Category: Vayakheil

Vayakheil and Ki Tissa: How to Be a Holy Artist

What does it take to create something that will help people feel the presence of God?

Golden Calf: figurine from the Temple of Baalat in Byblos

Aaron tries to do this when he makes the Golden Calf in last week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa. At first, the people are ecstatic over the idol, bowing down to it and singing and dancing. But this simple and undisciplined religious outlet does not last. When Moses returns and grinds the calf into gold dust, nobody protests. Moses stirs the gold dust into water, and they all meekly swallow it. Aaron’s creation turns out to be a failure.

In this week’s Torah portion, Vayakheil (“And he assembled”), the master craftsman Betzaleil begins making the holy objects for the new sanctuary. The completed creation is so successful that it sustains the religion of the Israelites for several centuries, until King Solomon replaces it with the temple in Jerusalem.

The key difference between Aaron and Betzaleil as creators of religious objects appears in the Torah twice, repeated word for word. In the portion Ki Tissa, God says it to Moses. In this week’s portion, Moses says it to the Israelites:

See? God has called by name Betzaleil, son of Uri, son of Chur, of the tribe of Yehudah. And [God] has filled him with ruach of God, with chokhmah, with tevunah, and with da-at, and with every craft. (Exodus/Shemot 35:30-31)

ruach (רוּחַ) = wind; spirit, motivation, overwhelming state of mind.

(Usually when the ruach of God comes over someone in the Hebrew Bible, that person speaks as a prophet or leads people into battle. Exceptions are Samson, who is gripped by a murderous rage and supernatural strength; and Betzaleil the artist, who is filled with a divine motivation to create.)

chokhmah (חָכְמָה) = wisdom; inspiration.

tevunah (תְבוּנָה) = insight, rational understanding, analytic ability.

da-at (דַעַת) = knowledge.

In later Kabbalistic writings, chokhmah and binah (another form of the word tevunah) are two of the sefirot or divine powers.  Chokhmah is the sefirah associated with the left side of the head, i.e. the left brain that popular science now associates with non-rational, intuitive, holistic consciousness. Binah (tevunah) is the sefirah associated with the right side of the head, i.e. the right brain that we now associate with rational, logical, analytic thinking. In the Kabbalist system, da-at is the product of chokhmah combined with binah.

Aaron, although he will serve as the high priest, lacks the four qualities with which God fills Betzaleil. When the Israelites are waiting at the foot of Mount Sinai in Ki Tissa, Aaron feels no ruach of God, no divine urge to create a holy object. The people decide Moses will never return and order Aaron: Get up, make for us gods that will go before us! (Exodus 32:1). Then Aaron acts, but only to satisfy the crowd.

He has no chokhmah, no inspiration nor wisdom about what to make; he merely calls for gold earrings to melt down, since the finest idols are made of gold.

He took it from their hands and he shaped it with the engraving tool, and he made it into an image of a calf. (Exodus 32:4)

Afterward, when Aaron explains to Moses what happened, he says: I said to them, “Who has gold? Pull it off yourselves.” And they gave it to me and I threw it into the fire and out came this calf.” (Exodus 32:24)

Aaron admits that he acted without any of the insight or discrimination of tevunah, and also without any da-at, any knowledge of what would emerge from the fire.

Betzaleil, on the other hand, is born betzalmeinu—in God’s shadow or image—when it comes to creativity. (See my post Vayakheil: Shadow Power.) He creates under the protection of God’s shadow. God “fills” him with the qualities he already has the potential and experience to develop.

Bowing Before the Ark, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

Even as Moses comes down with God’s basic design for a portable sanctuary, Betzaleil is filled with a divine desire to create it. He has the chokhmah to visualize the whole thing, and to imagine beautiful and inspiring objects—from the gold keruvim (hybrid winged beasts) on top of the ark to the design embroidered in brilliant colors on the curtain at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. He has the tevunah to analyze and understand how each part can be made well and assembled into the whole. And he has da-at, knowledge, of every craft: metal-working, jewelry, wood-working, weaving, and embroidery.

Betzaleil is so filled with chokhmah, tevunah, and da-at that he and his assistant can teach other craftsmen and craftswomen among the people.

And [God] put teaching into his heart, him and Ahaliyav son of Achisamakh of the tribe of Dan. (Exodus 35:34)

And Betzaleil and Ahaliyav and everyone wise of heart to whom God gave chokhmah and tevunah for da-at and for doing all the work for the service of the Holy, they shall do everything that God commanded. (Exodus 36:1)

The sanctuary that is completed in next week’s Torah portion, Pekudei, is the product of the grand design Moses heard from God; the divine spirit, inspiration, understanding, and know-how of the master artist, Betaleil; and the enthusiasm and wisdom of the contributors in the community. No wonder it becomes a place where people feel God’s presence.

I think that the qualities God gives Betzaleil are necessary for anyone to produce truly moving art, whether its explicit goal is religious or not. I know that when I do “creative writing”, especially of Torah monologues and fiction, both my motivation (ruach) and my inspiration (chokhmah) seem to come from a mysterious place outside myself, or perhaps from some inner place so deep my conscious mind can never penetrate it. I might as well say they come from God, the great mystery.

But the most burning motivation and inspiration leads nowhere without the application of rational insight and analysis (tevunah). My own ability in this area is a talent I was born with, a gift of God, that I have developed over many years of practice. And as in Kabbalah, I have found that the combination of left-brained inspiration (chokhmah) and right-brained analysis (binah or tevunah) does indeed result in knowledge (da-at).

The final requirement for creating art is to actually do all the labor. I am grateful that the ruach that blows through me from the unknown source I call God is strong enough to motivate me to keep on working, with enthusiasm—like the Israelites in this week’s Torah portion.

May the divine spirit be strong in all artists.

Vaykheil-Pekudei: Witnessing the Divine

The book of Exodus/Shemot ends this week with a double portion, Vayakheil (And he assembled) and Pekudei (Inventories).  The Israelites eagerly donate materials for the mishkan (the portable dwelling-place for God), and for ritual garments for the new priests.  They make all the parts of the mishkan, and Moses assembles them.  At the end of the book, God’s glory enters the Dwelling.

High Priest, Bible
card by Providence
Lithograph Co., 1907

The portion Vayakheil begins:  And Moses assembled the whole community (everyone who would witness) among the children of Israel.  (Exodus/Shemot 35:1)

The portion Pekudei begins:  These are the inventories for the Dwelling, the Dwelling of the Testimony of God.  (Exodus 38:21)

kol adat = all the witnesses of, the whole community of

eidut = report of a witness, testimony (from the same root as adat)

ha-eidut = The testimony (This form is used for the testimony of God.)

In Vayakheil, the community of witnesses is also the community that donates and makes the mishkan.  Women as well as men are specifically included in this group.  In Pekudei, when Moses assembles all the parts of the mishkan, he puts God’s testimony, ha-eidut, into the ark, then inserts the carrying-poles into the rings at its corners, and puts the golden cover on as a lid.  The Torah does not specify what the testimony inside the ark actually is.  Classic commentary is divided on whether it consists of a parchment scroll on which Moses wrote down the first part of the Torah, or the stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God with the commandments (both the intact pair of tablets and the shards of the broken pair), or both the scroll and the tablets.

Either way, The Testimony is something the Israelites already have.  And Moses has already told the people that God is with them.  But seeing is believing.  The Israelites need to witness Moses putting God’s “testimony” into the ark, and then they need to witness God’s visible presence.  On their journey from Egypt to Mount Sinai, they followed a manifestation of God as a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.  But the pillar disappeared when they arrived at the mountain, and clouds of smoke and fire appeared only at the mountain’s peak.  This was not enough for the Israelites; when Moses was gone too long, they made a golden calf.  And soon they will have to leave Mount Sinai and journey on to the Promised Land.  How can they know God is really with them, and God’s testimony is really secure?

Their memories of God’s miracles in Egypt and manifestations after that are not sufficient.  The Israelites are like witnesses with poor recall.  In order to remain fully aware of God’s presence and God’s investment in them, they have to build a visible, tangible place for God to dwell, and then they have to witness something that indicates God’s presence in that dwelling-place.  Only then can they fend off their fear of abandonment.

This plan works.  The book of Exodus ends:

…and Moses completed the work.  The cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of God filled the Dwelling … For the cloud of God was upon the Dwelling by day, and  fire was in it by night, before the eyes of all the house of Israel on all their journeys.  (Exodus 40:33-38)

Today, our world has many sanctuaries designed to make people feel the presence of God, including many synagogues, cathedrals, and mosques.  (We also have a plethora of buildings intended for religious worship whose architecture is no more inspiring than a high school gymnasium—but that’s another story.)  Many religions also have fixed prayers or mantras, with words to be recited or sung at specific times, words designed to help people feel the presence of God.

Nevertheless, God’s presence is not concrete enough for most humans today to attest to it as witnesses (and those who do have no corroboration).  And the written “testimony” we have, however accurately copied, was written down by fallible human beings, which means that, at best, something was lost in translation. We have no ark, we have no mishkan.  We know that if we discovered the ark, buried away somewhere, and attempted to duplicate the mishkan described in the Torah, God would not manifest in it the same way.  We live in another time, millennia away from the ancient peoples who built the Dwelling for God on their journey across the wilderness.

Yet so many people, including myself, yearn for something ineffable, something so hard to name that we call it “God”.  Some find an anthropomorphic idea of God helpful.  Some find the idea of a being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent helpful.  I am one of those who use the words “God” and “soul” when we want shorthand ways to talk about the mysterious feeling that there is some huge extra meaning in the universe and in ourselves.

No matter what phenomena I observe, I can always generate counter-explanations that prevent me from being a witness for “God”, whatever that word means.  Nevertheless, I have discovered that I can help my sense of a divine presence to grow.  I can build an imaginary mishkan inside my mind, and witness some  spirit of the divine, in the form of mystery and exaltation, obscurity and light …  cloud and fire.

May we all discover some of the divinity that dwells inside us.