OUR INDIGENOUS CULTURE

“When Moshe went into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Him, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the ark cover that was upon the Ark of the Testimony, from between the two cherubs. And He (God) spoke to him.”(Bamidbar 7:89)

Prior to the dedication of the Mishkan (Tabernacle), God would communicate with Moshe at Mt Sinai.   However, once the Mishkan was erected and dedicated on the first of Nissan in the second year following the Exodus, God would speak to his trusted prophet in that hallowed space. The Sages (Bamidbar Rabba 58) noted a contradiction between two verses regarding the exact location in the Mishkan where Moshe received prophecy. The opening verse in Vayikrah (1:1) states, “The Lord called to Moshe and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting.” This refers to the covered part of the Tabernacle (the Kodesh) on the outer side of the partition curtain (the parochet). A second verse from Shmot (25:22), states, “I will meet with you there, and I will tell you, from upon the ark cover, from between the two cherubs that are upon the Ark of the Testimony, everything that I will command you to the children of Israel.” This verse implies that God communicated with Moshe from between the two cherubs on the cover of the Ark which was situated in the Holy of Holies (the Kodesh Hakodashim) on the inner side of the partition curtain. How are we to resolve this contradiction?

The answer to this question requires us to employ one of the thirteen principles of Biblical interpretation that are listed by the Mishnaic sage, Rabbi Yishmael, in the opening section of the Sifra (also called Torat Cohanim), a legal Midrash on the book of Vayikrah. This list is included in our daily morning prayers and is indispensable for a proper understanding of the Torah. The thirteenth principle is: “When two passages seem to contradict each other, they are to be elucidated by a third passage that reconciles them.” An example of this is the famous trial of Avraham, whereby he was instructed to bring Yitzchak as an offering on Mt Moriah. Rashi records this in his commentary to Bereishit (22:12). At the end of the trial, after the sacrifice of Yitzchak was aborted when an angel told Avraham to desist, the aged patriarch addressed God: “First, You told me (Bereishit 21:12), “For it is through Yitzchak that descendants will be accounted to you” (Yitzchak would be the one to continue Avraham’s line rather than Yishmael). And then You said to me (ibid 22; 2), “Take now your son, your only one, whom you love: Yitzchak. And go you to the land of Moriah and offer him up there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains that I will tell you.” And now you tell me (ibid 22:12), “Do not raise your hand to the lad, and do not do anything to him…” [These statements of God clearly contradict each other.] “The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, (in the words of Tehillim 89:35), “My covenant will I not profane, nor alter that which is gone out of My lips”. When I told you, “Take your son”, I was not altering that which went out from My lips, namely, My promise that you would have descendants through Yitzchak. I did not tell you “Slay him” but bring him up to the mountain. You have brought him up — take him down again” (Bereishit Rabbah 56:8). 

In the case of the location of God’s communication to Moshe, the third verse that reconciles the first two is the closing verse of our parsha, “When Moshe went into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Him, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the ark cover that was upon the Ark of the Testimony, from between the two cherubs. And He (God) spoke to him.” From this verse, we see that both of the other verses are true:  Moshe went to the Tent of Meeting, to the area on the outer side of the partition curtain and waited there.  The voice of God then emanated from between the two cherubs on the cover of the Ark and from there, it travelled to the other side of the partition where Moshe was standing.

This is a fascinating idea. I would have thought that God was capable of causing Moshe to hear His voice directly, that is, straight from the Heavenly Realm to where the prophet was standing. But this was not the case – the voice first had to be ‘channelled’ via the space between the cherubs. Kli Yakar (Shmot 25:22) cites the famous passage in the Talmud (Brachot 8a) that “The Holy One, Blessed is He, has no place in His world other than the four cubits of Halacha.” It is a very puzzling statement that seems to imply that God is only found in a place where Halacha (Jewish Law) is studied. Why not in the soaring mountains, the wide oceans, the great expanses of the wilderness or the millions of stars in the galaxies? What is special about a Beit Midrash, a study hall, where Torah scholars debate the minutiae of Jewish Law? Kli Yakar explains that this is only where the learning is done in a peaceful way, where the protagonists are not arguing to prove a point or display their acumen but rather to find the truth. This is symbolised by the two cherubs which were situated on the lid of the Ark (which held the tablets of the Ten Commandments and the Sefer Torah that Moshe wrote) in a manner in which they faced one another. They were equals in the search for wisdom and truth. It is only into this place of truth that God’s word can descend and from there spread out to the rest of the world.

Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin (Oznayim L’Torah, Shmot 25:22), obviously taking his cue from the Talmud (Sukkah 5b) that the cherubs resembled a little boy and a little girl, notes that “when the young school-going children stand upon the cover of the Ark, then the Divine Presence rests upon the Jewish people and the Word goes out to His prophets. But when the young children are exiled [from their place upon the Ark], then the Divine Presence goes into exile with them” (Eicha Rabba 1:33). Jewish children need a foundation from which they derive their values, worldview and behaviour. That foundation and base is the Torah. In the words of Rabbi Aharon Feldman, the Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Yisroel in Baltimore, “the indigenous culture of the Jews is the Torah” (Eye of The Storm, page 37). He continues, “This was clear to the grandparents or great-grandparents of all of today’s living Jews. To them it was axiomatic that the Jews were a nation that believed in one God, who obligated them at Sinai to keep His commandments. The most wayward Jew of seventy-five years ago – even if he did not live by these ideals – recognized this much as fact.” Rabbi Feldman then goes on to bemoan secular left-wing Jews, especially in Israel, who have replaced the indigenous culture of Jews with a third-rate Western alternative. Yet he concludes on a positive note (page 40), “However, if history has any lesson to teach us, it is that attempts to uproot Torah from the Jewish people are always futile. This is the lesson we learn from events as far back as the Chanukah miracle, and as recent as the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Every nation that has attempted to uproot the Jewish people’s Torah has been relegated to the trash-bin of history. The Torah is eternal and its values will exist as long as the world exists.”

Lee, Chani Merryl & Naomi join me in wishing you Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Liebenberg.

This week’s YouTube message: https://youtu.be/oMOqMrazjHk?si=spkjXq7tfJq22kxT