Hello everyone and welcome once again to the Temple Institute Parsha class. My name is
Gedalia Meyer with the podcast from Maale Adumim in Israel. There are many things in life that we
never will be able to see, at least for the foreseeable future. We will not see any other
solar systems that may exist out there in space. We will not see the center of the earth. We will
not see the particles that make up the structure of the atom. We will not see the emotions of love
or fear or pride. We will not see the number two, or any other number, for that matter.
We will not see whatever thoughts go on in our minds, no matter how deeply we sense them.
We will not see sounds, smells, or tastes. It s even somewhat debatable whether we see the things
that we think we see, or if we are just putting together some cleverly constructed combination
of light waves and electrical impulses that make up what we call vision.
This is quite an amazing thing if we actually stop to think about it. Nobody seriously doubts the
existence of any of those things, assuming we buy into the latest and greatest of modern science.
Yet nobody alive will ever see any of the things on that list. We believe they all
exist because either scientific findings or our own personal experiences tell us
that they are real. But we lack any direct visual means of proving their existence.
We are able to accept the existence of many things in life despite this lack of visual proof.
That list could have gone on and on. The last item on the list fairly aptly demonstrates
that vision itself is an iffy experience, even for the things that we know we see.
That something so basic to our experiential reality could be so tenuous in its true nature
is quite baffling. What we think we see we are not really seeing as much as processing in some way.
It s really light waves passing through space in some pattern transforming into some other pattern
in our eyes and brains.That s really the best we can get as far as defining
this most fundamental of the senses. It puts to question a good deal of what we call reality.
It is when it comes to spiritual things like angels, dreams, and God,
that we really begin to draw the line between existence and non-existence.
It is a good bet that most people today doubt the reality of angels. This is because
they have likely never seen one, or have never recognized one if its staring them in the face.
Hardly anybody doubts the reality of dreams, but nobody has ever seen one in the normal
manner of vision. They are there in the mind - no more visible than a thought or an emotion.
God is the absolute epitome of this litmus test of reality. Since we cannot see God, many people
doubt the existence of God. One wonders what they would do if God actually came down into our world
and became as visible as a rainbow. Would they believe or would they brush the whole thing off
as a hallucination? We shall probably never know the answer to this question.
This week s Parsha is called Mishpatim. That word means judgements - an introductory term
for a Parsha which is really a long series of laws. In fact, almost the entire Parsha comprises
this list. There are well over 100 of them, in a seemingly random order that can be made sense of
if one puts in the effort. There are laws about owning slaves, a surprising topic for the Bible,
but one which would have been perfectly expected in all societies of the distant past.
There are laws about stealing, about helping others in a crunch,
about not cooking a goat in its mother s milk, and about not allowing a witch to live. While
some of these may seem highly outdated and even a bit insulting to the modern mind,
it is important to remember that the Bible was given to a very ancient people
to whom such laws were as important as current laws about Internet privacy are to us.
Some of the better known Jewish customs come right out of this series of laws.
That strange business about not cooking a goat in its mother s milk resulted in
the rabbinic determination that this actually extends to not eating or cooking any milk and
meat together. This results in a major section of the famously complex Jewish dietary laws,
commonly referred to as keeping kosher. There is also the first of several listings of the Jewish
holidays. It includes the three pilgrimage holidays, when all adult males were required
to be present at the central religious shrine and give an offering to God in celebration.
These holidays are Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot, with each representing a significant
moment in the agricultural year in addition to marking important times in Israelite history.
This list ends with an odd assortment of laws involving what to do upon finally entering the
Holy Land as far as dealings with the native inhabitants. This includes a promise of divine
assistance in the form of an angel and what seems to be some sort of insect, like a hornet.
There are all kinds of promises of success and health if everything goes as planned. But
underlying all the good stuff is a subtle threat of disaster if the laws are not followed and the
general religious expectations are not met. It s the classic double-edged sword of the Bible.
Whenever there are great promises and prophecies of great rewards and divine blessing,
there is always the suggestion of disaster if the Israelites don t keep their end of the bargain.
At the end of the Parsha things take a completely different turn. It is so radically different from
what came earlier that one wonders how there could possibly be a connection between them.
It goes into what appears to be either a retelling of the events of the giving
of the Ten Commandments or a continuation of the event as it went on. At first Moshe
is instructed to ascend the mountain along with seventy or so elders of the Israelites.
Moshe alone approaches God, just as at the giving of the Ten Commandments, while the other remain
somewhere below. Then things are back on the ground with Moshe writing everything down in some
form and building a altar with twelve monuments corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel.
Next comes a variety of offerings with the traditional sprinkling of blood.
At this point, things take a strange turn. There is no way to paraphrase this strange turn
in words that might make sense to us. The next few sentences are so bizarre
that they almost defy translation. Here they are in all their glory:
Moshe, Aaron, Nadav, and Avihu and the seventy elders of Israel ascended. They
saw the God of Israel and under His feet was like the work of a sapphire brick
(or possibly like the whiteness of a sapphire), and like the essence of the heavens in purity.
To the nobles of Israel he did not send forth His hand, and they saw God and they ate and drank.
After this it goes into a more comprehensible repeat of God telling Moshe to ascend the mountain
alone. This includes the classic Biblical account of how the mountain was covered with
a kind of cloud that represented the presence of God in the world. This otherworldly presence
is always referred to as the glory of God . It is described here as being similar to a fire.
Moshe enters into this cloud and remains there for forty days and forty nights - the classic Biblical
time span for such communions with God. But we have to try to make some sense of
that strange few sentences that precede this climactic conclusion to the Mt. Sinai experience.
What could all this possibly mean? How does the Torah come seemingly out of nowhere
and state that these people actually saw God? Not only does it say it once, but it seems to repeat
it, with the odd addition that they were eating and drinking when this vision was taking place.
In the middle of all that is that almost untranslatable description of what was under God
s feet. Somehow, this depiction of it resembling a sapphire in some way but also appearing like the
essence of the heavens in purity, zeros right in on what this visual experience actually was.
These people, according to the literal translation of these words, saw God. There is no mistaking
those words, even if they seem impossible to us and to the subsequent direction that Judaim would
take. Great efforts have been made through the centuries to mitigate the literal reading of these
words and to change it into some sort of thought experience. While there may be some merit in this
approach, we still have to deal with the actual words of the text. Even if we somehow make sense
of things, we will have to explain that strange phrase of God not sending forth His hand against
these elders who were gazing at God while eating and drinking. What could that possibly mean?
We have to enter into serious speculation at this point. First off, we are going to take the words
as they are in the text and not alter them to fit some more recent understanding of the theology
involved. These people saw God. While that may seem impossible, there it is right in front of
us. The Torah gives no real description of what God looked like, only this approximation in the
form of what was under His feet . This, we are going to take as a metaphor, which it seems to be.
What is under God s feet? Perhaps this refers to what is right below God in the grand scheme of
reality. In other words, there is God and there is some chain of causation that ultimately results in
the created world. The reality in between those extremes was what was under God s feet . This
is described as perhaps the whiteness of a sapphire. Sapphires, as everyone knows, are blue.
However there are clear sapphires and they are among the most brilliant natural items in all of
creation. They reflect light brilliantly, and this is perhaps the intention of the description here.
This in-between reality can only be described as some reflection of brilliant light and purity
resembling the essence of the heavens. This is about as close
as we can get to describing the approach to the reality of God.
Some of those who actually saw this could not sustain the vision without resorting to the
mundane actions of eating and drinking. These normal human needs can arise even in moments of
great spiritual intensity. This, perhaps, is what happened here. They need to eat, so they did. God,
it seems, forgave them for this impropriety, recognizing that they were, after all, human
beings. But the Torah does indicate that there was a breach of spiritual etiquette here , When
one is privy to such a vision, certain things have to be set aside, no matter how urgent.
What comes out of all this is that it is possible, in some way,
to see God. It may not be like seeing a mountain or a rainbow, but it may be like seeing a dream
or a thought. There is something there to be experienced in some manner that resembles vision.
The closest we can come to understanding what this vision was is by that description of the
in-between reality. That, the Torah is clear, is not God, but some intervening reality that
gives us an understanding of what God s reality may actually be. It is brilliant like a clear
sapphire and as clear as the heavens. It is reality devoid of all things physical.
For better or worse, this is the best the Torah gives of what it means to see God. This
vision may have been a one-time event. It s like never occurs again in the Torah. But then again,
who really knows if these sorts of visions are no longer really accessible if we would just open up
our eyes. Perhaps God could be just as visible as a number or as the emotion of love, or a dream.
Perhaps it s only a matter of knowing what to look for. Shabbat Shalom!