Summary
This week’s portion contains functionally no narrative, being wholly dedicated to the descriptions of various holy articles for the cultic worship of our ancestors. It begins with the instructions regarding the oil for the Ner Tamid (the eternal light) and then focuses on the vestments for the high priest and for his sons, the ordinary priests. It closes with instructions for the tamid (the perpetual daily sacrifice) and the making of the incense altar.
Commentary by Rabbi Janet Burden of West Central Liberal Synagogue and Ealing Liberal Synagogue
If I think back about fifteen years or so, I can well remember my general reaction to these sections at the end of Exodus that focus on the Temple and its sacrificial cult. I saw in them pretty much everything I hate about organised religion:
If I were being more self-indulgent, I could carry on quite a while with this list. On some level, I suppose I still haven’t worked through all the implications of what I was feeling then. You see, I was rather a later-blooming rebel…. Earlier, I dismissed Biblical passages like these as archaic and boring. They were only questionably worth reading, and certainly nothing to get het up about. Then, when I returned to university as a mature student, I began to understand how what we read shapes how we think. By the time I read my six or seventh 19th Century novel (each with its own variation of “the frail vessel” heroine), I had had it. This was the stuff that shaped our society’s attitudes towards women and their roles. I got angry… and I stayed angry. But I didn’t stop reading - and I didn’t stop with women’s issues. I became obsessed with economic and social disenfranchisement in all its forms. I regularly found that religion, at least in the form of the three great monotheistic faiths, stood indicted in the whole affair. If this is what it meant to be one of “the peoples of the Book,” how could anyone, in good conscience, participate? At times it seemed to me that the only option was to stand outside, a conscientious objector.
Fortunately, I was smart enough to realise that things just aren’t that simple. I knew full well that the very scriptures I blamed for creating the mess were the same ones being used by the Liberation Theologists to inspire the oppressed peoples of Latin America to stand up against dictatorships. Much closer to home, I had the evidence of my own community. Having become a social activist, I was confronted with the fact that Jews were vastly over-represented in every aspect of our work: work for racial equality, for better conditions for the migrant farmworkers, for environmental awareness, as witnesses on human rights watches…you name it. Something had shaped the consciousness of these, my partners in building a better world. I realised that if I wanted to be true to my own methodology, I would have to look for a possible explanation in the texts we have read, from generation to generation.
At first I found an easy way out, starting with the Pesach Hagadah. I knew seders had been used in anti-apartheid protests and freedom vigils. I had also been part of a community group who volunteered to do a seder service for the Jewish inmates in our local prison. It is fascinating experience to talk about the implications of freedom and responsibility in such an environment. I was lucky that the leader of the group was an experienced facilitator, and knew how to select and adapt texts in a meaningful way. No standardised ritual would have sufficed in those circumstances. But Pesach is only one of the elements that shapes Jewish consciousness... There was no escaping it - I would have to look at Torah.
What I am describing is the beginning of the process that led me to study for the rabbinate. What I found both inspired and delighted me. Many of our texts are wonderfully open-ended: the whole process of the rabbinic midrash is built on the idea that our stories leave gaps for us to fill, questions left unanswered, in short, space for us to enter into. But today’s readings don’t work that way, quite the opposite. There is no space for us in them. The descriptions offered are a good example of that 70’s catch phrase “the medium is the message.” The language recreates the historical reality: the Temple was an enclosed area, carefully controlled by a select group of insiders. It was only the destruction of the Temple, traumatic as it was, that made room for others to enter….for with that destruction came the corresponding rise of the synagogue: the public space for all Jews in the community.
Our midrash, so to speak, had to take on a physical form: there were arguably already too many words. It is quite an act of interpretation to transfer the garments of the high priest to where they are to be found today. Aaron’s successor stands in every synagogue: the Torah scroll, clothed in crimson, bearing the breastplate, rimonim and bells. This fact doesn’t solve all my problems with the text, but at least it is subversive enough to keep me engaged. And isn’t that what it’s really all about? Shalom u-vrachah.
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