Parshat Pekudei 5768: The Art of the Mishkan

For most years, Vayakhel and Pekudei are a double portion. As this is a leap year, they are separate. In last week’s portion Vayakhel we have Moses first giving the instructions for creating the Mishkan he learned on Sinai, employing the people to help in the construction with Betzalel as lead craftsman and architect. The people enthusiastically help out in its construction, so much so Betzalel has to ask for the donations to stop. In this week’s portion, Pekudei, all the pieces are completed, and Moses puts the components together for the first time. The cloud of glory covers the Mishkan to end the book of Exodus.

In this usual double portion I decided to do something similar to the text and make this a two-parter. I ended last week with a question: Should I do art on Shabbat? Using traditional texts, it becomes rather clear that there is a lot of halakic evidence that suggests art should not be done on Shabbat. I ended last week’s portion with a hint on one way of looking at this question differently however. We read this week:

Thus was all the work of the tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting finished; and the people of Israel did according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so did they.[Exodus 39:32]

In many ways this is similar to another passage in Torah:

1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. 3. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it He had rested from all his work which God created and made. [Genesis 2:1-3]

What is significantly different in these two passages is the word for work. In Genesis 2 the word is malacha (מלאכה), in Exodus 39 it is avodah (עבדה). As I mentioned last week, we started the construction of the Mishkan with the prohibition of work on Shabbat, and the rabbis took the definition of creative work, malacha, as the tasks necessary to complete the Mishkan, just like it was necessary to complete the works of creation in Genesis 2. But our text in Exodus 39 does not end construction with malacha but avodah.

Malacha based on God’s use of the word in Genesis 2, means creative work. It also can mean occupation. Thus as a general rule if we do something that creates, or something that is our career, then we are doing prohibited works on Shabbat. On the other hand avodah fundamentally means service. Avodah usually means a particular type of service, divine service or prayer. In the Perkei Avot, the weight of this is made clear:

Simeon the Righteous was one of the last of the men of the great assembly. He used to say: the world is based upon three things: the Torah, Divine Service, and the practice of kindliness. [Avot 1:2]

The early Rabbis made avodah, in their minds prayer, one of the pillars of the world. Yet a difference in words alone does not give me a complete answer.

Last Shabbat in a D’var Torah I gave on this same subject I asked the question about art and Shabbat. As it was a Reform congregation I got a lot of interesting answers, though many were along some of the avenues I discussed last week. Yet it was a few artists who said something that I had thought of, but its full impact hadn’t hit me. Sunday afternoon, when I attended my painting class, and experienced this comment I knew I was on to something.

What I was doing was painting a picture of a rose, ivy and a spider plant. All of my focus and concentration was on these three plants, and seeing every detail and every shade and color in them. Working on those leaves I realized what the artists in the discussion had said was completely true. When one works on art with focus and intention, you are observing the world differently than you normally do. Witnessing creation in this heightened sense is very different than in any other.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, try a rather startling experiment known in art instruction as blind contour drawing. Take a piece of paper and a pencil, and any object you want to draw, for example a cup of coffee. Put the pencil to the paper and draw the edges of the object without ever looking at the paper, never taking your pencil off the paper. Only concentrate your eye on the differing edges in the object, such as where your object meets the air, or where different parts connect. Just like mine, Your drawing may not look like much when you are done, but if you did the exercise right you have been finding and seeing things in the object you never would have otherwise seen had you merely looked at the object.

What I think happened in the construction of the Mishkan, the artisans, known as the wise of heart took the intention of building very seriously. It started as a job but as they built and created, it was no longer a creation, but a reflection of reality just like the blind contour drawing. Such a reflection was so deep, it was no longer work, but had changed into a prayer. They were not making something new but describing what was there all along. A painter might think of the paint flowing from the object onto the canvas or paper. This is no longer work; it is avodah, a prayer to the creator.

I believe I should paint on Shabbat. As an artist it is my unique and heartfelt prayer to God coming not from my lips but from my brush and hand. Painting is okay, but not completely. I’m going to add a few rules as well to make this as much of a special Shabbat experience as I can. Shabbat is about a very special time, a way a sanctifying time instead of space or object. I think one of the passages most of interest in this respect is one of the strongest statements about not doing anything with a painting:

Our Rabbis taught: The writing under a painting or an image may not be read on the Sabbath. And as for the image itself, one must not look at it even on weekdays, because it is said, Turn ye not unto idols. How is that taught? — Said R. Hanin: [Its interpretation is,] Turn not unto that conceived in your own minds.[Shabbat 149a]

While the whole seems rather harsh I think it points to an important truth, and one which resonates today in many ways. R. Hanin had it right: we should not turn to representations of reality and call them reality. That is the true idolatry. It is easy to look at the coffee cup and draw what you think is there, like I did here. As most good art educators will tell you, most of our drawing abilities never increase beyond third grade because we do exactly that. We put symbols in place of what is really there. In most art, unless we are consciously doing so, we should not turn reality into a symbol, and then add a caption to that symbol to tell people what to believe. In the ancient world that was exactly what they did. Someone might make a picture of something, and in its caption call the picture a god, and thus worthy of worship. Today from the local news to reality TV to even taking dramas all too seriously, it’s easy to fall victim of turning one person’s creative vision into reality in the same way.

Each artist, painter, photographer, or video cameraman, looks at the word differently and shows their own perspective. I could make a quick sketch of the same coffee cup but leave out details or see some more clearly than others for example. To use their vision as our own is to limit our own vision, and start not with the infinite, but the finite view of that artist. I can see the whole word in photographs, and yet not have experienced any of it. I can paint a beautiful model for a reference photograph, but it is nothing like painting a real woman. The photograph took the artistic ability of the model and the photographer and gives me only one flat view of a much greater, dynamic scene. God made the bigger scene; we made the photo in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. God made Maui, some photographer shot a few miniscule pieces of it.

To witness creation we need to witness creation itself, not a representation of it. From that concept comes the new restriction in my Shabbat observance, one that dove tails nicely into my own prohibitions of not watching television, or listening to music on Shabbat, all of which give limited representations of creation. I no longer use reference photos on Shabbat, I work from life only. I witness what is really in front of me, for all its detail and grandeur. Looking in this way brings me more towards a true avodah, where creativity changes into a prayer allowed on Shabbat.

It is a historical irony not lost on me that one of the people who gave a wonderful response at my D’var last week is the daughter of a rabbi I’ve learned from for a while. . Her idea was to focus on the idea of career for the prohibition of malachah, and not creative work. To her, creative work expressing one’s Judaism, like making a talit, was a good thing to do on Shabbat. In one of her father’s books and his prolific e-mails, he inspired me to write my own Shabbat halacha over eleven years ago. That Shabbat halacha changes now, and to close this week’s portion I thought I’d give you the new and revised version, of how I look to Shabbat for a time of joy, of holiness and of rest.

Shlomo’s Shabbos

Live Juicy one day a week. Start it with candles. Read Torah and Talmud and contemplate them. Wear wild Hawaiian shirts. No Internet, iPods, or TV or anything else electronic. Walk when you can, walk for the fun of it. Don’t buy anything but food or medicine. Love. If no one else is around love yourself. Don’t forget to hug! Spend time relating to other people. Have outrageous conversations. Eat a REALLY good meal. Dessert and sweets were created for Shabbos!!! Be sensual. Use all your senses to consciously taste, smell, see, touch, and hear. Sense how wonderful everything is. Paint and draw the beauty in Creation as you see it. Read spiritual books and novels of imagination. Take naps. Pray and Play. It doesn’t matter what or how -just play. Sing for the joy of singing, sing for the joy of God. With instruments, even if you can’t. Don’t do anything that has to do with work-unless someone's life is in danger. Bless God, yourself, everyone, and everything else.

May your Shabbat be one of rest, holiness and delight.

Parshat Balak 5767: The Peor Outbreak

Numbers 22:2-25:9

In this portion, King Balak of Moab watches all of his neighbors go down to defeat militarily at the hands of the Israelites. He sends envoys to the greatest magician in the area, Balaam, to curse the advancing Israelites. After a series of adventures, Balaam meets up with Balak, and sets up the curse. Three times in a row, the curse ends up as a blessing, the most famous now known as the prayer “ma tovu” and Balak is furious. But Balaam comes up with a plan for biological warfare. At the very end of this section, we read:

Israel stayed in Shittim, and the people began to commit harlotry with the daughters of Moab. They called the people to the sacrifices of their gods; so the people ate, and bowed down to their gods. Then Israel attached himself to Baal-Peor; and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. [Numbers 25:1-3]

A plague ensues, killing 24,000 people, more than any other plague. The plague ends in a bizarre manner:

And, behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought to his brothers a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the people of Israel, who were weeping before the door of the Tent of Meeting. When Pinhas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation, and took a javelin in his hand;

He went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly. So the plague ceased from the people of Israel. [Numbers 25-6:8]

I’m obsessed about this plague. Actually I’m intrigued by what the rabbis did with it. There are two clues in the text that explain how they come to their conclusions. The first is the name of the pagan god, Baal Peor. Baal in Hebrew means master or lord, and the common beginning of a number of such pagan god-names. So in Hebrew for example Zebuv means flies. Thus the Baal Zebuv (Beelzebub in Greek) of II Kings 1 can be translated the lord of the flies. Breaking the word Peor into syllables we have Peh meaning opening and Ohr meaning skin. Thus Baal Peor is lord of the skin orifices.

The second is a phrase in the text the people ate, and bowed down to their gods [Numbers 25:3] The Rabbis believed that there was significance to this sequence, best explained in the following story:

Rab Judah said in Rab's name: A gentile woman once fell sick. She vowed, “If I recover, I will go and serve every idol in the world.” She recovered, and proceeded to serve all idols. On reaching Peor, she asked its priests, “How is this worshipped?” They replied, “People eat beets, drink strong drink, and then uncover themselves before it. She replied, I would rather fall sick again than serve an idol in such a manner.” [Sanh. 64a]

As an Environmental Health professional I see this as an outbreak from fecal sources. When one eats and sacrifices in a room full of sewage bad things are going to happen.

Last week I began a speech at my professional association’s conference with the Peor incident. In Hebrew there is no word for enforcement, the modern word actually is a word for oppression. The point of my speech was good EH people modify the behavior of others instead of enforcing behavior. Health inspectors need to be more story tellers and less cops.

While attending sessions at the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) Education Conference and talking to many people between sessions, I kept getting a sinking feeling. Environmental Health Professionals, what some people call health inspectors or sanitarians get a bum rap. We either get ignored or blamed for not doing the right thing. Yet we are rarely given the resources to do our job properly in the first place. From government regulators to industry auditors, the story was the same. Environmental heath is the under funded orphan of public health.

We are often confused with environmental protection. Environmental protection might be described as protecting the planet from environmental contaminants. On the other hand environmental heath is protecting people from biological and chemical contaminants in the environment.

Environmental Health is a prevention, investigation and education activity, and thus its benefit is difficult to see. If done well, nothing happens. It thus becomes the last thing to be funded either in industry or in government.

Yet this is not the frame of mind in Biblical thinking. Prevention, from the fence on the roof to the fence around Torah is deeply rooted in biblical tradition. One example given not long after the Baal Peor incident is this one:

You shall have a place also outside the camp, where you shall go out to it; You shall have a spade among your weapons; and it shall be when you will ease yourself outside, you shall dig with it, and shall turn back and cover your excrement;[Deut 23:13-14]

It is a matter of environmental heath to keep fecal matter away from public areas and to dispose of it properly. It’s a commandment to dispose of sewage properly.

The lead character in the biblical environmental health story is the Priest, which throughout both Leviticus and Numbers we hear of the number of health related issues the priest was responsible for. Yet the priest who was responsible was not the High Priest, but the vice priest. The High Priest, in order to do his sacrificial duties, could not be involved with public health. Too many situations required quarantine and decontamination procedures which would make him unfit for performing sacrifice. Instead it was the second in command who did these things.

The man who stops the plague of Baal Peor is none other than the vice priest, Pinhas. He stops it by killing just one Israelite having sex with a Midianite in the Mishkan. In doing so he changes the minds of everyone who was seduced into Baal Peor worship. The seduction had reached the point of addiction according to the rabbis. By changing people attitudes he saves everyone. In my mind Pinhas is the first Environmental Health official, the first good Sanitarian.

While I don’t condone throwing javelins through health regulation offenders, Pinhas begins a model which we find throughout the tradition. Balaam in this section is involved with magic and in many places in the Torah we find prohibitions against magic. Yet, there is one kind that the Talmud condones: Magic that keeps people healthy. Such practices can be curative, but even more important is preventative magic. Pinchas in killing one person broke Balaam’s spell of seduction. Exposure to the pathogens hovering around Baal Peor’s temple stopped, and contamination waned. It was miraculous, but it also was good science through prevention and behavioral science. Following the ideal of building a fence around Torah, the Rabbis did the same thing for human beings, noting preventative practices. Describing many of the microorganisms of today as demons they instituted many policies that still stand the test of time. For example, they advised against spending time in swamps or sewers, advocated washing hands before eating, and prohibited eating food which has sat out too long or under a bed.

When I wonder about environmental health I go back to the ancient sources, and see that it has always been there. It may have been demons instead of microorganisms back then, but the world still had EH in some form or another. We in EH have been protecting the population since the Exodus from Egypt, and I truly hope we will do so till the end of time.

Parshat Behar Behukotai 5767: Quid pro quo?

Leviticus 25:1-27:34

In a double portion, finishing up the book of Leviticus this week we read:

1. You shall make no idols or graven image, nor erect a pillar, nor shall you set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down to it; for I am the Lord your God. 2. You shall keep my Sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary; I am the Lord. 3. If you walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; 4. Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.[26:1-4]

While all the good things continue for a few verses, we then read these verses

14. But if you will not listen to me, and will not do all these commandments; 15. And if you shall despise my statutes, or if your soul loathes my judgments, so that you will not do all my commandments, but that you break my covenant; 16. I also will do this to you; I will appoint over you terror, consumption, and fever, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart; and you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. [26: 14-16]

This will lead to progressively worsening conditions from famine to invasion to exile, until what remnant would be left of the Israelites would become paranoid exiles in foreign lands, afraid of the rustling of leaves.

Last week I put a footnote about Haya Im Shmoah, the reading from Deuteronomy 11 that is often omitted in liberal liturgy of the Shema. Haya Im Shmoah begins:

13. And it shall come to pass, if you shall give heed diligently to my commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14. That I will give you the rain of your land in its due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, and your wine, and your oil. 15. And I will send grass in your fields for your cattle, that you may eat and be full. 16. Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and you turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; 17. And then the Lord’s anger be kindled against you, and he closed the skies, that there should be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest you perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord gives you. [Deut. 11:13-17]

In both Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 11 there is a quid pro quo view of divine commandment and intervention. Do bad things and get bad. Do good things and get good. Some find this it a simple model of theodicy, the philosophy and theology of why bad things happen. There are preachers and rabbis who say that 9/11 or Katrina was a punishment for our misdeeds. For most however, this is simplistic and absurd, if not a heartless, painful way of describing such tragedies. So many people, not wanting to believe in such directness, reject such passages.

I’m not so sure rejection is wise. There are two issues that intrigue me about both passages I have a hard time ignoring. One is apparent only in the Hebrew. Unless one lives in the southern United States, in English “you” expresses both singular and plural. These sections are in the plural. They are addressed at a society as a whole. We as individuals cannot live to that expectation. We take the burden of all of society on our selves. We would need to be responsible for everything – and we can’t.

The specific transgression that causes the bad things is Idolatry. What is Idolatry? As we read repeatedly, Idols were physical objects which one bribed in order to get something in return. The Torah, given this understanding, makes another leap. Idolatry was not bribing a god at all but mere self absorption. Since there is nothing really there but a block of wood, the idol is a self delusion, a honoring of the Self instead of honoring the Creator of All.

Shabbat, the Sabbaticals and Jubilees we read about in this portion are about physical rest of people, economies and of course the land. They are also pauses from the regular grind to remind us we are in relationship with everything. In such pauses, we learn to be amazed at how wonderful and powerful such relationships are. Today it would be hard to find many people actually sacrificing to a wood or stone idol as a god. It is a different matter to think of self-absorption as idolatry. When we spend all of our time working or doing the stuff that matters to us personally and for our personal benefit only then we too are guilty of Idolatry.

Martin Buber believed we need to get away from the I-it experience of idolatry and move to the I-thou relationship, where the I was our perception of everything else. We hear repeatedly, from the first utterance at Sinai on, I am the Lord. There is a third possibility, I-I. We as limited beings are not everything, but instead part of an entire system of relationships, not one relationship, but infinite relationships with infinite things. God transcends these relationships. God created matter, but also created the relationships of all of these things. God is the entirety of those relationships. The first ‘I’ is the ‘I’ of I am the Lord, the entire system. That ‘I’ meets the ‘I’ of the limited human of I-Thou. I-I describes us as an integral and vital part of God. We are also an infinitely small part of God as well because everything else is too. As Heschel reminds us, we do carry two passages with us always, The world was made for my sake and I am but dust and ashes.

It was not because you were greater than any people that the Lord set His love upon you and chose you. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel, I love you because even when I bestow greatness upon you, you humble yourselves before me. I bestowed greatness upon Abraham, yet he said to Me, I am but dust and ashes;(Gen 18:27)[Chullin 89a]

To proclaim the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He: If a man strikes many coins from one mold, they all resemble one another, but the Supreme King of Kings, The Holy One, Blessed Be He, fashioned every man in the stamp of the first man, and yet not one of them resembles his fellow. Therefore every single person is obliged to say: The world was created for my sake. [Sanh. 37a]

When we lose this perspective then we move into idolatry. We must remember we are integral to every other relationship, and yet be very humble about that role. If our deeds are for the Self only, we stop caring how we affect all other relationships. When we stop caring, we cause damage. Such damage is cumulative, first affecting us in small ways then bigger ones, until our entire world is destroyed. Each one of us has the potential to do this. If a lot of people do the same the damage is worse. In whole societies we see the damage.

Divine retribution is not quid pro quo. It is the consequence of our actions. We are responsible for everything, as God commanded humanity back in Genesis 2. We have a stewardship of our personal and professional relationships to our communal and environmental ones. Such stewardship requires us to do the right thing and have the right relationships. Each will affect the other. All too often we forget that. When I davven Haya Im Shmoah, or read a passage like this week’s I am reminded once again.