Exodus : Perashat Ki Tissa (2 essays) : Beyond Edifice /The Golden Calf and the Castration Complex   

Things have a past and a present, but only Gd is pure presence....

 A.J. Heschel, God in Search of Man pp 142

In weeks past, we have discussed the inherent failure of artistic endeavor as perceived by contemporary theorists and earlier Hassidic masters. Every building, beautiful or sacred as it may be, is on the one hand subject to critique as a result of its being a "finished product", and on the other hand, no matter how beautiful the edifice, it is also from some perspective also a barrier, a set of boundaries, a marked off perimeter. We have seen that in the Hassidic masters this problematic is identified with regard to the Mishkan, with use of a slightly different language, that of sin. Thus, we have seen how what is at first glance considered to be the holiest and highest potential religious creation is reduced to a continuous reminder of our mistakes and sins . However, where we in contemporary culture enjoy the pessimistic state of critique, is there an alternative presented in these same sources? Is there no way to overcome the innate tragedy of human activity, what we may deem, the "Edifice complex"?

While novel ideas regarding contemporary theory are generally presented in the essay form, in the Hassidic tradition these issues are discussed as part of exegesis on the perasha, the Midrash and Talmud. Thus, to find discussion of alternative modes of construction, we must first analyze a textual problem. In this week's perasha, which is centrally situated between the various repetitions of the various commands to construct the Mishkan, we find a curious proximity between subjects. There is a restatement of the command to construct all the sundry elements of the Mishkan, directed this time to the "architect", Bezalel, and his team. After this, there is a command to keep the Sabbath, not specifically linked to the surrounding passages, and then the sin of the golden calf is narrated.

There are those who link the Sabbath passage specifically to the subsequent golden calf episode, and I would like to quickly present one because of its surprising novelty. The Meor V'shemesh states that Shabbat is linked to the Mishkan because both have in common rectification (tikkun) of the sin of the golden calf- the tribute collected to build the Mishkan corrects the sin committed by the people's eagerness to contribute gold to make the idol, in other words, the Mishkan is a response to the material aspect of sin, while the Shabbat, which is intended primarily as a day of spiritual contemplation, rectifies the idolatrous intentions underlying the golden calf, as we are taught BT Shabbat 118: "He who keeps the Shabbat correctly, even if he worshipped idols as did the generation of Enosh, is forgiven". In contemporary jargon, we might say that the Mishkan serves as a praxis-tikkun, the Shabbat an ideology-tikkun. Let?s go even further with this textual connection.

The opening verses regarding Shabbat in this perasha read as follows: (Shemot 31:13)

"But (akh), my Sabbaths you must keep, for it is a sign between us for generations (l'dorotaychem)...And the people of Israel kept the Shabbat, creating of the Shabbat an eternal covenant throughout the generations (l'dorotam)..."

Rashi explains the connection to the previous section, the command to build the Mishkan, as follows:

Even though you are commanded to work on the Mishkan, don't even think about violating the Shabbat while constructing it. This is derived from the superfluous "ach", for which we have a exegetic teaching whereby "but" and "only" imply exceptions to the law being discussed, thus, here it teaches that work on the Mishkan is stopped for the Shabbat.

In other words, these perashiot are linked in order to prioritize Shabbat over and above the Mishkan. The Ramban has a problem in midrashic formal logic with Rashi?s approach. If "buts and only" serve to exclude a circumstance from the law, then the law where the "akh" is found is the law diminished, hence, technically, the teaching should be that Shabbat is abrogated for the sake of the Mishkan! The Ramban, however, instead sets the Shabbat farther above the Mishkan; he argues that the conjunction of these texts is to insist, with the emphatic word "akh", that while the Mishkan may be transient, Shabbat is eternal, and always to be observed, even in the absence of a centralized Temple. In other words, the 'akh' implies that even if the Mishkan were destroyed, Shabbat is still to be kept. Keeping in mind the analysis of previous weeks, emphasizing the space creating aspect of Temple construction, is the Seforno's choice of terminology, he states that "...if Shabbat is violated, then there is no place for the Mishkan...".

Shabbat as a precondition, or replacement, for spatial sanctity. Could this be the route to an alternative dwelling, to a dis-placed holiness, one that transcends the critique of edifice?

Let us turn to the Degel Mahane Ephraim. He begins by quoting the Baal Haturim, who note that the first letters of the phrase "et hashabbat L'dorotam" spell out the word "ohel", tent. Furthermore, the repeated hebrew term meaning "generations", dorotam, is repeatedly spelled in an incomplete fashion, without the letter "vav", allowing for an alternate reading as "deerotam", from the infinitive "ladoor", to dwell, as in the modern Hebrew term "dirah", a flat. This implies, that the Shabbat is where they dwell, the Shabbat is in a sense a dwelling place, an alternative to the physical sanctuary of the Mishkan. The DME adds that the word ohel, tent, is also to be found in the first letters of the phrase "ot hee l'olam", which literally means that the Shabbat is a "sign" for eternity, that the Shabbat is an eternal covenant; to the DME, actually the Shabbat supercedes the Mishkan even as a dwelling place. We will argue that an edifice built out of time is preferable to even a sacred construct built spatially. The Meor Eynaim, following this approach, reads this back into the quote from Rashi we saw earlier. The ME sees in Rashi's reading a conscious choice of words in which indeed the 'akh', the "only", serves to diminish, and in line with the Ramban, in fact, it would diminish the Shabbat. The ME reads Rashi as implying that any activity, any act of construction, would serve to diminish Shabbat. Shabbat, as the Zohar teaches us, is a reflection of Gd's name, so to speak, and is thus complete, perfect, without deficiency. Construction, labor, on the other hand, is in itself a sign of deficiency- one constructs because of a perceived lack, because one needs the building. Thus, the teaching is that the construction of a physical, sacred edifice is in fact, a miyut b'Shabbat, a diminution of the Shabbat. (As a footnote, he adds an existential lesson as well; we are taught in Yeshayahu 57 that Gd dwells within the humble person. Thus, a person who needs nothing, who is cut off from desires, reciprocally dwells and becomes the dwelling place of this Godly perfection.)

Let us, then, suggest, that while the state of dwelling in place, spatial holiness, described regarding the Mishkan is innately a fallen one, one subject to critique and barriers, what we seek is a state of dwelling in time, as described regarding the Shabbat. The Sefat Emet quoted last week describes an original plan whereby the Torah would have been open to all without a Mishkan, without boundaries, immediately accessible to all who desired transcendent contact, until the people sinned and there was a need for mediated spirituality, through the walls of a Mishkan. The Sefat Emet, when discussing Shabbat, dwelling in time, explains the meaning of the word "ot", sign, as used in our verse here. Ot to the Sefat Emet (Shabbat Shuva, year trn"d) is a technical term meaning Gd-contact without mediation. Regarding our perasha, he states that Shabbat is a reaching back to the original plan of dwelling, unmediated by barriers, dwelling in time, prior to the sin of the golden calf.

I thus submit that dwelling in time may be an answer to some of the difficulties with dwelling in space. A sacred object is fixed, it is what it is and our challenge is to relate to it. Sacred time is in a relationship with us. Whereas sacred objects remain unchanged as we grow, sacred time implies continuous, linear growth. R. Zadok HaCohen of Lublin presents and interesting reading of the teaching in BT Shabbat 118: which states that if Israel kept two Shabbatot, the redemption would be achieved. R. Zadok explains that two Shabbatot, instead of just one, are necessary because first Shabbat must be experienced in order to truly experience Shabbat; this second one would then be transformative. In his dream notebook, printed down at the end of the work Resisay Laylah, he explains that the first Shabbat purifies from sin, and the second one is then experienced in an entirely different manner, free of sin and obstruction. Then, there would be a third one, technically ineffable, beyond words because it is beyond previously experienced existence (as the Buddhists explain regarding nothingness, it can only be explained after the fact). He suggests that Shabbat would, in the world of Tikkun, be three days (idea for contemplation-is there a potential message of future world harmony implicit here, where all the Sabbaths are unified?). The second Shabbat referrred to initially differs from the first properly experienced Shabbat, because we are different as a result, having a different vantage point as a result of the transformative experience, and the third Shabbat after that second transformative experience would inevitably be constitutive of an entirely different person. Dwelling in space, in place, then, is an innately flawed experience, fixed and unchanging, as an icon or statue is. Dwelling in time, is a spiritual journey that is only limited by how much we choose to grow with it. Shabbat is our unmediated transformative challenge.

UP to this point we appear to be supporting Heschel's argument regarding the advantage of holy time over holy object, as in his The Sabbath,(contra Eliade's centrality of sacred object, axis mundi, etc.) However, implicit in this argument built upon continued transformative experience, is the argument that even these stated positions are only a vehicle, a means to even further growth and transformation. The next step forward is to recognize that much like objects and spatiality, even time itself is corruptible. Sins, as it were,  occur in time, and certainly we all know from experience that one can experience unpleasant times (Borges, describing an ancestor: "like all men, he was given bad times in which to live"). This was recognized by our mystical thinkers. Luzzatto, in his commentary to the Zoharic section Arimit Yadi B'tzlotin, argues that time itself is transient. He reads the line in Kohelet 3:1 (not original to the Byrds, or even Pete Seeger who actually wrote the  great song), 'there is a season and time to every purpose under heaven' as a statement of fact, a scientific statement, if you will, understanding the phrase "under heaven" as declaring that time itself is provisionally 'under heaven', that is, it is transient. In mystical language, time, zeman, is numerically equivalent to the worlds of 'mah' and 'ben', the two lower universes. Time is superceded in the higher worlds.

What does this mean, a world above time? JL Borges has a fantastic (in the actual sense of the word) essay, entitled 'A New Refutation of Time', in which he denies the linearity and contemporaneousness of time:

I deny, in an elevated number of instances, the successive; I deny, in an elevated number of instances, the contemporary as well. The lover who thinks 'While I was so happy, thinking of the fidelity of my love, she was deceiving me' deceives himself: If every state we experience is absolute, such happiness was not contemporary to the betrayal; the discovery of that betrayal is another state, which cannot modify the 'previous' ones, though it can modify their recollection. The misfortune of today is no more real than the happiness of the past. I shall seek a more concrete example. In the first part of August, 1824, Captain Isadoro Suarez, at the head of a squadron of Peruvian Hussars, decided the victory of Junin; in the first part of August, 1824, De Quincy published a diatribe against Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre; these events were not contemporary (they are now), since the two men died- one in the city of Montevideo, the other in Edinburgh- without knowing anything about each other? Each moment is autonomous? Each moment we live exists, but not their imaginary combination.

Borges, in his story 'Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' is true to this conception, arguing that 'all men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare, are William Shakespeare'. I am not presenting this view as a scientific argument, rather, we certainly have a sense that there are greater and lesser moments in our lives that resonate for each one of us in a manner beyond the mere facticity of time.

Thus, in light of all we've seen in this week's perasha, we can posit a thought experiment more far-out than Nietzche's "eternal return". Nietzche argued that we would choose to live our lives differently if we perceived our actions as being repeated endlessly through infinity. I would suggest that perhaps all reward and punishment, all the concept of a world to come that is beyond time (according to our mystics), all these ideas may be conceptualized if we postulate a world constructed from time. That is, that which we have lived, that which we have chosen and prioritized, those moments may be the building blocks of another type of existence. Perhaps we are creating, with every positive moment lived, a new kind of edifice. The edifice, for example, that we construct out of our experience of Shabbat, the holy moments at the table with our families, in prayer, in lofty thought- let us posit that these and all beautiful moments experienced by the totality of consciousness may represent the building blocks for a better world, one literally "built out of time". This may explain why the Sabbath is far more important than the Mishkan- for the Sabbath experience, as we've seen, as in the first letters of 'ot he l'dorotam', spelling out 'ohel', a dwelling, may perhaps represent the building blocks of a far superior edifice, a currently unimaginable more beautiful world .

II. The Golden Calf and the Castration Complex

There are several provocative ideas I will attempt to develop in the course of this week's reading on perashat Ki Tisa. It is an extremely rich and problematic text, on its own and in connection with the surrounding perashiyot, thus I will try to stay on the course I've charted over the last few weeks, though there are some new themes I guess I will pick up at another time, say next year. But first, in the spirit of never missing good material no matter where you find it, I would like to present a relevant concept from the historian Simon Schama, in his The Embarrassment of Riches, on the Dutch golden age. I even managed to track down a web copy of the painting under discussion, so that you can all see it :

http://www.bmz.amsterdam.nl/adam/uk/groot/paleis6.html

Schama deals with the assumption of the Hebraic history as a model for the destiny of the new Dutch nation. Here begins the edited quote, from pages 116- 120:

It is, then, all the more extraordinary that the most striking instance of Mosaic iconography at the heart of Amsterdam's town hall, should have represented, not the ascendancy of the Calvinist zealots, but the polemical ingenuity of their pliant adversaries in the Amsterdam patriciate. Ferdinand Bol's Moses with the Tablets of Law (1661-62) is best known to art historians as the stilted and ungainly alternative to what might have been one of Rembrandt's most powerful late history paintings, executed in 1659, but what passes for second rate may qualify as first rate historical evidence, and Bol's Moses, in all its histrionic glory provides a grandiloquent demonstration of how the Exodus scripture had become a battleground for disputing views of the relationship between church and state. (the book then continues to describe the tense situation between the severe Calvinist clergy linked with the Orange loyalists versus the humanist magistrates).it was against this background that the moderate regents, savoring the magnificence of their new town hall, decided to offer an iconographic reproof to theocracy where it most counted: in their seat of law. Uytenbogaert had used the Old Testament to insist on the division of governance between lay and spititual spheres, with the former ultimately responsible for the administration of the commonwealth. It had been Moses, not Aaron, he argued, who had been awarded the godly leadership of the Children of Israel, and after Moses' death, that leadership had passed first to judges and then to kings. The priests and prophets had served as the moral consciences of the state, set apart in a special caste, but never entrusted with the role of government. The mantelpiece painting for the Chamber of the Magistrates (the painting by Bol) was to show the one occasion when government had been placed in the hands of the priests, with demonstrably calamitous consequences. Bol's Moses descends from Mount Sinai with the tablets of the law in his arms, only to witness the scenes of profane iniquity and chaos in the camp of the Israelites. Acknowledging their sins, they kneel before him for forgiveness- the figure in left profile, perhaps dressed as to embody the contrition of the priestly caste?

I will not go any further with this, only to point out that there is a somewhat forgotten work which makes this very argument, called Mishpat Hamelucha B'Yisrael, by R. Shimon Federbush, put out by Mossad Harav Kook. Federbush argues that all through Jewish history there was a separation between the religious and the civil lawmakers, the Sanhedrin and the priesthood. Perhaps this work needs to be revived and translated into English. Perhaps we need to think about this kind of seperation today.

Now, back to our reading for this week. Over the past few weeks, in dealing with the repetition of the Mishkan narrative, we discussed the idea of boundaries, of distance introduced as a result of the sin. The Mishkan structure itself, and the garments of the priests, act as signifiers and at the same times as means of overcoming, the boundaries and distance introduced by the sin of the golden calf. R. Zadok Hacohen follows this approach, but with an interesting twist, which would be incredibly radical if it wasn't in the Talmud (BT Nedarim 22: )

"If it weren't for the sin of the Golden Calf, the Jews would only have received the Five Books of the Torah and the Book of Yehoshuah".

It was only with the second set of Luhot that we also received the Oral law. He interprets this to mean that had there not been the distance introduced, our relation with the Torah text would have been an unmediated one, that would not have required the supplemental hermeneutics of the commentaries and supercommentaries familiar to the student of Jewish studies. Our understanding of the Torah would have been akin to what the Rambam describes of Adam before the sin (this similarity is explicit in R. Zadok, as we will see at the very end of this piece), that he would have had a pure objective relationship with Gd unblurred by subjectivity (which is why the forbidden Tree was known as that of "knowledge of good and bad" which are purely subjective categories, as opposed to the tree of Life, which he reads as the empirical, objective understanding, as in science (science as a medieval thinker would have seen it, not the way we would understand it today post Husserl, etc)).

The question, then, is, what is it about the golden calf that links specifically to issues of speech and understanding? I would like to suggest, by a route that begins with the Me'or V'shemesh, who talks of the golden calf as springing from the human need for authority, that is to say, the golden calf as an alternate representation of yir'ah, authority, to replace Moshe was desired by the people, follows with a summary of some core priniples of Lacan, specifically his "desire of the mother" and "name of the father" as representing symbolic representation versus the distance imposed by language, and back through R. Zadokk to why the book of Yehoshua was part of the text that was to be initially given.

The Meor V'shemesh has difficulty comprehending how a generation that experienced what it experienced could lapse so crudely into idolatry of the most primitive sort. What was it that the people wanted from this idol? His response is that it wasn't a "god" they were looking for at all, but rather an authority figure. In essence, they understood that the whole point of the exodus and the ensuing commandments was to reach a stage of awe, of recognition of Gd's greatness and grandeur, referred to in the classical literature as "yirat haromemut". This is the highest level of understanding recognized in the kabbalistic literature, higher than love. For example, in the prayerbook of R. Shalom Sharabi, the meditative introduction is always "b'dichilu u'richimu, u'richimu v'dichilu", "with awe and love, with love and awe", as increasing levels in mystical consciousness rise through fear, (for example, of punishment) to love, then to a higher form of love, to a state of reverent awe (not related to punishment). However, the route which the people took toward achieving this state was by analogy to Moshe. When Moshe appeared in public, as in Shemot 34:30, the people feared to approach him. So through him it was expedient to analogize the requisite awe for Gd. This is his interesting reading of the Talmudic teaching in Berachot 33:, from the verse in Devarim 10:12- What does Gd require from one, only to fear Gd! The Talmud brings texts which show just what a lofty thing this is, but they explain, to Moshe it is a small thing (ie, "only" to fear Gd). The Meor V'Shemesh explains, that in the presence of Moshe it is a small thing, because from the awe one has in Moshe's presence, it was easy to extrapolate the awe one must have before Gd. So in essence, what the people wanted when they feared that Moshe was dead on Sinai, was a new metaphor for fear, a new "authority figure" which would keep them in a state of awe. This what what they demanded from Aharon, and what they got was the golden calf.

What struck me about this reading was the relationship to the ensuing "play" that the text describes once the golden calf was presented to the people. If it was something to fear they were seeking, why was the people's response upon making this calf to "vayakumu l'tsachek", "they got up to party" of 32:6? I suggest that there is an insight in this teaching that resonates with some core ideas of Jacques Lacan, particularly his emendation of Freud's Oedipus/castration complex model, which I will attempt to summarize now. I will also attempt to show how this ties into the teaching we began with of R. Zadok Hacohen of Lublin, which suggested that the supplementary hermeneutics of the Oral Law were necessitated by the failure revealed in the golden calf debacle.

Lacan (following Melanie Klein) explains how at birth, the infant exists in a perceived state of totality with his needs and surroundings. There is no differentiation between the infant and his hunger, his mother, the breast that feeds him, and his sense of satiety. These are all within him, so to speak. Somewhere down the line, at about six months, the child begins to realise that he is a separate entity, unified in his individual person. This is accomplished by what Lacan calls the mirror stage. The child sees his reflection in the mirror, and realises that the image he sees is his individuated being. What is critical for us, here, is that in this model the attainment of individuation is always external, in that what the child sees is a reflected, objectified image, rather than some total complete entity. That image is "me", the child learns. In fact, this world, in which the individual really only comes to know his/herself by virtue of a reflection in others, this world, which Lacan refers to as L'Imaginaire, is also recognized as being in some way false. The me the child knows is an external image, as opposed to 'la reelle', the total uncategorized Real that was present before. What we are, what we live, is a state which is primary in the other, the way we are reflected in society, the way we teach ourselves to think of ourselves based on the demands of those around us, parents, friends, teachers, etc. As Lacan states in "The Four Fundamental Concepts": "Really, is there not something here more profound than La Rochefoucauld's remark that few would experience love if they had not had its ways and means explained to them?" All these behaviour patterns are the result of our self perception which is derived from seeing ourselves reflected in the other. However, the baby, when he sees himself in the mirror, always laughs. That is because, there is a kind of dialectic in process. On the one hand, one is suddenly cut off from the Real, this state of self based unity with the surroundings, but on the other hand, the infant is now an individual, a self among others. Now Lacan reads the Oedipal/castration model of Freud in a non-sexual derived manner, and as this is relevant, I will attempt another oversimplified explanation (it is virtually impossible to try to read Lacan without knowing already what he is trying to say, much like the example of a while ago of translating tefillin as phylacteries, but he has an interesting vantage point that I think may be useful). The attainment of individuality comes at a cost of the Real, and the return to this real, which is intimately connected to the mother, is at the root of desire, that sense that there is more to existence than what we are conscious of. The world makes demands on "us", yet we feel that somehow those demands are not "us". The "us" we still residually know of ourselves from before the mirror stage, this presymbolic world is linked to the mother, and specifically to her capacity to create and to feed. This Lacan calls the "desir de la mere", the desire of the mother (or for the mother). What cuts us off, so to speak, from this dreamy presymbolic Real, is "le nom du pere", the name of the Father, the categorized signifying world of Language. Once there is language, we are cut off (hence the castration) from the ineffable, that which is "prior" to language. So, in summary, our formation as individuals is linked from the outset to a sense of loss, at the root of our encounter with the real, which is why "desire" can never be filled, that there is a continual searching for something "beyond", that cannot be articulated, cannot be satisfied. Yet, to remain intact as individuals, we require the authoritative presence of the Father. The way we experience this encounter with the real (Lacan borrows a term from Aristotle and labels this "tuche"), at every developmental stage, is what determines our health or neurosis.

I would suggest that reading in this manner, we can tie together the teachings summarized above. The people, newly released from the unindividuated state of slavery, still crave the presence of an authority figure, the Name of the Father. When Moshe appeared to tarry, there was a loss of identity, of individuation. Perhaps, this is also symbolized in the Midrashim in which they threw the gold into the fire which then came out as a calf, a Midrash which contains within it several metaphors of birth and creation, as well as a metaphor of childishness (a calf rather than a full grown cow or bull). However, this maladaptive encounter with the real (reflected in the excess of "play", the "vayakumu l'tzachek"), was "neurotic", so to speak. The only cure for it is through the internalization of the true authority figure, that of Gd manifested to the nation as language, not an external "leader" but an internalized set of decisions to live a life with guidelines, in this case, of course, the commandments and Torah.

This brings us back to R. Zadok Hacohen's suggestion that the corpus of Torah would have been far shorter without the sin of the calf. The Talmud specifically links the sin to the Oral Law, the law of language rather than text. Perhaps the idea is that had without this disruptive event in development, had normal development proceded without the neurotic challenge, then our encounter with the normal state of individuation, i.e. the attainment of language, would have been healthier. In fact, in his work Mahshevet Harutz, chapter 16, R. Zadok explains this Talmudic teaching by linking it to yet an earlier failure of this sort, the sin of Adam as described in Bereishit. He says that initially, Adam could have transformed the whole world right at the outset had he not succumbed to his "desire" and disobeyed the "word". The therapy for this failure was meant to be accomplished at Sinai. There, the word could have been properly encountered by the people's reception of the Written Law, that is, the five books of Moshe, along with the book of  Joshua, which, dealing as it does with boundaries (of the Land of Israel), which would have corrected the local failure of Adam and Eve as an alternative locale, another set of boundaries (in a sort of metaphorical transferance) for the Garden of Eden. However, due to the failure of the encounter as seen in the golden calf episode, the second giving of the Torah demonstrated a need for a more gradual route to the written word, via the more extensive (hence also more distant) Oral Law.

In short, until humankind learns to internalize its own best interests, as long as there are border/boundary disputes,  there remains a need for constant direction and guidance...

In weeks past, we have discussed the inherent failure of artistic endeavor as perceived by contemporary theorists and earlier Hassidic masters. Every building, beautiful or sacred as it may be, is on the one hand subject to critique as a result of its being a "finished product", and on the other hand, no matter how beautiful the edifice, it is also from some perspective also a barrier, a set of boundaries, a marked off perimeter. We have seen that in the Hassidic masters this problematic is identified with regard to the Mishkan, with use of a slightly different language, that of sin. Thus, we have seen how what is at first glance considered to be the holiest and highest potential religious creation is reduced to a continuous reminder of our mistakes and sins . However, where we in contemporary culture enjoy the pessimistic state of critique, is there an alternative presented in these same sources? Is there no way to overcome the innate tragedy of human activity, what we may deem, the "Edifice complex"?

While novel ideas regarding contemporary theory are generally presented in the essay form, in the Hassidic tradition these issues are discussed as part of exegesis on the perasha, the Midrash and Talmud. Thus, to find discussion of alternative modes of construction, we must first analyze a textual problem. In this week's perasha, which is centrally situated between the various repetitions of the various commands to construct the Mishkan, we find a curious proximity between subjects. There is a restatement of the command to construct all the sundry elements of the Mishkan, directed this time to the "architect", Bezalel, and his team. After this, there is a command to keep the Sabbath, not specifically linked to the surrounding passages, and then the sin of the golden calf is narrated.

There are those who link the Sabbath passage specifically to the subsequent golden calf episode, and I would like to quickly present one because of its surprising novelty. The Meor V'shemesh states that Shabbat is linked to the Mishkan because both have in common rectification (tikkun) of the sin of the golden calf- the tribute collected to build the Mishkan corrects the sin committed by the people's eagerness to contribute gold to make the idol, in other words, the Mishkan is a response to the material aspect of sin, while the Shabbat, which is intended primarily as a day of spiritual contemplation, rectifies the idolatrous intentions underlying the golden calf, as we are taught BT Shabbat 118: "He who keeps the Shabbat correctly, even if he worshipped idols as did the generation of Enosh, is forgiven". In contemporary jargon, we might say that the Mishkan serves as a praxis-tikkun, the Shabbat an ideology-tikkun. Let?s go even further with this textual connection.

The opening verses regarding Shabbat in this perasha read as follows: (Shemot 31:13)

"But (akh), my Sabbaths you must keep, for it is a sign between us for generations (l'dorotaychem)...And the people of Israel kept the Shabbat, creating of the Shabbat an eternal covenant throughout the generations (l'dorotam)..."

Rashi explains the connection to the previous section, the command to build the Mishkan, as follows:

Even though you are commanded to work on the Mishkan, don't even think about violating the Shabbat while constructing it. This is derived from the superfluous "ach", for which we have a exegetic teaching whereby "but" and "only" imply exceptions to the law being discussed, thus, here it teaches that work on the Mishkan is stopped for the Shabbat.

In other words, these perashiot are linked in order to prioritize Shabbat over and above the Mishkan. The Ramban has a problem in midrashic formal logic with Rashi?s approach. If "buts and only" serve to exclude a circumstance from the law, then the law where the "akh" is found is the law diminished, hence, technically, the teaching should be that Shabbat is abrogated for the sake of the Mishkan! The Ramban, however, instead sets the Shabbat farther above the Mishkan; he argues that the conjunction of these texts is to insist, with the emphatic word "akh", that while the Mishkan may be transient, Shabbat is eternal, and always to be observed, even in the absence of a centralized Temple. In other words, the 'akh' implies that even if the Mishkan were destroyed, Shabbat is still to be kept. Keeping in mind the analysis of previous weeks, emphasizing the space creating aspect of Temple construction, is the Seforno's choice of terminology, he states that "...if Shabbat is violated, then there is no place for the Mishkan...".

Shabbat as a precondition, or replacement, for spatial sanctity. Could this be the route to an alternative dwelling, to a dis-placed holiness, one that transcends the critique of edifice?

Let us turn to the Degel Mahane Ephraim. He begins by quoting the Baal Haturim, who note that the first letters of the phrase "et hashabbat L'dorotam" spell out the word "ohel", tent. Furthermore, the repeated hebrew term meaning "generations", dorotam, is repeatedly spelled in an incomplete fashion, without the letter "vav", allowing for an alternate reading as "deerotam", from the infinitive "ladoor", to dwell, as in the modern Hebrew term "dirah", a flat. This implies, that the Shabbat is where they dwell, the Shabbat is in a sense a dwelling place, an alternative to the physical sanctuary of the Mishkan. The DME adds that the word ohel, tent, is also to be found in the first letters of the phrase "ot hee l'olam", which literally means that the Shabbat is a "sign" for eternity, that the Shabbat is an eternal covenant; to the DME, actually the Shabbat supercedes the Mishkan even as a dwelling place. We will argue that an edifice built out of time is preferable to even a sacred construct built spatially. The Meor Eynaim, following this approach, reads this back into the quote from Rashi we saw earlier. The ME sees in Rashi's reading a conscious choice of words in which indeed the 'akh', the "only", serves to diminish, and in line with the Ramban, in fact, it would diminish the Shabbat. The ME reads Rashi as implying that any activity, any act of construction, would serve to diminish Shabbat. Shabbat, as the Zohar teaches us, is a reflection of Gd's name, so to speak, and is thus complete, perfect, without deficiency. Construction, labor, on the other hand, is in itself a sign of deficiency- one constructs because of a perceived lack, because one needs the building. Thus, the teaching is that the construction of a physical, sacred edifice is in fact, a miyut b'Shabbat, a diminution of the Shabbat. (As a footnote, he adds an existential lesson as well; we are taught in Yeshayahu 57 that Gd dwells within the humble person. Thus, a person who needs nothing, who is cut off from desires, reciprocally dwells and becomes the dwelling place of this Godly perfection.)

Let us, then, suggest, that while the state of dwelling in place, spatial holiness, described regarding the Mishkan is innately a fallen one, one subject to critique and barriers, what we seek is a state of dwelling in time, as described regarding the Shabbat. The Sefat Emet quoted last week describes an original plan whereby the Torah would have been open to all without a Mishkan, without boundaries, immediately accessible to all who desired transcendent contact, until the people sinned and there was a need for mediated spirituality, through the walls of a Mishkan. The Sefat Emet, when discussing Shabbat, dwelling in time, explains the meaning of the word "ot", sign, as used in our verse here. Ot to the Sefat Emet (Shabbat Shuva, year trn"d) is a technical term meaning Gd-contact without mediation. Regarding our perasha, he states that Shabbat is a reaching back to the original plan of dwelling, unmediated by barriers, dwelling in time, prior to the sin of the golden calf.

I thus submit that dwelling in time may be an answer to some of the difficulties with dwelling in space. A sacred object is fixed, it is what it is and our challenge is to relate to it. Sacred time is in a relationship with us. Whereas sacred objects remain unchanged as we grow, sacred time implies continuous, linear growth. R. Zadok HaCohen of Lublin presents and interesting reading of the teaching in BT Shabbat 118: which states that if Israel kept two Shabbatot, the redemption would be achieved. R. Zadok explains that two Shabbatot, instead of just one, are necessary because first Shabbat must be experienced in order to truly experience Shabbat; this second one would then be transformative. In his dream notebook, printed down at the end of the work Resisay Laylah, he explains that the first Shabbat purifies from sin, and the second one is then experienced in an entirely different manner, free of sin and obstruction. Then, there would be a third one, technically ineffable, beyond words because it is beyond previously experienced existence (as the Buddhists explain regarding nothingness, it can only be explained after the fact). He suggests that Shabbat would, in the world of Tikkun, be three days (idea for contemplation-is there a potential message of future world harmony implicit here, where all the Sabbaths are unified?). The second Shabbat referrred to initially differs from the first properly experienced Shabbat, because we are different as a result, having a different vantage point as a result of the transformative experience, and the third Shabbat after that second transformative experience would inevitably be constitutive of an entirely different person. Dwelling in space, in place, then, is an innately flawed experience, fixed and unchanging, as an icon or statue is. Dwelling in time, is a spiritual journey that is only limited by how much we choose to grow with it. Shabbat is our unmediated transformative challenge.

UP to this point we appear to be supporting Heschel's argument regarding the advantage of holy time over holy object, as in his The Sabbath,(contra Eliade's centrality of sacred object, axis mundi, etc.) However, implicit in this argument built upon continued transformative experience, is the argument that even these stated positions are only a vehicle, a means to even further growth and transformation. The next step forward is to recognize that much like objects and spatiality, even time itself is corruptible. Sins, as it were,  occur in time, and certainly we all know from experience that one can experience unpleasant times (Borges, describing an ancestor: "like all men, he was given bad times in which to live"). This was recognized by our mystical thinkers. Luzzatto, in his commentary to the Zoharic section Arimit Yadi B'tzlotin, argues that time itself is transient. He reads the line in Kohelet 3:1 (not original to the Byrds, or even Pete Seeger who actually wrote the  great song), 'there is a season and time to every purpose under heaven' as a statement of fact, a scientific statement, if you will, understanding the phrase "under heaven" as declaring that time itself is provisionally 'under heaven', that is, it is transient. In mystical language, time, zeman, is numerically equivalent to the worlds of 'mah' and 'ben', the two lower universes. Time is superceded in the higher worlds.

What does this mean, a world above time? JL Borges has a fantastic (in the actual sense of the word) essay, entitled 'A New Refutation of Time', in which he denies the linearity and contemporaneousness of time:

I deny, in an elevated number of instances, the successive; I deny, in an elevated number of instances, the contemporary as well. The lover who thinks 'While I was so happy, thinking of the fidelity of my love, she was deceiving me' deceives himself: If every state we experience is absolute, such happiness was not contemporary to the betrayal; the discovery of that betrayal is another state, which cannot modify the 'previous' ones, though it can modify their recollection. The misfortune of today is no more real than the happiness of the past. I shall seek a more concrete example. In the first part of August, 1824, Captain Isadoro Suarez, at the head of a squadron of Peruvian Hussars, decided the victory of Junin; in the first part of August, 1824, De Quincy published a diatribe against Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre; these events were not contemporary (they are now), since the two men died- one in the city of Montevideo, the other in Edinburgh- without knowing anything about each other? Each moment is autonomous? Each moment we live exists, but not their imaginary combination.

Borges, in his story 'Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' is true to this conception, arguing that 'all men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare, are William Shakespeare'. I am not presenting this view as a scientific argument, rather, we certainly have a sense that there are greater and lesser moments in our lives that resonate for each one of us in a manner beyond the mere facticity of time.

Thus, in light of all we've seen in this week's perasha, we can posit a thought experiment more far-out than Nietzche's "eternal return". Nietzche argued that we would choose to live our lives differently if we perceived our actions as being repeated endlessly through infinity. I would suggest that perhaps all reward and punishment, all the concept of a world to come that is beyond time (according to our mystics), all these ideas may be conceptualized if we postulate a world constructed from time. That is, that which we have lived, that which we have chosen and prioritized, those moments may be the building blocks of another type of existence. Perhaps we are creating, with every positive moment lived, a new kind of edifice. The edifice, for example, that we construct out of our experience of Shabbat, the holy moments at the table with our families, in prayer, in lofty thought- let us posit that these and all beautiful moments experienced by the totality of consciousness may represent the building blocks for a better world, one literally "built out of time". This may explain why the Sabbath is far more important than the Mishkan- for the Sabbath experience, as we've seen, as in the first letters of 'ot he l'dorotam', spelling out 'ohel', a dwelling, may perhaps represent the building blocks of a far superior edifice, a currently unimaginable more beautiful world .

There are several provocative ideas I will attempt to develop in the course of this week's reading on perashat Ki Tisa. It is an extremely rich and problematic text, on its own and in connection with the surrounding perashiyot, thus I will try to stay on the course I've charted over the last few weeks, though there are some new themes I guess I will pick up at another time, say next year. But first, in the spirit of never missing good material no matter where you find it, I would like to present a relevant concept from the historian Simon Schama, in his The Embarrassment of Riches, on the Dutch golden age. I even managed to track down a web copy of the painting under discussion, so that you can all see it :

http://www.bmz.amsterdam.nl/adam/uk/groot/paleis6.html

Schama deals with the assumption of the Hebraic history as a model for the destiny of the new Dutch nation. Here begins the edited quote, from pages 116- 120:

It is, then, all the more extraordinary that the most striking instance of Mosaic iconography at the heart of Amsterdam's town hall, should have represented, not the ascendancy of the Calvinist zealots, but the polemical ingenuity of their pliant adversaries in the Amsterdam patriciate. Ferdinand Bol's Moses with the Tablets of Law (1661-62) is best known to art historians as the stilted and ungainly alternative to what might have been one of Rembrandt's most powerful late history paintings, executed in 1659, but what passes for second rate may qualify as first rate historical evidence, and Bol's Moses, in all its histrionic glory provides a grandiloquent demonstration of how the Exodus scripture had become a battleground for disputing views of the relationship between church and state. (the book then continues to describe the tense situation between the severe Calvinist clergy linked with the Orange loyalists versus the humanist magistrates).it was against this background that the moderate regents, savoring the magnificence of their new town hall, decided to offer an iconographic reproof to theocracy where it most counted: in their seat of law. Uytenbogaert had used the Old Testament to insist on the division of governance between lay and spititual spheres, with the former ultimately responsible for the administration of the commonwealth. It had been Moses, not Aaron, he argued, who had been awarded the godly leadership of the Children of Israel, and after Moses' death, that leadership had passed first to judges and then to kings. The priests and prophets had served as the moral consciences of the state, set apart in a special caste, but never entrusted with the role of government. The mantelpiece painting for the Chamber of the Magistrates (the painting by Bol) was to show the one occasion when government had been placed in the hands of the priests, with demonstrably calamitous consequences. Bol's Moses descends from Mount Sinai with the tablets of the law in his arms, only to witness the scenes of profane iniquity and chaos in the camp of the Israelites. Acknowledging their sins, they kneel before him for forgiveness- the figure in left profile, perhaps dressed as to embody the contrition of the priestly caste?

I will not go any further with this, only to point out that there is a somewhat forgotten work which makes this very argument, called Mishpat Hamelucha B'Yisrael, by R. Shimon Federbush, put out by Mossad Harav Kook. Federbush argues that all through Jewish history there was a separation between the religious and the civil lawmakers, the Sanhedrin and the priesthood. Perhaps this work needs to be revived and translated into English. Perhaps we need to think about this kind of seperation today.

Now, back to our reading for this week. Over the past few weeks, in dealing with the repetition of the Mishkan narrative, we discussed the idea of boundaries, of distance introduced as a result of the sin. The Mishkan structure itself, and the garments of the priests, act as signifiers and at the same times as means of overcoming, the boundaries and distance introduced by the sin of the golden calf. R. Zadok Hacohen follows this approach, but with an interesting twist, which would be incredibly radical if it wasn't in the Talmud (BT Nedarim 22: )

"If it weren't for the sin of the Golden Calf, the Jews would only have received the Five Books of the Torah and the Book of Yehoshuah".

It was only with the second set of Luhot that we also received the Oral law. He interprets this to mean that had there not been the distance introduced, our relation with the Torah text would have been an unmediated one, that would not have required the supplemental hermeneutics of the commentaries and supercommentaries familiar to the student of Jewish studies. Our understanding of the Torah would have been akin to what the Rambam describes of Adam before the sin (this similarity is explicit in R. Zadok, as we will see at the very end of this piece), that he would have had a pure objective relationship with Gd unblurred by subjectivity (which is why the forbidden Tree was known as that of "knowledge of good and bad" which are purely subjective categories, as opposed to the tree of Life, which he reads as the empirical, objective understanding, as in science (science as a medieval thinker would have seen it, not the way we would understand it today post Husserl, etc)).

The question, then, is, what is it about the golden calf that links specifically to issues of speech and understanding? I would like to suggest, by a route that begins with the Me'or V'shemesh, who talks of the golden calf as springing from the human need for authority, that is to say, the golden calf as an alternate representation of yir'ah, authority, to replace Moshe was desired by the people, follows with a summary of some core priniples of Lacan, specifically his "desire of the mother" and "name of the father" as representing symbolic representation versus the distance imposed by language, and back through R. Zadokk to why the book of Yehoshua was part of the text that was to be initially given.

The Meor V'shemesh has difficulty comprehending how a generation that experienced what it experienced could lapse so crudely into idolatry of the most primitive sort. What was it that the people wanted from this idol? His response is that it wasn't a "god" they were looking for at all, but rather an authority figure. In essence, they understood that the whole point of the exodus and the ensuing commandments was to reach a stage of awe, of recognition of Gd's greatness and grandeur, referred to in the classical literature as "yirat haromemut". This is the highest level of understanding recognized in the kabbalistic literature, higher than love. For example, in the prayerbook of R. Shalom Sharabi, the meditative introduction is always "b'dichilu u'richimu, u'richimu v'dichilu", "with awe and love, with love and awe", as increasing levels in mystical consciousness rise through fear, (for example, of punishment) to love, then to a higher form of love, to a state of reverent awe (not related to punishment). However, the route which the people took toward achieving this state was by analogy to Moshe. When Moshe appeared in public, as in Shemot 34:30, the people feared to approach him. So through him it was expedient to analogize the requisite awe for Gd. This is his interesting reading of the Talmudic teaching in Berachot 33:, from the verse in Devarim 10:12- What does Gd require from one, only to fear Gd! The Talmud brings texts which show just what a lofty thing this is, but they explain, to Moshe it is a small thing (ie, "only" to fear Gd). The Meor V'Shemesh explains, that in the presence of Moshe it is a small thing, because from the awe one has in Moshe's presence, it was easy to extrapolate the awe one must have before Gd. So in essence, what the people wanted when they feared that Moshe was dead on Sinai, was a new metaphor for fear, a new "authority figure" which would keep them in a state of awe. This what what they demanded from Aharon, and what they got was the golden calf.

What struck me about this reading was the relationship to the ensuing "play" that the text describes once the golden calf was presented to the people. If it was something to fear they were seeking, why was the people's response upon making this calf to "vayakumu l'tsachek", "they got up to party" of 32:6? I suggest that there is an insight in this teaching that resonates with some core ideas of Jacques Lacan, particularly his emendation of Freud's Oedipus/castration complex model, which I will attempt to summarize now. I will also attempt to show how this ties into the teaching we began with of R. Zadok Hacohen of Lublin, which suggested that the supplementary hermeneutics of the Oral Law were necessitated by the failure revealed in the golden calf debacle.

Lacan (following Melanie Klein) explains how at birth, the infant exists in a perceived state of totality with his needs and surroundings. There is no differentiation between the infant and his hunger, his mother, the breast that feeds him, and his sense of satiety. These are all within him, so to speak. Somewhere down the line, at about six months, the child begins to realise that he is a separate entity, unified in his individual person. This is accomplished by what Lacan calls the mirror stage. The child sees his reflection in the mirror, and realises that the image he sees is his individuated being. What is critical for us, here, is that in this model the attainment of individuation is always external, in that what the child sees is a reflected, objectified image, rather than some total complete entity. That image is "me", the child learns. In fact, this world, in which the individual really only comes to know his/herself by virtue of a reflection in others, this world, which Lacan refers to as L'Imaginaire, is also recognized as being in some way false. The me the child knows is an external image, as opposed to 'la reelle', the total uncategorized Real that was present before. What we are, what we live, is a state which is primary in the other, the way we are reflected in society, the way we teach ourselves to think of ourselves based on the demands of those around us, parents, friends, teachers, etc. As Lacan states in "The Four Fundamental Concepts": "Really, is there not something here more profound than La Rochefoucauld's remark that few would experience love if they had not had its ways and means explained to them?" All these behaviour patterns are the result of our self perception which is derived from seeing ourselves reflected in the other. However, the baby, when he sees himself in the mirror, always laughs. That is because, there is a kind of dialectic in process. On the one hand, one is suddenly cut off from the Real, this state of self based unity with the surroundings, but on the other hand, the infant is now an individual, a self among others. Now Lacan reads the Oedipal/castration model of Freud in a non-sexual derived manner, and as this is relevant, I will attempt another oversimplified explanation (it is virtually impossible to try to read Lacan without knowing already what he is trying to say, much like the example of a while ago of translating tefillin as phylacteries, but he has an interesting vantage point that I think may be useful). The attainment of individuality comes at a cost of the Real, and the return to this real, which is intimately connected to the mother, is at the root of desire, that sense that there is more to existence than what we are conscious of. The world makes demands on "us", yet we feel that somehow those demands are not "us". The "us" we still residually know of ourselves from before the mirror stage, this presymbolic world is linked to the mother, and specifically to her capacity to create and to feed. This Lacan calls the "desir de la mere", the desire of the mother (or for the mother). What cuts us off, so to speak, from this dreamy presymbolic Real, is "le nom du pere", the name of the Father, the categorized signifying world of Language. Once there is language, we are cut off (hence the castration) from the ineffable, that which is "prior" to language. So, in summary, our formation as individuals is linked from the outset to a sense of loss, at the root of our encounter with the real, which is why "desire" can never be filled, that there is a continual searching for something "beyond", that cannot be articulated, cannot be satisfied. Yet, to remain intact as individuals, we require the authoritative presence of the Father. The way we experience this encounter with the real (Lacan borrows a term from Aristotle and labels this "tuche"), at every developmental stage, is what determines our health or neurosis.

I would suggest that reading in this manner, we can tie together the teachings summarized above. The people, newly released from the unindividuated state of slavery, still crave the presence of an authority figure, the Name of the Father. When Moshe appeared to tarry, there was a loss of identity, of individuation. Perhaps, this is also symbolized in the Midrashim in which they threw the gold into the fire which then came out as a calf, a Midrash which contains within it several metaphors of birth and creation, as well as a metaphor of childishness (a calf rather than a full grown cow or bull). However, this maladaptive encounter with the real (reflected in the excess of "play", the "vayakumu l'tzachek"), was "neurotic", so to speak. The only cure for it is through the internalization of the true authority figure, that of Gd manifested to the nation as language, not an external "leader" but an internalized set of decisions to live a life with guidelines, in this case, of course, the commandments and Torah.

This brings us back to R. Zadok Hacohen's suggestion that the corpus of Torah would have been far shorter without the sin of the calf. The Talmud specifically links the sin to the Oral Law, the law of language rather than text. Perhaps the idea is that had without this disruptive event in development, had normal development proceded without the neurotic challenge, then our encounter with the normal state of individuation, i.e. the attainment of language, would have been healthier. In fact, in his work Mahshevet Harutz, chapter 16, R. Zadok explains this Talmudic teaching by linking it to yet an earlier failure of this sort, the sin of Adam as described in Bereishit. He says that initially, Adam could have transformed the whole world right at the outset had he not succumbed to his "desire" and disobeyed the "word". The therapy for this failure was meant to be accomplished at Sinai. There, the word could have been properly encountered by the people's reception of the Written Law, that is, the five books of Moshe, along with the book of  Joshua, which, dealing as it does with boundaries (of the Land of Israel), which would have corrected the local failure of Adam and Eve as an alternative locale, another set of boundaries (in a sort of metaphorical transferance) for the Garden of Eden. However, due to the failure of the encounter as seen in the golden calf episode, the second giving of the Torah demonstrated a need for a more gradual route to the written word, via the more extensive (hence also more distant) Oral Law.

In short, until humankind learns to internalize its own best interests, as long as there are border/boundary disputes,  there remains a need for constant direction and guidance...