Purposes and pitfalls of repeated rituals

The chapter of Judaism Reclaimed which relates to parashat Tetzaveh exploresa number of activities, such as lighting the menorah and daily korbanot, with which the daily Mishkan workload was scheduled to start and conclude. Several of these activities attract the description 'tamid', which means ‘constant’; a term which sits uncomfortably with the reality that these activities were performed only once or twice a day, in the morning and evening. This difficulty is highlighted by the observation of Rashi, at the start of our parashah, that regular daily events can attract the term tamideven if they are not continuous. Why should this be?

One explanation of Rashi's statement is that the use of the term tamid to describe regular but non-constant activities provides us with a fundamental insight into how the dynamics of these cyclical events are viewed from the Torah's perspective. The opening and closing ceremonies of the Mishkan’s daily routine were not intended merely to supply an element of solemnity or grandeur. Rather, they contextualise and grant legitimacy to everything that happens during the span of time that passes between them. By validating the various offerings that were brought throughout the day, the opening and closing activities can be seen to exert a constant influence and thereby justify the Torah's description of them as tamid.

The burnt Tamid offerings, which open and close the daily sacrifices, are explained by Rabbi S. R. Hirsch as representing Judaism's delicate balance between the interests of the nation and the individual. In order for an individual's private korban to be valid, it must be offered in the time-space between these two public Temidim. This symbolises that, while Judaism provides space for individual expressions of worship, such expressions must acknowledge and respect the boundaries set by the Community.

R’ Hirsch cites Talmudic sources which describe how the Sadducees could not accept the public spirit of the Tamid offering, leading them to reject the notion that it is an obligatory national offering. The Sadducees, he continues, maintained that Jews can connect themselves to God only through the written letter of the Torah which is equally accessible to all, and that each individual is empowered to interpret and reject aspects of the Torah as he sees fit. This approach was mirrored by their rejection of the entire concept that halachah, as determined by the Sages, could regulate the efforts of an individual who is seeking to draw close to God through a korban.

Even though the Temidim were offered only twice daily, the description of 'constant' was thus justified by the crucial context they provided for all of the intervening private korbanot. The principle that the subjective religious expression of individuals must accord with the values of the Nation of God, to whom the Torah and its teachings were entrusted.

The menorah's light is understood in both midrashic and kabbalistic literature to represent the 'illumination' provided by the Torah's wisdom. Through the daily kindling of the Menorah, the Torah emphasises that the korban rituals are beneficial only when they are performed in a way that is consistent with the Torah's spirit and teachings.

Rituals, when practised without a proper understanding of their meaning and significance, have an unfortunate tendency to be stripped of their profound spiritual meaning. While it is true that the performance of all mitzvotis enhanced through a deeper understanding of their underlying meaning, awareness of the purpose and function of korbanot is particularly crucial. This is seen from the fact that manner of offering korbanot was repeatedly singled out for criticism by the prophets, who protested that the korban was being reduced to a superstitious ritual that was merely intended to appease God and persuade Him to ignore their sins. In view of this very real risk – that the korban may ultimately distance people from God rather than drawing them close - we can understand why the daily Mishkan service required the constant influence of the Menorah’s light to provide an essential context. An ongoing illuminating reminder for the entire sacrificial service.

The chapter proceeds to discuss the concept of ‘tamid’as it applies to other concepts in Judaism including the ‘constant commandments’ (mitzvot temidiyot), the obligation of Torah study and God’s ‘constant’ renewal of the world.

First posted on Facebook 5 March 2020, here.

A tenuous tale of two Tabernacles

By Daniel Abraham and Shmuli Phillips

After several weeks of lengthy elaborations on details of Mishkan construction, one could be forgiven for assuming that all details of God’s desert residence had now been unambiguously resolved. This is certainly not the case however according to Dr. Jaeyoung Jeon, a senior researcher at the University of Lausanne's Institute for Biblical Studies, writing on TheTorah.com (here). Dr. Jeon claims that two free-standing tales of tabernacle-tents can be identified in the Torah: a priestly version focused on rituals and sacrifices, and the Tent of Meeting at which Moshe received divine communications.

According to Dr. Jeon the distinguishing features of the priestly tent, whose construction was a national project, include its elaborate and intricate design as well as its central location for national sacrifice. Moshe’s tent, by contrast, was a simple tent pitched by Moshe alone at the edge of the camp. Instead of sacrificial ritual, Moshe’s tent was a place of prophetic encounter at which God communicated with Moshe and, by extension, the nation that he led. While the ‘’priestly tent’’ is depicted as a permanent resting place for God’s Presence, God must ‘’descend’’ in a pillar of cloud to appear at Moshe’s abode.

Most importantly, writes Dr. Jeon, the Torah’s accounts of events at ‘’Moshe’s tent” do not directly relate to their surrounding narratives. This, he claims, is evidence that the verses containing those accounts were later additions to the Torah’s text by an anti-priesthood school of scribes looking to challenge priestly control of religion in the early second Temple era.

Setting aside the author’s far-fetched claims of inter-scribal strife, this article on TheTorah.com is a perfect exhibit of the extent to which many academic source-critics are prepared to ignore far simpler ways of resolving the text internally. Rather than seeking to read and understand the text in its own terms, they let their pre-conceived (and often academically disputed) hypotheses propel them towards the creation of convoluted contradictions that compel them to carve up verses and passages to fit their arguments.

There are two obvious flaws in Dr. Jeon’s thesis. First of all, it ignores a verse (Exodus 38:8) in which both tents are described:

“And he made the washstand of copper and its base of copper from the mirrors of the women who had set up the legions, who congregated at the entrance of the tent of meeting”.

Which group of scribes, according to Dr. Jeon’s hypothesis, might have been responsible for referencing Moshe’s tent in the context of the construction of the priestly tabernacle?

Furthermore, while Dr. Jeon claims that “Exodus 33 is not directly related to the Golden Calf episode which it ostensibly continues”, an overview of the dynamics surrounding God’s communications with Moshe in the desert shows that the moving of Moshe’s tent plays an integral part in the narrative surrounding the construction of the Tabernacle.

In the initial months following the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt, none of God’s communications with Moshe appear to relate to any particular area or tent within the camp. It is only in the aftermath of the sin of the Golden Calf that God warns (Exodus 33:3) “I will not go up in your midst since you are a stiff necked people, lest I destroy you on the way”. Immediately following God’s disclosure that He will no longer be entering the camp “Moshe took the tent and pitched it for himself outside the camp, distancing [it] from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting, and it would be that anyone seeking the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp”.

Thus Moshe’s pitching of his tent outside the camp is a direct reaction to the fall-out from the Golden Calf sin. Moshe then prays that God will once again enter the camp and be amongst the people – a prayer that God appears to accept (33:15-17).

It is only months later however – in the second year following the Exodus – that the Tabernacle is constructed and God is once again willing to “reside” in the midst of the camp and communicate with Moshe there:

“And they shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell in their midst.” [Exodus 25:8]

“I will arrange My meetings with you there, and I will speak with you from atop the ark cover from between the two cherubim that are upon the Ark of the Testimony, all that I will command you unto the children of Israel.” [Exodus 25:22]

And immediately following the Tabernacle’s inauguration ceremony:

“When Moses would come into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Him, he would hear the voice speaking to him from between the two cherubim above the covering which was over the Ark of Testimony, and He spoke to him.” [Numbers 7:89]

From this point onwards, Moshe no longer appears to have a personal tent of any significance. The proposed distinctions between “Moshe’s tent” and the “Priestly tent” by Dr. Jeon become ever weaker and ignore considerable counter-indications from within the text itself that there is one single tabernacle where all these events take place.

Crucially it is Moshe alone and unaided who finally erects the “Priestly tent” in the closing sections of Exodus 40, and it is also Moshe who performs a high proportion of the sacrifices at its inauguration ceremony. This is a strong challenge to any hypothesis that seeks to identify Moshe and his tent as representing “lay leaders” in opposition to the exclusive and elite priestly caste.

While it is true that certain events highlighted by Dr. Jeon (Miriam and Aharon’s rebuke, the appointment of 70 elders, and the appointment of Yehoshua) do describe God descending or appearing in a cloud, this does not contradict the notion that God’s presence was ever-present in the Tabernacle. As the verses (above and elsewhere) make clear, God’s Presence resided within the Holy of Holies “between the two cherubim above the covering which was over the Ark of Testimony”. The events in which God descended in a cloud however took place at the “entrance of the tent” or “surrounding the tent” – which were not the regular places for prophetic communication.

A careful reading of the text also demonstrates that these events at “Moshe’s tent” are not described as taking place outside the Israelite encampment as Dr. Jeon claims. When the Torah seeks to signify people exiting the entire encampment it employs the phrase “יצא אל/מחוץ למחנה” as can be seen repeatedly in Leviticus 13-14, Numbers 5, 15, and regarding Miriam’s leprosy in Numbers 12). This too is the phrase used to describe Moshe removing his tent from the camp in the aftermath of the sin of the Golden Calf in Exodus 33. This phraseology is to be contrasted with the language used in the episode of the 70 elders and God’s rebuke of Aharon and Miriam (Numbers 11 and 12) where they are described merely as “יצאו”, going out to the tent, while Eldad and Meidad remain in the camp. This terminology indicates, as Ibn Ezra writes, that the people are being described as leaving the main Israelite camp and entering the area of the Mishkan (Machane Shekhinah) rather than departing from the entire encampment.

It is not merely the text of the Torah itself that invalidates the theory of Dr. Jeon. His claims that the verses describing Moshe’s tent are very late additions are disputed from within academic source criticism too. Rival biblical scholars theorise that the supposed "E" [Elohist] source is the one of the oldest sources—preceding other parts of the Torah by hundreds of years. Additionally, a further group of scholars argue that there never was an independent "E" source at all. Yet other scholars, such as Gary Rendsburg, are of the opinion that all narrative portions of the Pentateuch are from a single author, which would undermine Dr. Jeon’s claims.

In short, what we see here is scholarly willingness to ignore the simple flow of the narrative in Exodus 33 in order to isolate the descriptions of Moshe’s tent from the surrounding narrative and frame the passage as a contradiction between texts authored by rival scribal groups. Rather than examine possible ways of understanding the text that avoid claims of contradiction, the author ignores inconvenient verses that challenge his ideas and proceeds to construct outlandish theories, unsupported by evidence or credibility, which relate these verses to supposed power-struggles in the early second temple era.

First posted on Facebook 14 March 2021, here.

The Mishkan: a mishmash of misguided theories

By Daniel Abraham and Shmuli Phillips

As with other areas of academic interest in the Torah, the Mishkan (Tabernacle) has provided fertile ground over the years for those who seek to dispute traditional belief in biblical accounts of the Exodus and the Jews' subsequent journey through the Wilderness. While traditionalists are often portrayed as primitive and closed-minded for remaining loyal to their received texts, it is eye-opening to see the progression that these academic accounts have gone through over the years.

In the early days of source criticism, Julius Wellhausen confronted believers with a theory that the Tabernacle had never existed. The academic world of that era embraced the notion that the entire account was simply a retrojection of worship in the temple used to explain how the Israelites offered sacrifices in the desert. Wellhausen’s position is still upheld by some today, as Benjamin Sommer summarises: “many modern scholars contend that the priestly tabernacle is a fiction invented by priests in the exilic era to represent Solomon’s temple”.

Nevertheless, this theory has been increasingly challenged in recent decades, as scholars have started to identify specific parallels between the Mishkan and older shrines from the Ancient Near East. Sommer cites sources to show that several details of the Tabernacle’s structure and operation recall large tent sanctuaries used by Northwest Semites in the Late Bronze Age.

He adds “in some respects the tabernacle’s plan is closer to that of a genuine ancient Semitic tent shrine than to Solomon’s temple”. Sommer notes that just like the Tabernacle, these ancient Semitic shrines held “the presence of the god…traveled through the desert, and were made of red leather (as opposed to the usual black tent of Semitic nomads).” Furthermore “the use of acacia wood rather than olive or oak for building the ark and various elements of the tabernacle calls a desert setting to mind, because it comes from a tree common in the deserts south and southwest of Canaan”. This evidence led other scholars such as Richard Elliot Friedman to concede that “the Tabernacle probably was housed in the Shiloh structure. And then it was housed in the first Temple”.

Famed archaeologist, Kenneth Kitchen, shows that the Torah’s detailed account of the Tabernacle’s structure exhibits a number of parallels between the Tabernacle and other movable shrines that predate 1200 BCE. He writes of “large tents over wooden frames set in socketed bases were used for both ritual and royal purposes at Mari, still half a millennium before any Moses.” He also describes how divine houses in Ugarit myths from this time period draw not only upon similar themes, but even their terms to describe building materials are identical to those of the Torah (qerashim, ohel, mishkan).

Kitchen offers further detailed evidence supporting the antiquity of the Tabernacle, showing parallels of gods dwelling in Tabernacles, two levels of ritual priests similar to the Cohanim and Levites, consecration rituals for both high priests and sanctuaries lasting for days, wagons to transport these structures, the shape and style of the ark itself, and silver trumpets to assemble people and signal a march to war.

He then concludes: “Thus the old nineteenth-century dogmas must be abandoned in the face of those facts. There is no reason whatsoever to deny that the tabernacle and temple building accounts run true to form, and would normally be considered as records of actual work done. Thus, for the Sinai tabernacle, in retrospect, we possess a considerable—and growing—amount of valuable comparative data (much of it very old, and much, contemporary; far less, of later date) that favor the hypothesis that a small but well-decorated dismountable tent shrine (based on usages of its time) accompanied the Hebrew from Sinai to Canaan, its rituals being of appropriate modesty in extent and format.”

While the building materials of the Mishkan can therefore be seen to reflect those of an era which significantly pre-dates scholarly theories and estimates, the particular structure and layout of the Mishkan may contain an even more specific and significant theme.

One of the most significant recent developments in the traditional response to biblical criticism has been the work of Rabbi Dr Joshua Berman, who emphasizes the need to evaluate the Torah in the context of parallel literature from the Ancient Near East. In Ani Ma’amin, Berman shows how various key biblical features appear to have been deliberately formulated in a way that mirrors and, in crucial ways, departs from the religious, military and cultural writings of ancient Egypt.

Dr. Joshua Berman goes into great detail explaining how Ramesses II’s military camp at Kadesh “constitutes the closest parallel to the Tabernacle—including the Temple of Solomon—known to date”. As can be seen from the attached diagram, the layout and proportions of the Mishkan are identical to the military camp of Rameses II – believed by many to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus. In a recent post we showed how the Song of Sea could be seen as a deliberate appropriation of Rameses’ victory celebration over the Hittites – ironically replacing Rameses with the God of the Bible. Here too we can see the Torah’s subtle symbolism working to glorify God in place of the deified Egyptian monarch.

Berman adds that just like the four camps of Israelites in the desert: “Egypt’s four army divisions at Kadesh would have camped on the four sides of Ramesses’s tent compound”. In Richard Elliot Friedman’s words “its size, shape, proportions, surrounding courtyard, golden winged accoutrements, Eastern orientation, and arrangement of outer and inner rooms are a match”.

Berman concludes that the Egyptian parallel is far more convincing than previous scholarly attempts to view the Tabernacle in the context of Canaanite or Assyrian shrines: “Neo-Assyrian camps are routinely depicted as oval in shape, and feature no throne tent of any kind”. Had the Torah been written during the Neo-Assyrian or Babylonian exiles, which at one point represented the academic consensus, we would have expected any Israelite writer to have been influenced by the designs of these cultures’ temples rather than express intimate knowledge of Egyptian and Ugaritic religious and military structures from centuries earlier.

• Kenneth Kitchen, “On the Reliability of the Old Testament (2006)
• Richard Elliot Friedman, “Who Wrote the Bible” (1987)
• Richard Elliot Friedman, “The Exodus” (2017)
• Joshua Berman, “Inconsistency in the Torah” (2017); Ani Ma'amin (2020)
• Benjamin Sommer “The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel” (2011)
• James Kugel “How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now (2007)

First posted on Facebook 3 March 2022, here.

Where on Earth is God?

Yesterday’s Torah reading introduces us to a concept which is theologically challenging yet fundamental to our faith: that God can “dwell in our midst”. While the notion of God dwelling in a nation’s midst would seem to be conferring some sort of benefit on them, its precise meaning is complex and elusive. As the wise King Shlomo succinctly summarised during his dedication of the first Beit Hamikdash:

"Can God really dwell on earth? ... the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You, and surely not this Temple that I have built!" [Melachim I 8:27] 

The answer is indicated both in the continuation of Shlomo's speech (“But may you turn to the prayer … that Your servant shall pray towards this place”) and by God's subsequent response. God's 'residing' in a particular location represents, metaphorically, the notion that people’s prayers will be answered there, thereby making His existence more tangible to them.The Maharal (G.A. Bereishit 6:6) restates the problem before elegantly expanding upon this theme, explaining that God indeed 'fills the Earth' and cannot be confined to a specific place. One who claims, however, that all places are therefore equal to worship Him is attacking a core tenet of the Torah: the principle that God designates as 'holy' certain places in which He enables people to relate to Him more easily. Maharal’s statement highlights the tension that prevails between our awareness of God's infinity on the one hand, and the Torah's assertions that our ability to experience and relate to Him fluctuates in accordance with the limiting physical variables of time and place. 

In an almost “Maimonidean”-type manoeuvre, the Maharal clarifies that God’s dwelling in our midst does not imply any change in God – rather the “intervening screen” which typically diminishes our ability to perceive Him which is partially removed. This process, which is referred to biblically in terms of a relationship between God and His nation, evolves in Midrashic and Tannaitic Hebrew into a noun: “Shechinah” which is taken to denote God’s Presence in a particular place. 

Rambam’s presentation of this concept in the first section of Moreh Nevuchim focuses on the heightened providential opportunities that such a “divine dwelling” affords. One manifestation of this is the differential between the Land of Israel which “God’s eyes are always upon” [Devarim 11:12] and the rest of the world. Our analysis may help to clarify a perplexing statement of the Gemara that "anyone who lives outside the Land of Israel is considered not to have a God". Derashot HaRan (4) explains that a person who lives outside Israel distances himself from God's direct providence. In doing so, he forfeits the benefit of the special hashgachah-based relationship with God that only living in Israel can convey. Relatively speaking, therefore, such a person can be considered “not to have a God.” 

It is an important principle of Judaism that the opportunity to do good breeds a commensurate negative potential to do evil, and this principle manifests itself clearly in the 'residing' of the shechinah. While an increased concentration of hashgachah affords people an opportunity to enhance their perception and relationship with God, it is accompanied by the commensurate threat of a more direct and drastic response to any wrongdoing. This idea is used by Rabbeinu Nissim (Ran) in connection with God's sending an angel to oversee the Jewish People's journey to the Land of Israel in place of His personal direct Providence, which had governed the Jews’ progress until the sin of the Golden Calf.

The Netziv (Bemidbar 11:1), provides further examples of this principle, contrasting the immediacy of the punishment suffered by the 'mitonenim' (complainers) in the desert when compared to the relatively distant threatened punishments which would be visited upon the nation in the event of them sinning described in the book of Devarim. The Netziv deduces that this is due to a differential in the concentration of shechinah and hashgachah between that which existed in the desert at the time of the mitonenim, (whose complaints were "in the ears of God"), and the ‘regular’ hashgachah which would be present once the Jews had entered the land. 

Varying concentrations of shechinah or hashgachahmay also help us to explain the severe punishment meted out to Nadav and Avihu for bringing “strange fire” before God. The verse emphasises that their sin was committed “before God”, which indicates the presence of a heightened degree of the shechinah and an increased level of hashgachah. For this reason, the divine decree against them was both immediate and severe. Perhaps this is the real significance of the words "bikrovai ekadesh" (“among those close to Me will I be sanctified”): that God will be sanctified by the evidence of hashgachah among those closest to Him. This can be contrasted with the punishment received by King Uzziah in the late first Mikdash period for the same sin — the bringing of an unauthorised ketoret offering. Uzziah received punishment through the affliction of tzaraat, not death, because there was a reduced level of hashgachah after the inauguration of the Mishkan.

There is a tradition that "veshachanti betocham" refers not only to the shechinah residing in the Mishkan, but also alludes to each individual's mission to develop himself into a Mikdash within which the shechinah can reside. This teaching can be viewed consistently with Rambam's principle that the level of Providence that a person is capable of receiving is directly dependent on the extent to which he has developed his character and intellect. 

In Rambam’s understanding, as a person becomes more righteous, he gradually minimises the extent to which he is governed by forces of nature; through this process he becomes subject instead to God's direct hashgachah, which guides and facilitates his continued development. However, just as the direct hashgachah on a national level causes the nation to be judged more severely should they sin, so too an individual upon whom the shechinah resides is judged "kechut hasa'arah", causing him to be judged severely even for more minor infractions.

This reciprocal relationship between God and humanity is pointed out by Rambam in the closing stages of his Moreh Nevuchim where he writes that

“…the intellect that overflows towards us and is the bond between us and Him, may He be exalted. Just as we apprehend Him by means of that light which He caused to overflow towards us – as it says “In Your light do we see light” (Tehillim 36:10) – so does He, by means of that same light examine us; and because of it He, may He be exalted, is constantly with us, examining us from on high”. [3:52]

See more at www.TalmudReclaimed.com.

First posted on Facebook 18 February 2024, here.