A significant geo-intellectual shift is taking place in the world. The West, being steeped in scientific thought and its quest for clarity has relentlessly pursued the measurable. How much? How many? How long? When? Where? We are ill at ease with paradox and feel awkward with enigma. The East on the other hand, has been far more at home in the world of the mystical, transcendental and spiritual. Asian thinkers have always been comfortable with the unknowable, and the immeasurable. The East more than the West has known that not all things valuable are measurable; and not all things measurable are valuable.
More recently, as the East accelerates its mastery of Western business and technology, the West has become increasingly intrigued by the mystical. In education, psychology, religion, and even in business, mysticism is becoming main-stream. This new foray by the West into previously uncharted territory opens pathways to deep spiritual experience. However, the West lacks the tools to gauge the authenticity of seemingly subjective spiritual ideas and experiences. This admits a plethora of charlatan practitioners who flourish in the freedom from rigorous intellectual accountability that this new environment offers them.
To effectively distinguish the authentic from the counterfeit one needs to balance both worlds: the measurable and the immeasurable; the material and the spiritual. Neither the West nor the East have evolved in this balance to nearly the degree that Torah culture has.
Torah, more than any other discipline, manages the elegant balance between the measuarable (the “four amot of Halachah”) and the immeasuarable (philosophy and Kabalah). Torah is that delicate ladder of Jacob’s dream that, founded firmly on the ground, climbs into the upper reaches of Heaven.
One of the most meticulously quantifiable areas of Halacha is the Temple service. Measures of time, space, direction, mass and volume are constantly factored into the service at its very core. Not surprisingly then, with respect to the once-a-year entry into the Kodesh Kedoshim (Holy of Holies), Moshe is told to instruct his brother that he may not enter it “at any time”[1] . This implies that the space, specifically demarcated, may be entered only at a specifically demarcated time. Yet in the next sentence, just when we would expect G-d to tell Moshe when that time is that Aharon is permitted to enter the Kodesh Kedoshim, he doesn’t. Instead of telling him when he may enter, G-d tells him how he must enter: with a bull, a ram, priestly clothes of sanctity, and two goats supplied by the community! But after being warned that there is only a specific time to enter, why are we not told when that time is?[2]
The phrase, “He may not enter at any time” is ambiguous. It could mean what we have understood it to mean, namely, that Aharon may not enter the Kodesh Kedoshim any time he pleases, but only at specific prescribed times. But it could also mean he may not enter the Kodesh Kedoshim at any time at all. The Klei Yakar understands it according to the second interpretation. How then does he understand the next verse that prescribes how and with what he actually does enter? When is that time that he enters, according to the Klei Yakar?
The Klei Yakar introduces a profound kabalistic idea: the only time that Ahron entered the Kodesh Kedoshim was Yom Kippur, and Yom Kippur is not in fact a moment in time at all. It is a moment of stillness not subject to the anxieties of time. It is almost T.S.Eliot’s, “still point of the turning world.” The Satan, (I understand him to manifest in our own egos and pursuits of self-preservation and mechanistic activities), explains the Klei Yakar, only affects us during the 364 “other” days of the year, not the day of Yom Kippur.
It is intriguing to consider the possibility that just as the time of Yom Kippur doesn’t count as time but as an eternal moment suspended above time, so also the space occupied by the Holy Arc in the Kodesh Kedoshim also did not count as space and did not occupy space.[3]
This passage, describing Aharon’s miraculous encounter, was specific to the Kohein Gadol’s annual entrance into the Kodesh Kedoshim. Nevertheless, like each word of the Torah, this passage too is overflowing with relevant meaning for us all today.
We tend to miss the intense richness and precious gift of each moment of our lives as we stress about past and future. Teshuva (repetance and self-correction) is given to us to help us beyond our pasts. Bitachon (faith) is given to us to liberate ourselves from the anxieties of the future. Because “Yeish koneh olamoh be’sha’ah achat”[4] (a person could achieve his eternity in a single moment). That is the power of the moment, when we live in it with all of our attentiveness. When we squander our moments fretting about past and future, we squander eternity. When a person is engaged in a true creative process, they do not notice time passing, they are not conscious of time. They are living the moment. When children play, they too are living the moment, unconscious of the passage of time.
That does not mean to suggest that we should not rectify the past and plan for the future. Of course we should. But we should do that in the present moment and to the extent that we can impact the past and the future. Once we have planned what we need to and forgiven what we have to, we should refocus our attentiveness on the wondrous present moment of eternity in which we find ourselves.
In space too, so much of our attention is often on where we should have been, where we ought to be and where our children are! So little attentitiveness is focused on where we actually are. We often notice so little of our own surroundings, while we fantasize about surroundings that are not ours. We do not hear the sounds around us, nor see the colors and tones that surround us. With such mindlessness and being so out of tune with our senses, how can we expect to grasp that which cannot be analyzed and measured? How can we grasp the Divine if we are living only in our heads and not in our own immediate moments and spaces?
Finally, there is a further paradox in our verse; “for in a cloud, I shall become visible”! In the fogginess and mistiness created by the Ketoret (incense) offering, you will “see” me. Is vision not usually a function of clarity? Do we not normally wait for the fog to clear before we can see? Why would G-d say that it is in the very fog of the Ketoret cloud, that He will become “visible”? Furthermore, we know that G-d cannot be seen by a living person?[5]
Again we see the Torah’s teaching that while we need visual clarity to see things that are measurable and that operate within the dimensions of space and time, we need a different type of sight to “see” the Divine. We need in-sight. In-sight is the ability to see inward. To see deep, deep into our own souls because that is where we will find the windows to the Divine, that is where we will experience the spiritual; not in the superficiality of our external senses. That insight is not gained from scientific clarity. It is gained from an egoless state of self-knowledge and being. We gain insight when the world appears mysterious and enigmatic to us. We gain insight when we stay in spaces that are discomforting in their paradox. We feel our own depth and G-d’s infinity when we are in a space that has no place and in a moment that is beyond time.
Even the Kohein Gadol, schooled as he is in all the minutiae and Halachik detail of Temple Service, needs to manage the balance between the quantifiable and the mystical. He needs to bring together the Jewish peoples’ talent to operate in both worlds. Like the difference between East and West, for centuries we too had different seats of excellence. Sephardim and Hassidim were more comfortable with the mystical, while Ashkenazi scholars limited themselves more to the measurable world of Halachik analysis in which they excelled. These distinctions are vanishing as we too experience the same kind of geo-intellectual shift that is impacting the rest of the world. The Kibutz Galuyot (the convergence of globally diverse communities) is harmonizing us once again into an orchestra of both spiritual and analytical excellence. As we find our way in this space, we sometimes produce a noisy cacophony. But little by little our people are crafting a magnificent, new symphony of pre-messianic majesty.
[1] Vayikra 16:2
[2] The Ramban asserts that there is no need to specify that the time referred to is Yom Kippur, because that is contextually evident.
[3] See Bava Batra 99a and Maharal in Chidushei Agadot, p. 121, who explains the Arc as having a similar relationship to the Beit Hamikdash as the intellect has to the body. As massive as the intellect is and as much power as it wields, it occupies no space.
[4] Avodah Zarah, 10b
[5] See Ibn Ezra and Rashbam
