Harnessing Spiritual Energy

Rabbi Melanie Aron

March 1, 2003

There are many events in the Torah that are not anchored to any specific date, for which we don't know when they actually took place. Occasionally, as the Israelites wander through the desert, we are told that something happened "on the first day of the second month of the second year of their wanderings", but more often we have no real clue about the passage of time. This bothered the meforshim, the Biblical commentators, and often they tried, using clues in the text itself, to establish a more specific time frame for the events that took place.

Reading about the building of the tabernacle, Rashi, the most famous of the meforshim asks, on what day was it that they started their work? And he provides an answer. He says: it was the day after Yom Kippur. Now he didn't just pick that day out of the blue sky. He notes that the building of the tabernacle follows the sin of the Golden Calf. As the Torah describes the Israelite repenting for their sins, he assumes that was Yom Kippur. But I think that he attaches the building of the tabernacle to the day after Yom Kippur for deeper reasons as well.

The sin of the Golden Calf followed just a few weeks after the Jewish people's greatest religious peak experience, the revelation of God on Mt. Sinai. The mountain shook, and the people witnessed the thunder and lightning. They were overwhelmed with emotion and said, "naaseh venishmah, we will heed and observe all of God's commandments", but that didn't prevent them from building an idol shortly thereafter. From that incident, God reached the conclusion that peak experiences alone aren't enough to sustain a religious life. Now after the day of repentance for the Golden Calf, a day of heartfelt emotion, and a sort of peak experience in its own way, God is acting on the conclusion God reached earlier and is putting that learning to use.

Just as today we go out after Yom Kippur, to hammer the first board in the construction of our Succah, God is instructing the people to direct the spiritual energy from their peak experience to the construction of something more permanent. It is similar to what happens to us with seminars, or lectures, or even work off-sites. We are stimulated, excited, full of new ideas, and we get a tremendous boost. But unless we find some immediate way to put our new learning to work, what often happens is that the energy of the special event dissipates without being used for any constructive purposes.

This duality of peak experiences and the constancy of everyday life is found also in the two religious structures that stood within the Israelite camp, the mishkan, the tabernacle, and the ohel moed, the tent of meeting. The mishkan, literally the place where God dwells, was meant to be a sign to the people of God's constancy. It was the location of the ner tamid, the constant flame of the people's dedication to God. It was where a cloud hovered by day and a fire by night to reassure the people that God was constantly with them during their wanderings.

The tent of meeting, on the other hand, was for those occasional moments when God had a special revelation to share with Moses. The tent of meeting represented those really momentous occasions in our lives, the birth of a child, or even a time of great danger, when we live our lives with special intensity and so there is a special intensity to our religious life as well. Perhaps it is like today, the day of your Bat Mitzvah.

But what we have learned from the second part of the book of Exodus is that the tent of meeting, without the mishkan, the tabernacle, was not adequate as the center of the people's religious observance. The mishkan represents a kind of spirituality, which is also a vital part of our own religious lives, because it is that which relates to our normal experiences, day in and day out. It is the reminder that God is present also in what our tradition calls the daily miracles. Early in the service Ali chanted a series of blessings, about our opening our eyes in the morning, standing on our feet, and knowing that the various systems of our body are working. Are prayerbook refers to them in English as blessings, but in Hebrew we recognize them as nisim bechol yom, the miracles we experience every day.

Tomorrow will be the day after this Bat Mitzvah service. No more stress, no more lists of things to do, or Hebrew to review again and again. But as the stress is reduced, so too the excitement and anticipation, and the focus on Jewish traditions and observances that this day entailed.

On the day after, the underlying rhythms of your regular Jewish life will prove to be the important sustaining element, Shabbat around your table at home, Jewish study, and coming to Temple. Today is a very special day, but tomorrow and all the tomorrows to come are even more important in setting the course of your life.