Who Built It 3 (פרשת כי תשא)

Some time ago, I wrote a drash about Parshat Eikev (פרשת עקב) entitled, “Who Built It?” I drew attention to this verse: “And you will say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand made me this wealth.’ And you will remember the Lord your God, for He it is Who gives you power to make wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17-18). While the wealthy person is inclined to believe that he is singularly responsible for his own success in life (“I built that”) this portion teaches us otherwise.

Parshat Ki Tisa (פרשת כי תשא) extends this point from economic capital to what sociologists call cultural capital. It’s not just the wealthy person who is inclined to commit the aveirah (עבירה) of believing he built his good fortune on his own. Learned and brilliant people often fall into an analogous error, believing that their intelligence and wisdom made them successful. They too forget the Source of their power—in this case, the power to understand. 

Parshat Ki Tisa makes this point through Bezalel, the man upon whom the Lord calls to manage the construction of the Mishkan (משכן or Tabernacle). Bezalel is chosen for this role because of his wisdom (חכמה), understanding (תבונה), and knowledge (דעת) (Exodus 31:3). But notice what the portion teaches about these qualities. Just as it is the Lord “Who gives you power to make wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18), so it is the Lord who imbues Bezalel with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge (Exodus 31:3). For good measure, the Torah makes clear that the point does not apply to Bezalel alone, for “in the hearts of all that are wise-hearted I have put wisdom that they may make all that I have commanded” (Ex. 31:6). The verse reminds us of the Source of these qualities and how we are instructed to use them: to build a sanctuary (more figuratively to sanctify the world) so that we may foster the divine presence among us.

Who Built It 2 (פרשת תרומה)

Some time ago, I wrote a drash about Parshat Eikev (פרשת עקב) entitled, “Who Built It?” I drew attention to this verse: “And you will say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand made me this wealth.’ And you will remember the Lord your God, for He it is Who gives you power to make wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17-18). While the wealthy person is inclined to believe that he is singularly responsible for his own success in life (“I built that”) this portion teaches us otherwise. “Wealth,” I wrote in that drash, “is a social product of many people working together.”


Getting from the Lord “gives you power to make wealth” to “wealth is a social product of many people working together” required some admittedly convoluted reasoning. Parshat Terumah (פרשת תרומה) makes this point more simply and directly. The portion begins with this instruction:
 

וְעָשׂוּ לִי, מִקְדָּשׁ; וְשָׁכַנְתִּי, בְּתוֹכָם

Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them (Exodus 25:8)

A few verses later a further instruction is given concerning the making of the ark (ארון), the primary article of furniture in the Mishkan (משכן or Tabernacle):

וְעָשׂוּ אֲרוֹן

And they shall make an ark… (Exodus 25:10)

Nehama Leibowitz draws attention to the mode of address used here. She quotes the eighteenth-century rabbi Or Ha-hayyim:

The change in the wording from the second person singular [you shall make] to the third person plural [they shall make] is to illustrate that the essence of the Torah can only be fulfilled by Israel as a whole. For instance, a priest cannot fulfill the bestowing of the 24 priestly gifts, the redemption of the firstborn etc., whilst an Israelite cannot fulfil the positive commands of the sacrifices and the same applies to the Levite. But, taken as a whole, the Israelite people can keep the entire gamut of Jewish observances. For this reason the Torah states: “they shall make the ark.”

Nehama Leibowitz also quotes Midrash Tanhuma, which makes a similar point:

We find that when the Holy One Blessed be He instructed Moses to build the Tabernacle He used the expression ועשיתה “thou shalt make” but with regard to the Tabernacle He said: ועָשׂוּ “they shall make.” Why? The Holy One Blessed be He wished to stress that the command applied to each and every Israelite alike. No one should have the excuse to say to his fellow: I contributed more to the ark. Therefore I study more and have a greater stake in it than you! You contributed hardly anything therefore you have no share in the Torah…. That is why it is written (Deut. 33, 4): “An inheritance of the congregation of Jacob.”

If the ark is the product of many people working together, how much more so does this point apply to lesser achievements!

Agent and Principal (פרשת משפטים)

Last week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim (משפטים), includes an intriguing reference to a mysterious agent sent by God to assist the Jewish people in its journey to the Promised Land:

הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי שֹׁלֵחַ מַלְאָךְ, לְפָנֶיךָ, לִשְׁמָרְךָ, בַּדָּרֶךְ; וְלַהֲבִיאֲךָ, אֶל-הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר הֲכִנֹתִי. הִשָּׁמֶר מִפָּנָיו וּשְׁמַע בְּקֹלוֹ, אַל-תַּמֵּר בּוֹ:  כִּי לֹא יִשָּׂא לְפִשְׁעֲכֶם, כִּי שְׁמִי בְּקִרְבּוֹ.

Robert Alter translates the passage this way:

Look, I am about to send a messenger before you to guard you on the way and bring you to the place that I made ready. Watch yourself with him and heed his voice, do not defy him, for he will not pardon your trespass, for My name is within him (Exodus 23:20-21).

Alter comments that “the frankly mythological terms of the preceding narrative—the pillars of cloud and fire, the Destroyer in Egypt—invite us to imagine the messenger as a fearsome agent of God, perhaps human in form like the divine messengers in Genesis, leading the people through the wilderness.”

The 1985 JPS translation, the Sapirstein translation, and my grandmother’s 1957-1960 Menorah Press translation render the passage similarly except, in contrast to Alter’s more literal translation, they translate the Hebrew word מלאך as angel rather than messenger. The English word angel is derived from the Greek angelos, which literally means messenger or envoy.

Rashi explains that the messenger or angel is none other than Metatron (מטטרון), “whose name is like the Name of his Master,” meaning that its numerical value is equal to שדי (Shaddai, the Almighty). For Rashi, this is the meaning of “My name is within him,” though I am reminded of the much later legends about the golem, in some versions of which the clay creature is animated by placing a slip of paper or a tablet inscribed with the name of God under its tongue. Rashi adds that Metatron will not pardon trespass for two reasons: first, as an angel who is free of the evil inclination (יצר הרע) and does not sin, he is unaccustomed to forgiving; and second, “he is only an emissary [שליח] and does nothing but fulfill his mission.”

What else do we know about Metatron? Gershom Scholem, the great Israeli scholar of Jewish mysticism, noted that the Talmud mentions Metatron in the context of its polemics against Jewish heretics like Elisha ben Abuyah. He writes:

Elisha b. Avuyah saw Metatron seated [in a vision] and said, “perhaps there are two powers,” as though indicating Metatron himself as a second deity. The Talmud explains that Metatron was given permission to be seated only because he was the heavenly scribe recording the good deeds of Israel. Apart from this, the Talmud states, it was proved to Elisha that Metatron could not be a second deity by the fact that Metatron received 60 blows with fiery rods to demonstrate that Metatron was not a god, but an angel, and could be punished…. It is however thought that the appearance of Metatron to Elisha b. Avuyah led him to a belief in dualism.

Scholem’s discussion thus leads us to the Jewish heretic Elisha ben Abuyah, also called Akher (the Stranger), who became the model for Isaac Deutscher’s conception of the “non-Jewish Jew.” As Deutscher explained in his famous 1958 essay:

The Jewish heretic who transcends Jewry belongs to a Jewish tradition. You may, if you like, see Akher as a prototype of those great revolutionaries of modern thought: Spinoza, Heine, Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky, and Freud. You may, if you wish to, place them within a Jewish tradition. They all went beyond the boundaries of Jewry. They all found Jewry too narrow, too archaic and too constricting. They all looked for ideals and fulfillment beyond it…. It was this that enabled them to rise in thought above their societies, above their nations, above their times and generations, and to strike out mentally into wide new horizons and far into the future.

Now, Deutscher may be right that the Jewish heretic is the more farsighted individual with the wider horizon. But isn’t there a corresponding danger for the heretic that he will mistake, from his detached viewpoint, the agent—an agent without mercy—for the principal?