Invitation to pay close attention to this moment:
- Where does it fit in with what came before and will come after? (confusing)
- What is unusual or strange about this covenantal moment? (דם ברית, splitting blood, visual revelation, eating and drinking)
Didn't we just have the revelation at Mt. Sinai last week?
What is this covenant ceremony?
What is the book of covenant Moshe already has?
Why is he called back up the mountain? What is he supposed to be getting from God?
Rashi: אין מוקדם ומאוחר בתורה
Re-scrambles text to make one logical narrative with a single revelation at Sinai
But the text is much more confusing, and I'd like to go with it...
I'd like to use the comparison to help understand what makes this moment unique
Everyone together at mountain
God's voice calls out for all to hear/"see"
10 Utterances
People can't handle hearing
Sensory confusion
Ask Moshe to speak to God in their place
Egalitarian revelation (everyone present and seemingly included),
but God communicates in a way that only the leader can handle;
the people max out.
Seems that engaging everyone as if they're prophets doesn't work (they can't hear it).
Only Moshe receives revelation.
People are left wondering what's going on.
In order to fill the void (fear, unknown, etc.),
the people create a molten image of a calf.
Engaging only the leader and neglecting the rest of the community doesn't work.
The people have emotional and spiritual needs;
and if those aren't met through "formal religion",
the people will find another means to fill them.
Least well-known and in some ways the strangest.
I'm going to point out several details
to help us understand what this experience might be about.
The Vision - Sapphire Bricks
(10) and they saw the God of Israel: under His feet there was the likeness of pavement (brick) of sapphire, like the very sky for purity.
כמעשה לבנת הספיר AS IT WERE THE BRICKWORK OF SAPPHIRE — This had been before Him during the period of Egyptian slavery as a symbol of Israel’s woes — for they were subjected to do brick-work (cf. Jerusalem Talmud Succah 6:3; Leviticus Rabbah 23:8).
That means that this vision is directly connected to what they have been living.
Response to the Vision - Feasting
ויחזו את האלקים. הָיוּ מִסְתַּכְּלִין בּוֹ בְּלֵב גַּס מִתּוֹךְ אֲכִילָה וּשְׁתִיָּה, כָּךְ מִדְרַשׁ תַּנְחוּמָא, וְאֻנְקְלוֹס לֹא תִרְגֵּם כֵּן.
ויחזו את האלהים AND THEY BEHELD GOD [AND DID EAT AND DRINK] — They gazed at him intimately as though their association with Him were a matter of eating and drinking. Thus does the Midrash Tanchuma, Beha'alotcha 16 explain it. Onkelos, however, does not translate the passage this way (i. e. he does not take it in a depreciative sense that Nadab and Abihu and the elders acted improperly. His translation is: they beheld God’s Glory and rejoiced in their offerings which were accepted as though they were eating and drinking). —
...they beheld God’s Glory and rejoiced in their offerings which were accepted as though they were eating and drinking.
but actually it is an integration.
They are absorbing the moment of visual revelation (the sapphire bricks)
into an experience of worship through sacrifice,
which means a devotional meal.
What could be an otherworldly experience
becomes physical, embodied, and ritualized,
a sanctification of physical experience.
The People and the Blood
(6) Moshe took half of the blood and put it in basins, and the other half of the blood he dashed against the altar. (7) Then he took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, “All that Adonai has spoken we will faithfully do (or literally: we will do and we will hear)!” (8) Moshe took the blood and dashed it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that Adonai now makes with you concerning all these commands.”
In Temple/Mishkan, blood usually poured on the altar, sometimes also sprinkled on the curtain before the Holy of Holies
I am only aware of two cases in which people are sprinkled and both involve a little bit of blood or ash mixed with water
Only time people are directly sprayed with blood
It is as if they are themselves the curtain
(Talmud connects this moment to conversion,
but it seems that there is something even more powerful happening)
The people, in all their physicality, are the sanctuary.
1. Revelation is in poetic images that have resonance for the people
2. Their physical needs are included and sanctified (feasting)
3. They physically become involved with/become a manifestation of or symbolic of the covenant itself
The other to covenantal moments are intensely spiritual
and even other-worldly.
They might match our expectations of what an elevated "prophetic" moment
should look like.
But religion, in its everyday lived form,
is much more similar to this covenant, a covenant of blood or physical life.
The only covenant in which everyone is able to be present and participate
without checking out, or dying, or reverting to forbidden worship.
It is a version of revelation that relies on poetic symbols (life the brick and the blood and the sapphire)
and on embodied practices (the sacrifice, the feasting, the blood, the community responding נעשה ונשמע).
And it is one in which the people themselves, their bodies and their lives,
become the location of sanctity and worship.
This is the model of physical, repeated מצוות in Judaism,
actions that are at the same time frequently relational/ethical
but also poetic and devotional,
Actions that are collective and repeated and time to a whole network of practices.
And though they are collective and repeated, they are not meant to be rote,
but are, with our participation,
filled with the vision, the resonance, and the potency that is present in each moment.
נעשה נשמע
Was it okay that they looked?
Is it okay that they are eating and drinking?
מעשה לבנת ספיר
דם ברית
- Circumcision
- Blood of death (babies)
- Blood of birth
- Blood of Passover sacrifice
- Blood of sacrifices in general
[Conversion]
Blood is a powerful symbol of life-force and protection
that these people have been intensely involved with.
אלא חוט של תכלת מאי היא דתניא היה ר"מ אומר מה נשתנה תכלת מכל מיני צבעונין מפני שהתכלת דומה לים וים דומה לרקיע ורקיע דומה לכסא הכבוד שנאמר (שמות כד, י) ויראו את אלקי ישראל ותחת רגליו כמעשה לבנת הספיר וכעצם השמים לטהר וכתיב (יחזקאל א, כו) כמראה אבן ספיר דמות כסא
But what is the benefit imparted by the thread of sky-blue wool? The Gemara answers: As it is taught in a baraita that Rabbi Meir would say: What is different about sky-blue from all other colors such that it was specified for the mitzva of ritual fringes? It is because sky-blue dye is similar in its color to the sea, and the sea is similar to the sky, and the sky is similar to the Throne of Glory, as it is stated: “And they saw the God of Israel; and there was under His feet the like of a paved work of sapphire stone, and the like of the very heaven for clearness” (Exodus 24:10). This verse shows that the heavens are similar to sapphire, and it is written: “And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone” (Ezekiel 1:26). Therefore, the throne is similar to the heavens. The color of sky blue dye acts as an indication of the bond between the Jewish people and the Divine Presence.
You, for your part, I have released your prisoners from the dry pit, in the blood of your covenant,
Connected to vision of משיח in ס׳ זכריה
Hint that it is that embodied practice (ritual, interpersonal, devotional, political/communal...) that will be redemptive