This is Life as a Sacred Text, an expansive, loving, everybody-celebrating, nobody-diminished, justice-centered voyage into one of the world’s most ancient and holy books. We’re working our way through Exodus these days. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here.
Let’s talk some more about the layers of meaning that can be held in our rituals and ritual objects, shall we?
So, as we’ve been discussing, in Exodus there’s this big chunk of text about setting up the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. The portable place of worship that the Israelites took around with them in the desert.
And as we’ve seen, there are details. So many details! How many rings of what kind of metal, what kind of wood, how many cubits high, and so forth. But all this detail is meant to tell you important stuff.
For example: the Menorah, the seven-pronged lamp that was lit in the Tabernacle/Temple. (The Hanukkah menorah, or Hanukiya, has 8 branches and a ninth shamash/helper).
This is a coin from the Second Temple era:
A cool lamp, yeah? But look at the description in Exodus—you see there’s more to it than meets the coin.
Here’s Exodus 37:17-24. The ‘he’ in question is Betzalel, chief artisan of the Tabernacle.
He made the lampstand of pure gold. He made the lampstand—its base and its shaft—of hammered work; its cups, calyxes, and petals were of one piece with it.
Six stems issued from its sides: three stems from one side of the lampstand, and three stems from the other side of the lampstand. There were three cups shaped like almond-blossoms, each with calyx and petals, on one stem; and there were three cups shaped like almond-blossoms, each with calyx and petals, on the next stem; so for all six stems issuing from the lampstand.
On the lampstand itself there were four cups shaped like almond-blossoms, each with calyx and petals: a calyx, of one piece with it, under a pair of stems; and a calyx, of one piece with it, under the second pair of stems; and a calyx, of one piece with it, under the last pair of stems; so for all six stems issuing from it. Their calyxes and their stems were of one piece with it, the whole of it a single hammered piece of pure gold. He made its seven lamps, its tongs, and its fire pans of pure gold. He made it and all its furnishings out of a talent of pure gold.
A base with multiple stems issuing from either side, with almond blossoms flowering on them.
It’s a tree.
And not just any tree—the Menorah is an almond tree.
Why an almond tree?
There’s a story of Korach’s rebellion in Numbers, about a play for power. (We’ll get there, don’t worry.) As part of this revolt, there’s a thing where God has the head of every tribe put a staff at the Tent of Meeting, but only Aaron’s sprouts... almond blossoms.
The next day Moses entered the Tent of the Pact, and there the staff of Aaron of the house of Levi had sprouted: it had brought forth sprouts, produced blossoms, and borne almonds. (Numbers 17:23)
So at minimum, the almond tree is about Aaron’s priestly authority. (Shoutout to Dr. Rachel Adler for this wise line of thinking, by the way.)
But the thing with ritual and ritual objects is that they don’t only hold one thing.
They operate on numerous mythic, sociological, theological, spiritual, emotional, pastoral, psychological (and more) levels at once. That’s why they’re so powerful.
I learned this first when I went to go say Kaddish—the mourner’s prayer—for my mother when I was in college. I could only say it among a quorum of Jews, which forced me to leave the hermitage of my grief. As a mourner, I stood to recite it—so other people knew immediately that I was hurting, that I might need some extra tenderness and care. The prayer itself is a praise of God, said by the liturgical leader many times in different forms throughout the service, only a couple of which are designated for grieving. As such, the mourner uses a prayer that is in some ways a mundane punctuation mark as an expression of their suffering—there’s something ordinary and reassuring about that. At the same time, the words of praise in the prayer force the mourner to affirm magnificence and glory at the time when things seem bleakest. A medieval legend suggests that one should say the prayer to help the soul of the dead in the afterlife, thus giving the mourner one last way to help, to stay connected to the family member they have just lost. It was initially a prayer said after Torah study, so it marks the end of the study of the Torah that was this beloved person’s life.
These few short paragraphs live on so many levels simultaneously.
And what’s powerful about this is that when ritual is about not just one thing, layers of meaning might get added—whether personal meaning, what a ritual means for one particular person, or communal meaning as our social and communal and theological and historical story changes and evolves. And it also means that it’s not easily threatened—that the multilayered nature of real ritual means that if one “reason” needs to fall away, it operates on so many other planes at the same time that it continues to be a powerful vehicle for connection to the holy.
If it does not—that is, if a ritual serves only a thin purpose—it might not stand the test of time. That’s OK. Things evolve, and keep evolving. We see what does the thing.
We see what holds us, and what helps direct us to the Source.
Back to our menorah/tree.
It’s Aaron’s almond staff of authority. But tree also evokes the Garden of Eden, and the famous trees with their famous fruit there. We talk about Torah as the Tree of Life, Psalms talks about the righteous as a tree, and so forth. The Menorah is (maybe) all of these things.
But! But! As Dr. Adler observes, this tree is also on fire. Right? It’s a lamp.
A tree on fire. Hmmm. Where have we seen that before? Oh, yeah.
A messenger of God appeared to [Moses] in a blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed, and there was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed. (Exodus 3:2)
There are so many things happening in this one ritual object. It’s about Aaron’s priestly authority, but also Moses’ first and paradigm-shaping encounter with the divine, his charge from God to tell Pharaoh to release the enslaved Israelites. The Menorah is also about Moses’ prophetic authority.
This is also the tension between Tabernacle/Mishkan and Temple/Mikdash.
That is to say, there is one framework where God is imminent and travels with you, leads you in fire and smoke, shows up on the regular and is accessible, a la the prophetic tradition. And there is another wherein God dwells in a fixed place (Jerusalem), accessible only to an elite class (the priests), or maybe you a little if you travel to that place and can bring a sacrifice.
Two entirely different worldviews and ways of being, both held somehow in this one ritual object.
But every ritual object is like this in some way, every ritual. Holding all of these questions and layers, operating in multiple fields simultaneously.
It’s the paradox that gets us to mystery, to the place beyond language, to encounters with that which is beyond conception.
It’s the layers and layers of meaning that can get us beyond meaning into pure experience.
It doesn’t make rational sense, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Not everything worth experiencing happens on the rational plane.
Sometimes you do ritual, and you let ritual hold you.
Let all those layers hold you, even if you don’t see them, even if you don’t know they’re there.
They are, and whether you’re aware of them or not, they might be helping you light a pathway to something beyond yourself.
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TW: death, grief, personal trauma and a few more things I can't name yet.
This is going to be long and I don't have a TLDR and I'm not sorry. It's absolutely okay for y'all to not read this, but due to the nature described in the TW above, I'm not interested in responses to whatever the 2 sentence version of this would be. I am sorry if that sounds harsh, it's really not and it's really okay if you don't have time or energy to read all this.
Oof. Oy. And a little ouch - but the kind of ouch like when you pour hydrogen peroxide (or whatever) on an open wound and it stings, but as you watch it bubble and drain down you know that that sting means it's being cleaned so it can heal and be protected from infection as it heals.
I hope this metaphor makes sense, I found it striking today because as I developed it I realize how often we/I (maybe just I) just stick a bandaid on our emotional/psychological wounds, our trauma, without cleaning them first and how that leads so many of us to "infections" like addictions and hate and self-hate and much more I'm sure.
Before I get too far in the weeds - this is my question (one of them anyway): So what do we do/how do we reconcile when we discover that a ritual we've been performing for years that has fulfilled all of those multiple "mythic, sociological, theological, spiritual, emotional, pastoral, psychological (and more) levels at once" we've been doing *wrong* this whole time?
I've already buried the lede - but it's saying Kaddish. I've done it wrong this whole time. All 43 years of my life, I have said Kaddish 100s of times but only maybe 15-20 or so with a minyan and never in the specific relationship to mourning in community described above - I'm not even sure if those 15-20 count as a minyan (at least for some Jews). I grew up in Butte, MT. Once a thriving Jewish community with 3 separate synagogues (2 Orthodox and 1 Reform) in the height of the boomtown era (1860sish-1930sish), by the time I was attending synagogue as part of an interfaith (multi-faith) family in the 1980s/early 90s we didn't have a Rabbi - we flew in student Rabbis from LA for the HHD and we celebrated Passover and Hanukkah at home. I was 15 when we moved from Butte to Idaho Falls - I know our beautiful historic synagogue was sparsely filled, I don't know if I can actually count a minyan among those attendees - I was just too young to remember and never knew that a count/quorum was a thing to which I should pay attention.
It was about 4 years ago that I began to reach out and research more Jewish history, education and community online that I never had access to before - that I realized that the personal ritual practice I had developed as a way of grieving and honoring my dead by saying Kaddish alone or with just my Mother was absolutely wrong. Because - for me - a person who can't be truly sure she's ever said Kaddish with a minyan, saying Kaddish became a way to escape the pressures of a community who expected me to mourn and grieve in their way, by their standards - culturally xian and American and the type of tossing bandaids on wounds without cleaning them out first - with all the trappings of shame and guilt and insistence that I was somehow doing it wrong. And for me saying Kaddish alone was a way of removing myself from the type of community that just wanted me to move on - who didn't want to have to hear about my grief. And yet there was the constant refrain of "don't hesitate to call if you need anything" - but that never actually means "including just listening and being with you in community" like it seems to be in Jewish mourning practices. Like described above - where the act of standing indicates a required level of sensitivity, where Kaddish is said together because one *should* be "forced to leave the hermitage of my grief". I lost my father in 2003, my sister in 2006 and my Aunt Diane last August and for me in all of that grief - "community" was always a burden - a pressure to do and say the right thing. To placate those who put their need to "be there for me" over my own needs at the time. But Kaddish - saying it every day was my chance to let go of all that. To connect with the memory of my loved ones and to privately commune with and praise G-d beyond the gaze of those whose expectations I could never live up to.
And there's a resentment in me of those for whom the ability to say Kaddish in a minyan and to be prioritized by their community - to have community who get this at all - is a given and who - unlike Rabbi Ruttenberg who has always reached out to those of us on the margins and seen us, take that privilege for granted.
And there's also the weird hurt that comes with one who has deep respect for ritual and for the rules of ritual and how very important they are to feel as though I'm appropriating my own culture. Because I don't know how else to describe it - but I find "it is what you make it, and G-d's about intent and not the details" sentiments regarding this unique type of pain when us rural/isolated Jews are trying to learn how to do things right and feeling like appropriators or cosplayers to ring really hollow. Because - like, that's not enough. That's a "I only read the TLDR" response. Sure - it matters that Kaddish said privately became a ritual that helped me mourn in my own way - but you can't just bandaid over the fact that that's not the way it's supposed to be done. That's not the ritual. It's supposed to be said in community. And telling me that what I've done is "fine" doesn't actually address the hurt of the way in which I feel robbed of the opportunity, of the education, of the community that's supposed to be the whole point. There's no fair place to put any kind of blame - and nothing about the aforementioned resentment helps me or anyone else.
And this helps - it helps to look at the multilayered nature of ritual and to understand that that is fully within our tradition to adapt and evolve. But I still don't know yet - how to reconcile with the immeasurable complexity of that specific hurt of discovering all the many small and HUGE rituals and details I've been doing wrong this whole time.
I took a break a couple months ago and feel bad for dumping all this on my first response back (and I haven't caught up yet either - I just jumped back in). But all my love for this and for listening.
Yishar koach, and thank you for this teaching. If it had only taught us how to look at Kaddish in a different way, dayenu!