and every one of them.” Thus, the construction of the tabernacle can also be interpreted as opening up a sacred space within oneself for God to dwell within (or, rather, for realizing that God has been dwelling within all along).

The very last verse of this week’s portion seems to echo this understanding. It says:

וּבְבֹא מֹשֶׁה אֶל אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לְדַבֵּר אִתּוֹ וַיִּשְׁמַע אֶת הַקּוֹל מִדַּבֵּר אֵלָיו מֵעַל הַכַּפֹּרֶת אֲשֶׁר עַל אֲרֹן הָעֵדֻת מִבֵּין שְׁנֵי הַכְּרֻבִים וַיְדַבֵּר אֵלָיו:

When Moses went into the Tent of the Meeting to speak with Him, he would hear the Voice speaking to him from above the cover that was on top of the Ark of the Pact between the two cherubim; thus He spoke to him. (Numbers 7:89)

The key words here are “speaking to him”, which in Hebrew are middaber eilav. From the context one would assume that “speaking to him” means God speaking to Moses, as indeed most translators have assumed.

But that is not what the Hebrew says. As Rashi points out, middaber (מִדַּבֵּר), while spelled the same as medaber (מְדַבֵּר), is in a grammatically different form—the reflexive form of hitpa’el. This means that the “him” in the expression “the Voice speaking to him” is not Moses, but God himself.

Here are Rashi’s own words:

מדבר. כמו מתדבר, כבודו של מעלה לומר כן, מדבר בינו לבין עצמו ומשה שומע מאליו:

“…speaking to him: Heb. מִדַּבֵּר. [This form] is [grammatically] the same as מִתְדַּבֵּר [the reflexive form, meaning] “speaking to himself.” It is out of reverence for the Most High to express it in this manner. [God] speaks to Himself, and Moses hears it spontaneously.”

One of Israel’s preeminent Judaic scholar and teachers, the late Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, noted in response: “This not an acoustic event, in which a voice [or a sound, kol] reaches Moses, but rather a process within Moses’ consciousness, who… hears God speaking to Himself within Himself.” And he also points out that with this radical interpretation of the text, Rashi preempts Maimonides’ theory of prophecy by about two hundred years.

Indeed, the tabernacle is that sacred space within where a prophet can “hear” the voice of God. And we are all called to do that. Moses said, “Would that all of Y‑H‑V‑H’s people were prophets, and Y‑H‑V‑H put His spirit upon them.” (Numbers 11:29). We each are called to erect that sacred space, that Tent of the Meeting, within ourselves.

Thus, the construction of the Tabernacle can be seen as a meditative process. We create the sacred space within oneself through loosening our grip on our thoughts, loosening our grips on the inner noise, letting everything be and just BE—thereby giving that kol dmama daka, the “sound of subtle silence” (also known as “still small voice”) to be heard.

What a perfect subject of contemplation before Shavu’ot.

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Leibowitz points out that the only translator of the Bible who noted this grammatical form of middaber and translated correctly was Martin Luther. In his German Bible he translated it as “redend zu sich” (speaking to himself). Leibowitz wonders, could Luther have been familiar with Rashi?

And another German teacher, although much earlier than Luther, who understood God’s speech as an something that occurs within one’s consciousness was Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1327). See previous mention, on the commentaries of both Acharey Mot and Beshalach.

וַיִּקְרָא אֶל מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה אֵלָיו מֵאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר:

He called to Moses; Y-H-V-H spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting. (Lev. 1:1)

Those familiar with the Torah and/or readers of this blog will remember that this portion follows many chapters in Exodus in which the text dealt mainly with the construction of the mishkan (the tabernacle, here referred to as “the Tent of Meeting”). As mentioned repeatedly in this blog, the Hassidic viewpoint is that the tabernacle is principally an internal structure, an inner sacred space within each person, and it’s up to each of us to “erect” this structure so that God can be realized as dwelling within.

According to this interpretation, therefore, when the Torah says that “Y-H-V-H spoke to him [Moses] from the Tent of Meeting”, it is a voice that Moses, who serves as a metaphor for each one of us, hears from within himself.

This is hinted at by an “anomaly” in the actual text of the Torah scroll. The first word of this Torah portion (and therefore, of the book of Leviticus), vayikra (ויקרא), ends with the letter aleph (א). This letter has the numerical value of 1, and stands for “The one without a second”–the one and only, i.e. God. But in this case, the letter is written smaller than other letters, almost like a superscript:

In the commentary on the first portion of the Torah, bereshit, I mentioned that there are a few places in the Torah scroll in which the letters are written differently, e.g., larger, smaller, or turned at an abnormal angle. These “abnormalities” are neither typos nor decorative devices. Rather, they are used to highlight or amplify important metaphysical points.

The fact that the word vayikra, which means “He [God] called”, ends with a small aleph, highlights the fact that the voice of God that one hears is not a dramatic voice from outside through “cosmic loudspeakers” but rather a “still, small voice” that one hears from within.

And indeed, one of the early Hassids, Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl, explains this in his book Meor Eynayim. He says that the small aleph indicates that He, the Master of the world, reduces Himself in order to be present in the soul of every human, to guide us towards Himself, towards aleph, towards the One.

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The word vayikra, which is translated here as “He called”, is from the root kara, which means “to read”, “to call out”, and “to proclaim”. It is identical to the same root in Arabic, qara (or kara; the use of K in Hebrew transliterations vs. Q in Arabic ones is due to differences in pronunciation).

Interestingly, the first word that was revealed to Muhammad and that started his mission was the word iqra (اقْرَأْ), which means to call out (or proclaim) as well as to read. In today’s traditional Qur’anic arrangement, this is the opening words of surah 96, but it is nevertheless understood as the first word of Allah that was revealed to the Prophet.

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In traditional Jewish religious education, the first text that young students of the Torah are exposed to soon after learning the alphabet is the book of vayikra. This is because this book is almost entirely devoted to the worship of God in the tabernacle (hence its Latin name, Leviticus, i.e., pertaining to the Levites, the priestly class, and their duties). This was thought of as the purest of subjects and therefore appropriate for beginning Torah study.

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

וַיָּבֹא מֹשֶׁה בְּתוֹךְ הֶעָנָן, וַיַּעַל אֶל-הָהָר; וַיְהִי מֹשֶׁה, בָּהָר, אַרְבָּעִים יוֹם, וְאַרְבָּעִים לָיְלָה.

Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. (Exodus 24:18)

The Torah specifies that Moses stayed at the top of the mountain for 40 days and nights. Since the number 40 appears as a measure of time in various places in the Torah and the rest of the Bible (either as 40 days and nights or as 40 years), it will be good to consider its symbolism.

Whenever time is measured as 40, what follows is an event of great significance. For example, in the story of Noah, we are told that the rain poured down upon the Earth for forty days and nights; the people of Israel spent 40 years in the desert; in the book of Judges, we are told repeatedly that exactly 40 peaceful years separated the rule of one judge from the next; and 40 is the number of days that Goliath kept challenging the people of Israel to find him a worthy opponent before young David rose up to the challenge.

We are also told that Elijah walked from Beer Sheba to Mt. Sinai for 40 days and nights, without stop. And even in the Christian Gospel we are told that Jesus went to the desert without food or drink for 40 days and nights.

What unites all these periods measured by 40 is that they always precede transformative events. 40 is a symbolic unit of potent time that precedes major change, a change that gives voice to the timeless. The flood precedes a new covenant between God and humanity; Moses comes down with the Torah; Elijah receives a revelation of YHVH; Jesus overcomes the devil’s temptations.

It is highly unlikely that in some miraculous way, all these important events always had a period of 40 days or 40 years leading to them. The time is not physical time, and the events are not physical events in time and space. They are symbolic. But what is the symbolism of 40?

We may find a clue in the Hebrew alphabet, in which letters are also numerals. The letter mem (מ), the 14^th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, has the numerical value of 40. In the Kabbalah, that letter represents the element of mayim (מים), Hebrew for water.

Just like the number 40, the element of water often appears in the Torah around potent transformative events: The Flood; baby Moses is saved by Pharaoh’s daughter when she pulls him out of the water (hence his Hebrew name, Moshe, word derived from the verb limshot, i.e. to pull out of the water); the people of Israel pass through the Red Sea on the way to the desert, and once again through the Jordan river on the way from the desert to the Promised Land.

But just as the number 40 in the Torah does not represent actual units of time, water (mayim) in the Torah does not actually mean what we now refer to as water. Rather, it is the principle of transformation. It is related to fecundity, to the creative feminine. It is that which brings about transformation and change. This is very similar to the Vedic literature, in which water symbolizes the feminine aspect of the divine, the principle of fecundity, as well as pure consciousness.

How are we to read these stories in which time is measured by 40? As invitations to action. When “Moses” goes up the mountain for 40 days, it is an invitation for us to go deep into our own height of consciousness and attempt to discover that the Torah is already there, alive within us.

When Elijah walks 40 days and nights, reaches Mount Horeb (Mt. Sinai) and receives the revelation that God is in the “sound of subtle silence” ((1 Kings 19: 11-12), it is an invitation for us to go within and find that sound of subtle silence within ourselves and attempt to be guided by it.

When the people of Israel walk through the Red Sea, having liberated themselves from bondage to Egypt or mitzrayim (lit. “duality of boundaries”), we are also invited to shed our investment in duality and in bound modes of behavior and thinking and embrace the unity and expansiveness, symbolized by Canaan, the Promised Land.

In this manner, understanding the symbolism can enable us to make the Torah a practical guide to life, here and now.

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

Famously, Moses goes up the mountain and returns with the Torah inscribed in stone. Ancient lore has it that he received not only the written Torah (torah shebikhtav), but also the oral Torah (torah she’be’alpe), a tradition of interpretation of the written text which was initially passed on orally.

Few Biblical scholars take seriously the claim that the entire Torah was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Even some orthodox and ultra-orthodox scholars acknowledge the fact that the books of the Torah—let alone the rest of the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud and the Kabbalistic texts—are a collection of writings contributed by different authors at different periods (see this article).

Does that mean that the concept of divine revelation is a sham? Only if you relate to Torah as the text that appears in the books. But in the Jewish tradition, this is only one of a few ways of understanding the concept of Torah, and if you consider the others, the story gets interesting.  (This may appear a bit abstract to some).

Torah as Alive Primordial Intelligence

Rabbinic literature relates to the Torah as much more than a concrete text and a tradition of its interpretation. The Torah is also described as:

· The speech of God or the name of God;
· Embodied as chokhmah, Wisdom, the architect of creation;
· A sequence of expressions that serves as the blueprint for Creation (the DNA of the universe, if you will).

These three concepts of Torah emphasize its nature as an alive level of primordial intelligence, rather than as merely text.

Interestingly enough, this mirrors the attitude towards the Veda in the Hindu tradition*. While the Veda is commonly understood as a text, a collection of mantras that are recited during the sacred performances, the Veda is also described in the Vedic literature as:

· The Word, the essence of the ultimate reality, Brahman (this is parallel to the Jewish concept of the Torah as the speech of God or the name of God);
· The totality of knowledge, embodied as the Creator (parallels the Jewish concept of Wisdom or Chokhmah);
· A sequence of sounds which forms a blueprint for Creation (again, the “DNA of the Universe”).

What is the connection between the concrete words of the text of both Torah and Veda with these more esoteric understandings of them? Abiding by the concrete texts and by the performances derived from them is meant to align one with the alive, transcendental level of wisdom as a living reality within oneself.

Be Awake and See the Sounds

The close similarity between the notion of Torah and Veda in both traditions may be informative. By understanding what the Vedic tradition says about the process of cognition of the Vedic hymns we may glean something about prophecy and revelation in the Jewish tradition.

About the Vedic hymns, the Rik Veda proclaims:

यो जागार तमृचः कामयन्ते
yo jagara tamrichah kamayante
He who is awake, the richas [Vedic hymns] seek him out. (Rik Veda, 5.44.14)

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, one of the foremost teachers of Vedic teaching in our time, often commented on this verse. He explained that the Veda—much like the Torah—eternally murmurs to itself in the transcendental field of creation. The hymns zoom forth in the awareness (“the richas seek him out”) of whoever can bring his or her awareness to that level of reality [“he who is awake]”.

An interesting feature of this process of cognition is that it involves not only sound but also sight, not as two separate elements but as a unified cognition of sound and sight. For this reason, the person who is able to thus cognize the Veda is referred to as a rishi, a seer.

This may shed light on a peculiar expression in this week’s Torah portion. After listing the ten commandments, the Torah describes the experience of the People of Israel as they heard them, starting with a peculiar phrase:

וְכָל הָעָם רֹאִים אֶת הַקּוֹלֹת

And the people see the sounds (Exodus 20:15)

Sounds, of course, are heard, not seen. Could it be that the reason the text here says that the sounds were seen is that it describes a process of cognition similar to that describes in the Vedic texts?

Torah Revelation Now

The Torah phrase describing the process of revelation has another peculiarity: although it is referring to an event that occurred in the past, it uses the present tense. Instead of saying “the people saw the sounds” it says “the people see the sounds.” Just as the Veda spells out a principle—“He who is awake, the richas [Vedic hymns] seek him out”—so does the Torah suggest to us that we can realize the Torah as a living reality within our awareness right now.

In other words, instead of speculating whether or not the entire Torah was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, let us be like Moses and allow the Torah to be a live presence in our awareness. That would be the fulfillment of what Moses declared that he wanted:

וּמִי יִתֵּן כָּל עַם יְהוָה נְבִיאִים כִּי יִתֵּן יְהוָה אֶת רוּחוֹ עֲלֵיהֶם:

Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them! (Numbers 11:29)

And this will also be the fulfillment of the words of Prophet Jeremiah:

הִנֵּה יָמִים בָּאִים נְאֻם יְהוָה וְכָרַתִּי אֶת בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאֶת בֵּית יְהוּדָה בְּרִית חֲדָשָׁה:… כִּי זֹאת הַבְּרִית אֲשֶׁר אֶכְרֹת אֶת בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל אַחֲרֵי הַיָּמִים הָהֵם נְאֻם יְהוָה נָתַתִּי אֶת תּוֹרָתִי בְּקִרְבָּם וְעַל לִבָּם אֶכְתֲּבֶנָּה וְהָיִיתִי לָהֶם לֵאלֹהִים וְהֵמָּה יִהְיוּ לִי לְעָם: וְלֹא יְלַמְּדוּ עוֹד אִישׁ אֶת רֵעֵהוּ וְאִישׁ אֶת אָחִיו לֵאמֹר דְּעוּ אֶת יְהוָה כִּי כוּלָּם יֵדְעוּ אוֹתִי לְמִקְטַנָּם וְעַד גְּדוֹלָם נְאֻם יְהוָה כִּי אֶסְלַח לַעֲוֹנָם וּלְחַטָּאתָם לֹא אֶזְכָּר עוֹד:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,* says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

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* The analysis of the various non-scriptural understandings of Torah, as well as their parallel to the non-scriptural understanding of Veda in the Hindu-Vedic tradition, is based on Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture, by Barbara Holdrege, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. The book is based on her PhD thesis at Harvard.

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