Parashat Tzav, Leviticus 6:1-8:36

The threshold is where our Judaism is tested

Remember Alice who followed the rabbit down the rabbit hole? Her adventure really began when, at the very bottom of the hole, she came upon a series of doors and was unable to open any of them:

However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted! Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head though the doorway…

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 1

She eventually made it through. Her choice was somewhat easier than the conundrum faced by the heroine in Frank Stockton's classic short story "The Lady or the Tiger?" . In this story a man is sentenced for the crime of loving a princess. As with all criminals in his community he is brought into an arena with two doors. His sentence is determined by which door he chooses. One choice means immediate death at the mercy of a ferocious feline; the other choice results in marriage to a lovely femme fatale. The twist is that his beloved princess knows who or what is behind each door and gives her lover the signal. But we are never told which door is chosen. This is a life-and-death version of Let's Make a Deal. We seem to have an insatiable curiosity for what lies behind those doors. Will it be the latest car with all the bells and whistles, or just honest-to-goodness bells and whistles?

While the function of doors has not changed, the psychology of doors has. Do we go through a door to get away from it all, or to be part of the action? Put it another way: Do you prefer the privacy of your backyard or the community of your front stoop? This is a question that has played a significant role in a movement called "New Urbanism." Also known as traditional neighborhood design, the idea is to build our cities and towns in such a way as to foster community. This is based on diversity in housing, public spaces, and transportation. It is the opposite of what is commonly called urban and suburban sprawl.

Entranceways are one of the differences between sprawl and the vision of New Urbanism. Drive down the streets of most suburbs that have sprouted in the last few decades and you will be overwhelmed by the garages. It is no longer the entrance to the home that is important but the rear patio door that leads to the supposedly private backyard. In more traditional neighborhood design, the garage is less noticeable and the big front porch has made a comeback.

The overall goal of these new neighborhoods is to recreate the social interaction that has disappeared from most of our current subdivisions. Simply moving the houses closer to the streets and providing tree-lined sidewalks doesn't guarantee pedestrian interaction. However, by locating porches close to the sidewalks, residents can easily converse with neighbors as they pass by. Contrary to most conventional subdivisions, traditional neighborhoods encourage residents to become acquainted with their neighbors. One result of people knowing one another is a renewed sense of safety, both for children and adults.

Larry Garnett, Porches with Purpose

On a porch it's possible to be in a private space and still participate in a public sense—and the public can participate in a home owner's private world.

Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk quoted in
A Room without Walls: Rediscovering the Front Porch by Jason Miller

The intersection of private and public space plays an important role in Parashat Tsav. While continuing the levitical focus on the variety of offerings and the rituals surrounding them, the very end of Tsav shifts our focus to the folks in charge of the sacrifices - the kohanim (priests) – and to the intriguing details of their ordination:

Moses said to Aaron and his sons: Boil the flesh at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting and eat it there with the bread that is in the basket of ordination — as I commanded: Aaron and his sons shall eat it; and what is left over of the flesh and the bread you shall consume in fire. You shall not go outside the entrance of the Tent of Meeting for seven days, until the day that your period of ordination is completed. For your ordination will require seven days. Everything done today, the Lord has commanded to be done [seven days], to make expiation for you. You shall remain at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting day and night for seven days, keeping the Lord's charge — that you may not die — for so I have been commanded.

Leviticus 8:31-35

It is intriguing that priests are to remain at the entrance to the tent (petach ohel) for the week of ordination. Perhaps it is my modern sensibility, but to my mind it makes more sense if the priests are well within the tent during those seven days. Shouldn't they be meditating on the role they are about to undertake? Isn't it distracting to sit at the entrance to the tent?

In the Torah the entrance to the tent (petach ohel) is a special place. Abraham greets the three divine visitors as he sits at the entrance to his tent. (Genesis 18:1-2) In fact, Rashi tells us he specifically chose this location in order to provide hospitality to passers-by. Sarah overhears the news that she will bear a son at her petach ohel. (Genesis 18:10) Sforno notes that the angel announcing the birth of Isaac was actually there to address Sarah. This is a spiritually important location. God speaks to Moses at the petach ohel (Exodus 33: 9, Deuteronomy 31:15), sometimes in the presence of Israel. (Exodus 33:8, 10) This is also where God rebukes Aaron and Miriam. (Numbers 12:5) Korach and his fellow rebels meet their fate at the entrance of the tent. (Numbers 16:27)

Even when we are no longer wandering in the desert and no longer living in tents, the threshold retains its importance. This Shabbat's proximity to Purim reminds us that Esther too stood at the threshold awaiting recognition from the king to invite him and Haman to a banquet. (Esther 5:1) Esther's threshold is spiritual as well as physical. She hides her Judaism in order to enter the palace. Now, at the threshold before the king, she initiates a plan wherein she must reveal her true self.

Living in our modern society, are we still sensitive to the petach ohel as both a physical and spiritual place. Where are we in relation to our modern-day tents? Are we inside: physically isolated and mentally insulated? We all know of people who draw the blinds and lock their doors, not bothering to look out at the greater community. As well, we are acquainted with other individuals who prefer to be on the outside, physically and spiritually, not even bothering to peek in.

The threshold is the boundary between the public and private spheres, the dividing line between the sacred and the profane. In the Torah, the priests are not hermits. Their role puts them at the center of the community. Even their private preparations entail public presence.

Actually, the sacred area is not in the inside of the tent, nor is the public space outside: The threshold is the sacred space. The point at which the areas meet, the entranceway, the threshold, the tent door, this is the most sacred of spots where God speaks to us because this is where we must respond.

"Be a Jew at home and a man outside of it." This was the lesson of the Haskalah (Enlightenment) as summarized by the poet Yehuda Leib Gordon . Judaism was in the tent. The moment you walked out the entrance you were a participant in the modern world. Over a century later, experience has shown us that this is not so. The threshold is where our Judaism is tested: not in the comfort of home or synagogue, but at the moment we set foot through that doorway to interact with the world around us.

This is what the priests found out and what Esther learned. It remains our challenge as Jews today. When we walk towards that entrance, we know that that is where God’s presence is so strong and yet so fragile. This is the area we must approach with the resolve embodied in the psalmist’s prayer:

Open up gates of righteousness
I will approach and thank the Eternal one.

Psalms 118:19

Shabbat shalom,
MS

Parashat Noah, Genesis 6:9-11:32

The towers we construct in our society make it possible to be scattered in the midst of others.

On a recent drive, I got caught in an area without a strong radio signal. This is a relatively uncommon occurrence today with satellite radio. Scanning the airwaves for a recognizable sound, any sound, had a surprisingly nostalgic effect, a reminder of sitting by a radio on a clear night turning the dial to see how distant a signal you could get. Was it a baseball game from across the country? If you had shortwave, which nation came through loud and clear? The static and sputtering inevitably gave way to something weak but audible and provided a connection that stirred the imagination.

What could be more thrilling than the sound heard half a century ago, the faint blips from Sputnik, the first satellite launched into space? The recognizable sound pattern that made its way through the static on October 4, 1957 heralded the beginning of the space age. This Russian success followed on a number of American failures in rocketry. It gave new focus to the Cold War and spurred the race to the moon.

Looking upward, striving to reach new heights seems to be inbred within us. The quest to scale unimaginable heights is found in a small story in Parashat Noah, the well-known tale of migdal bavel, the Tower of Babel.

Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard." — Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar. — And they said, "Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world." (Genesis 11:1-4)

This story in Genesis has inspired much in the Western world. Countless works of art deal with the Tower of Babel. The word even makes its way into popular culture thank to Douglas Adam's creative use of the word "Babel" in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language."

While the end result in the Tower of Babel story is that God "confounded the speech of the whole earth" (Genesis 11:9), Douglas Adam's "Babel fish" picks up on what the inhabitants in the biblical tale were trying to do – unite humanity.

The Tower of Babel symbolizes independence, unity and strength. Let's even toss creativity into the mix. After all, it takes a certain degree of sophistication to build a city and a tower. We still do this. Consider how many major cities vie with each other to have boasting rights to the tallest structure in the world.

This story has inspired creativity in commentators who – pardon the pun – rise to the challenge of explaining the Tower's purpose. The most creative explanation comes from Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz, who viewed the Tower as a type of launching pad for flying vehicles to the moon. It had to be far enough above the atmosphere so that these vehicles would not be subject to strong winds and other natural elements. (This from his commentary, Tiferet Yehonatan, which was written in the eighteenth century!) The Tower was a creative response to the dangers of the world which could be destroyed by a divinely ordained flood, such as the one that had occurred during Noah's time. Think of these flying vehicles as interstellar arks. It was a human attempt at self-preservation and could only be achieved through unity. As such, it was the mirror image of what occurred during the generation of the flood, when humanity was divided, and Noah needed to be instructed as to what to do. Tiferet Yehonatan implies that the builders of the Tower, using their own initiative, embarked on a mission of self-preservation.

An equally modern explanation with far different results was put forth by the nineteenth century commentator Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, (Netziv):

Since the views of human beings are not the same, they (the builders of the Tower) were concerned that others should not have a different perspective. Therefore, they would watch that no one would leave their city, and those who expressed an opposing view were sentenced to death by burning… It seems their shared words became an obstacle and they decided to kill anyone who did not think as they did. (Ha'emek Davar on Genesis 11)

In this explanation, what passed for unity was forced on the individual in a totalitarian manner. The Tower symbolizes a guard tower that one might find in a prison.

This explanation is more along the lines of the midrashic view that the quest to build this symbol of human strength resulted in a lack of concern for the individual. Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer recounts how if a person carrying the bricks up the Tower fell down and died, the work nevertheless continued, but if a brick fell down all the builders stopped and wept. The glory of the collective vision was constructed at the expense of the individual's life.

In its own way, the Tower of Babel was the biblical equivalent of the space race. While the quest to conquer space arose out of suspicion and distrust, it nevertheless showed the heights of human creativity and ingenuity. What began with some barely discernible sounds from a basketball size satellite, eventually led to a photograph taken by the Apollo 8 crew that put the universe and our place in it into perspective: Perhaps we need to be on a tall tower looking down to realize the vulnerability of humanity. Similarly, the desire to build "a tower with its top in the sky" could fulfill different needs. It could be used to "make a name for ourselves" with all the positive and negative implications of this desire. Equally, it could be a symbol of the people's unity and caring, a solution for the inevitable – being "scattered all over the world."

The former concern is doomed to fail because of selfishness, the latter because of unintended consequences. Think of modern cities, full of people living in towers. According to a number of urbanists, such as Jane Jacobs, we plan cities, but we don't allow communities to develop. While our population density increases and we are surrounded by others, we create buildings that leave us increasingly isolated. More becomes less. The towers we construct in our society make it possible to be scattered in the midst of others.

The Tower of Babel, the space race, and our urban centers share the flawed magnificence of human undertakings. Each, in its own way, is dazzlingly chutzpadik, while at the same time being imperfect. Each is an attempt to move forward, to turn the small step into a giant leap, which is the essence of humanity.

The story of the Tower takes place after the flood, symbolized by the rainbow in the sky. According to Genesis Rabbah, the generation of the flood totally disregarded God and sought to displace the Almighty, while the generation of the Tower attempted to share power with God. What better way to try this then by reaching into God's realm, ascending the heights where the rainbow exists? The consequence for the tower builders was not as severe as for their predecessors, because they wanted to be with and not replace the Divine.

Is it truly possible to share in God's role? It is one thing to place ourselves at the summit of all creation and quite another to be the bridge between heaven and earth. Perhaps we should think of the Tower of Babel as a transmission tower. The builders wanted it to carry a message from earth to the heavens whereas they, and we, should be more concerned with listening to the message coming from heaven to earth.

Shabbat shalom,
MS