Among the contributions the Children of Israel are instructed to bring forward for constructing a sanctuary, in this week’s reading, is “oil for lighting” (Exodus 25:6).
“With what are we to light, and with what are we not to light?” asks the Mishnah, the earliest compilation of rabbinic law, from the second century of the Common Era, in its tractate on the Sabbath, in its chapter on kindling the lights to illumine the sacred day (Shabbat 2:1).
“Rabbi Ishmael says: we are not to light with tar, out of respect for the Sabbath; but the Sages permit lighting with all oils – with oil of sesame seeds, with oil of hazelnuts, with oil of radish seeds, with oil of fish, with oil of gourd seeds, with tar, and with naphtha. Rabbi Tarfon says: we are to light with nothing but olive oil alone” (Shabbat 2:2).
This past week, at the close of a talk at Harvard Hillel on rational versus mystical tendencies in Judaism, Rabbi Dr. Joel Hecker – who was a senior colleague when I taught at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia and is now the parent of a freshman in our community – illustrated the contrast between those inclinations by taking note of two texts, recited respectively by different Jewish communities at the selfsame moment. Joel reminded a group of students who came to sit with him after Sabbath dinner how at precisely the liturgical moment in which many synagogues (including our own Orthodox worship group within Harvard Hillel) recite the above-quoted second chapter of the Mishnah’s tractate Shabbat, with its listings of fit and unfit substances for sacred lamps – right between Kabbalat Shabbat (our rite for welcoming the Sabbath) and Ma’ariv (our evening prayers) – other congregations, ones that hold by a version of the service more influenced by medieval kabbalah, recite a passage from the Zohar, describing what happens spiritually, cosmically, at the inception of the Sabbath:
“Just as the aspects of God are unified on high in a mystery of oneness, so, too, the indwelling Divine Presence below is unified in a mystery of oneness, so as to be, with those aspects above, one facing one. The Blessed Holy One on high is One, and will not sit upon His throne of glory until She [the Divine Presence below] is made whole in a mystery of oneness just as He is, so as to be One in One.”
As Joel juxtaposed those texts – the Mishnaic passage known as “Bameh madlikin…” (“With what are we to light…”) and the Zoharic teaching known as “Kegavna…” (“Just as…”) – it occurred to me that both teachings, in their respective ways, actually were addressing the very same question: How is the sacred light of the Sabbath lit? The Mishnah answers with wicks and oils; the Zohar answers with cosmic unification of Divinity.
It would be something of a caricature of religious types to say that for some individuals the proper technical execution of the ritual is all in all, whereas for others the experiential concept of the moment with its transcendent meaning is everything. For the most part, we each have both tendencies and both concerns within us, the impulse to get the rites right, so to speak, and the yearning to have the times they mark mean something true and powerful.
It would be caricature, too, to presume that all communities and individuals who recite Kegavna – the Zohar’s mystical “Just as” – have more music in their hearts than ones that recite Bameh madlikin – the Mishnah’s practical “With what are we to light.” In Philadelphia, I belonged to a synagogue of Spanish and Portuguese origin that sang “Bameh madlikin” every Friday night as a responsive chant. (If you’d like to hear, it sounded very much like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEF4N7EMSj8t=00m54s
By the same token, many communities that preserve “Kegavna” in their prayer books mumble its passages rather perfunctorily.
A profound spiritual teaching can be recited dryly, by rote; and a technical set of practical particulars can be sung with spirit, as though the world depended on it.
You may say: well, of course one may miss the point of a mystical teaching, or repeat it unmindfully, and in that sense get it wrong; but, you may ask, isn’t it also getting things wrong to intone a technical passage, such as the following, for example – about improper wicks for Sabbath lights – as though it were some kind of theurgical incantation?
“We do not light with cedar bark, nor with uncarded flax, nor with floss silk, nor with willow fibre, nor with desert shrub fibre, nor with the greenery that floats upon the water.”
After all, if one chants those words, one is singing about pond scum.
But there is exactly the point. Ours is a tradition that attaches transcendent importance to the seemingly lowly stuff of the world and how we relate to it. Whether speaking of the foods we eat, or the fabrics we wear, or – as in the just-quoted case – the materials that make our lamps, Jewish tradition, from the Bible through the Rabbis, has always sought a right and holy way for doing everything.
The spirit of that ages-old search is particularly relevant and timely in our own moment today on this planet, as we realize just how much our choices and our actions as a human species really do have cosmic consequences, insofar as our environment and its future are concerned. I am not saying that the Mishnah, or the Bible, for that matter, has an exact or a present-day recipe for sustainable human habitation on this earth. I do say that the sensibility our Jewish people has cultivated for centuries around and through our texts and traditions – the tendency toward meticulousness in practice and toward finding meaning everywhere – may serve the world particularly well in these times, helping to cultivate a spiritual approach and motivation to living responsibly on this earth, as humankind seeks to understand anew, so to speak, what is kosher.
Getting things right, then, is very important; and, at the same time, the paths we make in this world as conscious beings are not solely about stuff – they are also about story.
It is all too possible to ‘worship at the altar of technical competence,’ as I sometimes put it – for instance, in the ritual realm of synagogue skills, to feel that slam dunking a prayer service or hitting a sacerdotal home run is only about making sure the prescribed particulars of a ritual are done just so, actualizing ancient teachings to the letter and traditional tunes to the note. There is a spiritual satisfaction, to be sure, in feeling one has answered properly in practice a question like the Mishnah’s “with what are we to light?”
However, some part of our soul is likely not going to be satisfied unless we are also, at the same time, addressing the question of what, deeply, cosmically, is going on in such a moment. What happens in the spiritual structure of existence, and what occurs within a divine substratum of the universe and of ourselves, when we do exactly thus and so?
The Mishnah, translated from its Hebrew – “One should not pierce, for instance, the shell of an egg and fill it with oil and place it at the mouth of the lamp so that it will drip during the Sabbath into the fuel already present, no matter if the ‘pierced egg shell’ is something made of clay; but Rabbi Yehudah permits this. However, if the potter fashioned the lamp with such an additional reservoir as part of it from the start, it is permitted, since it is all one vessel.” (Shabbat 2:4)
The Zohar (as I interpret from the Aramaic) – “When that divine Oneness occurs, when we help make it so at the start of the Sabbath, then every force of violence and self-violence and every force of judgment and self-judgment flees from that holy moment, and She is so completely His and He is so completely Hers that there is no sovereign reality in all the universe in that moment apart from Her.”
Our scriptures answer the spiritual question of what really is going on, with respect to the building materials and the special substances for the sanctuary, in this week’s Torah-reading, with God’s saying through Moses, regarding the people: “Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8). In the account of Solomon’s later Temple that we pair with our Torah-portion this week, the question of what really is going on here is answered this way, by God to the King: “With regard to this House you are building – if you follow My laws and observe My rules and faithfully keep My commandments, I will fulfill for you the promise that I gave to your father David: I will abide within the children of Israel, and I will not forsake my people Israel.” (1Kings 6:12-13).
That is what happens, according to our scriptures. What is at stake – to be decided by our making room for it, and having a care for it, or not – is the question of Divinity’s manifest presence in our earthly world. As human beings, we have the capacity to make this earth an ugly and horrific place, in which there is no apparent aspect of the holy – heaven forbid. On the other hand, we are able to make this world a place of wondrous harmonizing, shining with creative genius, where deep and inspiring wisdom is discovered and celebrated everywhere.
It is up to us whether a sacred oneness of being will be recognized and made actual.
Or, as the Mishnah has it: “With what are we to light, and with what are we not to light…?”