Tetzaveh

Looking for parking in New York City can often be an incredibly frustrating experience.  There’s a story of a man looking for a parking spot in New York City one afternoon.  He’s in a rush, he’s already late for a meeting and he’s been looking for a spot to open up for close to an hour.  In frustration, he calls out to God, “God please if you find me a spot, I’ll go to Minyan more often, I’ll learn more Torah, and I’ll give more tzedakah!  I just can’t look for a parking spot anymore, please make a spot open up for me.”  As he opens his eyes from his heartfelt prayer, he notices the car immediately in front of him pulling out.  So he looks up at the heavens and says, “never mind God, I found one myself.

There is a classic debate among theologians and philosophers both Jewish and non-Jewish.  To what degree is God involved in the world?  Does God have a hand in everything that happens, or is God like a watchmaker who is no longer involved in the operation of the watch after it has been put together and set in motion?  The bottom line is that we don’t know; religious belief is not the same as knowledge.  I know that the sky is blue; I know it because I see it very clearly, I don’t have a choice.  But I believe there is a God and I believe that this God is the primary mover of the world constantly willing everything into existence, I believe this whether it’s explicit or not, and it’s usually not.

When it comes to belief, God gives us a choice.  We can choose whether or not we believe in God, we can choose whether or not we believe that God is actively and directly involved in this world at all times, and we can choose whether or not we want to follow God’s commandments.  Our religion wants us to choose in the affirmative, but we have the freedom to make that decision for ourselves.

Matters of faith cannot be absolutely proven, to do so would make it knowledge of something and not belief.  When we try to prove a matter of faith, what we are really doing is establishing our reasons and reminders to believe.  In Judaism, Jewish philosophy and learning serves as an intellectual reminder that there is a God.  Shabbat, Holidays, prayer and many more mitzvoth are ritual reminders.  We also have physical reminders like the mezuzah, or the synagogue’s sacred space.  For a person of faith, we need these reminders to constantly keep the faith in a world where God is not always obvious. 

The tabernacle and its many artifacts served as physical reminders of the connection between the Jewish people and God.  This is evident in the beginning of this week’s Parsha, where we see the word for testimony – עדות, being used with regard to the items in the tabernacle.  The second verse of the Parsha says, “Aaron and his sons shall set the lights of the menorah in the tabernacle outside the curtain which is over the עדות.”  In the many translations, עדות, the Hebrew for testimony, is translated as the Ark of the Covenant.  Although the Ark of the Covenant is often used to relate to this idea of testimony, that is not the literal translation of the verse.

In fact, the Talmud in Masechet Shabbat 22b understands this verse to have a different meaning. The sages say that in this context the עדות – testimony is referring to the testimony of the Menorah, which gives testament to the idea that the divine presence dwells among the Jewish people.
Every day before sunset the Cohen would light the menorah lamps which were each filled with just enough oil to last through the night.  Every morning the Cohen would find six of the lights extinguished, but the middle light would miraculously burn all the next day until just before sunset on the following evening when the Menorah would be prepared and lit for that night.  This lamp was called the Ner Tamid, the continuously burning light.  It was a symbol for the connection between the Jewish people and God.

The Menorah was not a light fixture whose purpose was to illuminate a dark space, the room it was in had windows which let the light in during the day, and the room was not in use at night.  The Menorah’s sole purpose was testimony to the continuous connection of the people to God.  This reminder is necessary, because God’s presence is not naturally seen or felt in the world during our daily lives unless we actively choose to see the world that way.

This is one of the most important lessons from Megillat Esther and the story of Purim.  An interesting fact about Megillat Esther is that even though this is a religious document and part of the Hebrew bible, it does not contain the name of God, not even once.  There are also no explicit miracles in the story of Purim.  On the surface, it is simply a story of Jewish survival.  But the Jewish people at this time saw their survival as miraculous.  All of the coincidences which put Mordechai and Esther in the position to influence Achashverosh in way that would ultimately save the Jewish people were not seen as mere coincidences, the people saw them as the hand of God.

They chose to see their salvation coming from the hands of God even though there were no explicit miracles, they could’ve chosen to give themselves the credit for their survival and forgotten about God. This is why our sages in Masechet Shabbat 88a explain that on Purim the covenant between the Jewish people and God was reaffirmed for all eternity.

The Talmud discusses the Midrash which says that God held mount Sinai over the Jewish people’s heads when offering them the Torah and said, if you accept the Torah it will be good for you, but if not I’ll drop the mountain on top of you.  The sages of the Talmud point out the theological problem in this Midrash. In Jewish law, if a person is forced to sign an agreement under duress, the agreement is invalid.  So the sages make the same argument about the accepting the Torah at Sinai under the conditions in this Midrash.  The challenge is resolved by the Purim story.  At the end of Megillat Esther 9:27, it says, “The Jews upheld and received upon themselves and their descendants.”  The sages of the Talmud understand this statement to mean that they now voluntarily chose to uphold that which was already received, the Torah.  This acceptance makes the Torah a binding agreement between the Jewish people and God. 

To me, the contrast between the accepting of the Torah at Sinai versus that of Purim has a lot to do with the historical reality at the times of those stories.  We don’t have to understand the Midrash as saying that the mountain was literally held over their head, but it’s expressing the idea that it would not have been reasonable to see the Jewish people during the Exodus as even desiring to choose.  They had just experienced the outstretched hand of God miraculously saving them from Egypt, followed by the revelation of God at Sinai.  They didn’t have a choice because too much had happened for them to believe otherwise.  This was not the world that most Jews would live in for all of eternity.  Most of us live in a world where faith in God and God’s involvement in this world is a choice, because we don’t see God as obviously as they did then.  Therefore the Jews at the time of the Purim story serve as a more realistic role model for the rest of the Jewish people for all future generations.

God’s existence and involvement in the Exodus was a matter of knowledge, the people acknowledged God after the splitting of the red sea, proclaiming, “This is my God and I will exalt him.”  But God’s existence and involvement in the Purim story is not as clear.  The people of Shushan chose to see their redemption as being through the hand of God even though it wasn’t obvious.  And the people chose to obligate themselves to uphold the Torah because of their faith in God’s divine presence continuously dwelling amongst them.

We live in a world where, like the Jews of Shushan, we have a choice whether we want to see God, believe in God’s presence amongst us, and obligate ourselves to follow in the ways of the lord, is a matter of free choice.  But when we choose to see the world in such a way, we are illuminated by the divine radiance, like that of the Menorah, through this relationship.