Creating Through Unity
Thoughts on VaYakhel 2019
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And
Bessalel and Aholiav and every wise-hearted man in whom God has given wisdom
and understanding to know how to do the task of the holy work, shall do all
that God has charged. (Shemot 36:1)
The Hakhamim
described the uniqueness of Bessalel, the head contractor of the Mishkan,
in a single sentence:
Rav Yehudah said that Rav said: Bessalel knew how to join the
letters with which heaven and earth were created.[1]
Understood
within context of the Torah’s many thematic and linguistic similarities between
the Mishkan and Creation,[2]
the Hakhamim were teaching that the Mishkan represented a “second
creation.” The “letters of creation” are likewise a reference to the Rabbis’
cryptic portrayal of creation with letters, as the Talmud elsewhere refers to
our ability to create by means of Sefer Yessirah – a book that details
the central role of the Hebrew alphabet (“letters”) in beriat ha-olam.[3]
It is
surprising, however, that as they likened the construction of the Mishkan to
Creation, the Rabbis spoke about the “joining of letters.” The Torah’s
telling of Creation, after all, is an elaborate story of the opposite verb – separation.
Following God’s initial creation of formless matter (tohu va-vohu), each
of His next consecutive actions represented separation – light from darkness
(1:3-4), the upper “waters” from the lower ones (6-7), dryland from water
(9-10) and day from night with the heavenly bodies (14-18). Indeed, political
philosopher Leo Strauss once remarked, “Creation is the making of separated
things.”[4]
Ramban
(R. Moshe b. Nahman) relatedly wrote that the letters of the Torah are in fact
a sheet of God’s names that Moshe separated in a particular way, to yield the
words and sentences that express meaning in our text. The Torah could
theoretically be read to portray altogether different meanings, however, by
dividing its letters into different words and sentences.[5]
The great kabbalist R. Yosef Gikatilla similarly expressed: “The Book is
therefore not vocalized, has no intonations, and lacks punctuation, for the
Torah contains all wisdom, revealed as well as concealed … And thus, the Torah
may be interpreted in many aspects as man inverts the verses one way or
another.”[6]
“Creation” of our Torah is thus likened to that of the World – as a “formless
matter” of thousands of letters incoherently strung together take form by means
of a deliberate process of separation.
Describing
Bessalel’s divine power to create, then, we would perhaps have expected the Hakhamim
to refer to his ability to “separate the letters with which heaven and
earth were created” – the absolute opposite of their reference to his “joining”
those letters!
Consider,
however, that the Torah twice expresses a theme of unity in the context
of constructing the Mishkan:
And you shall join the panels to one another with the clasps, that
the Mishkan be one whole. (Shemot 26:6)
And you shall join the tent, that it become one whole. (26:11)
Indeed,
the very idea of turning to the people for their donations (terumah) was
interpreted by some as an expression of unity, as well. “Having been liberated
from slavery, they were now asked to embark on a community project…everyone was
able to contribute something to its construction and take pride in what was
accomplished,” Kenneth Seeskin wrote.[7]
Countering a world that was built and maintained through separation,
then, the Mishkan introduced an alternate reality of creation through unity.
This
contrast between the construction of the Mishkan and Creation arises
with regards to the mystical concept of simsum (contraction), as well.
The kabbalists long pondered the paradox of an infinite God’s creation of a
finite world, questioning the existence of anything aside from Himself. R.
Yisshak Luria, the Ari z”l, famously taught that God created by means of
simsum. By “withdrawing” into Himself, God consequently “made space” for
the existence of a physical world.[8] A midrash
that imagined a conversation between Moshe and God regarding construction of
the Mishkan, however, mentioned the concept of simsum with an opposite
meaning! According to the midrash, God responded to Moshe’s confusion
about building a sanctuary to “house” Him, by explaining: “Moshe, not as you
think. Rather, twenty boards to the north, twenty boards to the south and eight
to the west – and I will descend and contract (mesamsem) My
presence among you below.”[9]
Whereas beriat ha-olam took place by means of God’s “separation,” the
very entity of the Mishkan sought His “union.”
Rav Yehudah said that Rav said: Bessalel knew how to join the
letters with which heaven and earth were created.
Using
the very same “letters” of beriah, Bessalel transformed the concept of
creation by introducing the foundational reality of creation though unity.
Living in a world first created through separation, much of our own
interactions take place within the frame of distinction – we associate
ourselves from different people, thoughts, ideas, allegiances, etc. Joining
“letters” and materials to one another, the Mishkan connected Am
Yisrael to one another and to God. And it introduced the eternally relevant
paradigm of creation through unity.
In memory of Felix Torgueman z”l – a “man of letters” who created
through “unity.”
[1] Berakhot 55a.
[2] Recall our thoughts on Parashat
Tessaveh 2019, “Man-Made.”
[3] See, e.g., Sanhedrin 65b
and 67b.
[4] Leo Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” L’Homme 1981 (21:1), pg. 9. Cf. our
thoughts to Parashat VaEra 2017, “Separation & Unity.”
[5] Introduction to the Commentary
of Ramban on the Torah.
[6] R. Yosef Gikatilla, Shaarei
Sedek. Cited by Moshe Hallamish in An Introduction to the Kabbalah
(New York, NY, 1999), pg. 217.
[7] Kenneth Seeskin, Thinking
About the Torah: A Philosopher Reads the Bible (Philadelphia, PA, 2016),
pg. 99. Cf. our thoughts on Parashot VaYakhel-Pekudei 2017, “The Unity
Project.”
[8] See, e.g. Gershom Scholem’s Major
Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, NY, 1995), pg. 260-4.
[9] Pesikta DeRav Kahana 2:10.
See, as well, Shemot Rabah 34:1. And R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s
analysis in Halakhic Man (Philadelphia, PA, 1983), pg. 49-52, as noted
by R. Reuven Ziegler “The Halakhist as Creator,” in Books of the People:
Revisiting Classic Works of Jewish Thought (New Milford, CT, 2017), pg. 282
fn. 25. And Cf. R. Shai Held’s “Being Present While Making Space,” in The
Heart of Torah vol. 1 (Philadelphia, PA, 2017), pg. 184-8.