|
Listen to the post in audio
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Introduction
In a wide variety of fields of inquiry, a particularly fascinating aspect remains “exploring the middle lands.” This corresponds to the “borders,” or that “boundary place” where two different systems interface.
For example, those who are interested in nature, studying the relationship between humans and animals, or observing a high ground where two ecosystems interface, is at least seductive and extraordinary. While in modern-day science, one of the most interesting fields is that of the “human interface,” the place where people relate to the machines they create.
Also in halachah, or Torah Law for Jews, there is a lot of study of “middle stages,” such as that concerning twilight. The end of the day, and the beginning of the night, can be regarded as a “door,” and in Scripture it is one of the most common metaphors, that place where we are “neither in nor out,” but part of both.
The Bible therefore often speaks of “dualism” between systems: Heaven and earth, GOD and man, Creator and created, believers and unbelievers. But the first description of a “middle place” was described in the narrative of Jacob, the third of the “three fathers” of the people of believers.
Jacob and the “place in between”
As the future Israel was leaving the land of Canaan, while sleeping he dreamed of a ladder with Messengers of GOD ascending and descending. When he woke up, he exclaimed, “Y – H – V – H” (the Torah tells us not to pronounce the four-letter Name of GOD the way it is written) is in this place, and I didn’t realize it!”
Then he continued, “This place is great!” (the literal Aramaic translation would be, “This is no ordinary place.”) And again, “This could only be the house of Elokim, and this is the Gate of Heaven!” (Book of Genesis 28, 16-17)
Well, more than seven hundred years passed before Jacob’s vision could be fulfilled, when King Solomon built the Holy Temple on that mountain. On that high ground the Holy of Holies around that point and placed the Ark of the Covenant on the Rock where Jacob had laid his head to rest. The rabbis of the Talmud call that Rock “the first stone,” because, they say, the world began from it: “the origin of something from nothing, the place where the two meet.”
Jacob thus found himself in a place that expresses the essence of Torah, found himself between two expressions of the oneness of GOD, the Creator: YHWH and Elokim.
Idolatry “separates” the manifestations of the Nature of GOD, while those who study spirituality, theology and philosophy nowadays understand well that to speak of oneness corresponds to recognizing a “something” that is above everything, the Creator, thus the primordial Essence of everything.
The ancients did not have this understanding, so they idealized a sophisticated pantheon of divine beings, not grasping that the essence of everything is something beyond all. Something that cannot be defined by our limited knowledge, for GOD is beyond all that can be known: Transcendent, yet only “trying to understand” triggers immoderate growth.
Beyond time, space and all reasoning, the Creator has always remained the same. The true source of all being. As Maimonides writes, “If it is, then everything else is. But if it is not, then nothing else can be. ” Miracles, Torah and tzaddikim are manifestations of YHWH in the world.
Interestingly, the ancient pantheons, from Egypt to Norway, generally included an original god from whom everything began. But that deity remained completely apart from the entire hierarchy of gods.
“Core” and conclusions
Abraham was the first to destroy this dichotomy, this division between GOD and other gods. He introduced the idea that the same One GOD, who originated all things, also has a deep concern for what happens down here, thus manifesting Himself in different “expressions.” We have been handed down that Abraham said, “Do you see all these forces of nature? All your gods of wind, fire, love, war, fertility and playfulness? They are nothing but manifestations of a single transcendent Being who does not change, and from whom all things come. Just as it can be found infinite and unchanging in the essence that precedes all things, so it can be found in the ephemeral and temporal world in which we live. YHWH is Elokim. Truly, there is nothing else outside of Him.” This for those who study religions is very reminiscent of the Shahada for our Muslim brothers and sisters.
Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, found the place where his ancestor’s words were fulfilled: a place where “space began,” the only place that was not dominated by GOD as Elokim, but where YHWH stood. He envisioned a time when his own descendants would build a home there, a means of capturing and projecting such a revelation throughout the World. Until the time when no one would ever again impose a “doctrine,” or “a way,” on his neighbors, for all would know YHWH. As it has been handed down to us, “from the least to the greatest, says YHWH.”
