Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Portion 19 T’rumah Exodus 25:1-27:19
Portion 20 T’tzaveh Exodus 27:20-30:10
Portion 22 Vayak’heil Exodus 35:1-38:20
Portion 23 P’kudei Exodus 38:21-40:38

Plaut refers to Isaac Abarbanel who considered the table and bread to refer to the pagan practice of feeding the gods. The Torah subverts this idea. “Table and bread are removed from the Holy of Holies; the table vessels remain empty, and the bread is consumed by the priests themselves as part of the sacrificial rite.”

Perhaps this is a general rule. The various parts of the Tabernacle and priestly attire made reference to the practices of neighboring cultures and subverted them. But to understood how the subversion worked in many cases would probably require a deeper knowledge of these cultures than we currently have.

Using symbols of an opponent to subvert the opponent’s ideas is a common tactic in social justice movements. Last year, at the annual stock holder meeting of Peabody Energy, the Sierra Club held a press conference and distributed an “alternative annual report” of Peabody Energy. Like the company’s annual report it was filled with facts and figure about the company, and it had a similar “look and feel” to the official report. However, while the company’s report was focused on profits and stock price, the Sierra Club’s was focused on environmental degradation. If someone unfamiliar with company annual reports were to read the Sierra Club’s report, they would learn that Peabody is bad for the environment but they would miss the message contained in the “look and feel” of the report: that Sierra Club was making a point about what the real “bottom line” of a company should be. When it comes to understanding the Tabernacle we are in even worse shape because the Tabernacle is all “look and feel,” and we don’t know much (at least I don’t) about what the “official annual reports” looked like or meant.

My favorite subversion of a ritual is the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge has all the elements of a pledge of obedience to the state, a ritual of nationalism. However it utterly but subtly subverts that notion. The flag that we pledge our allegiance to is the flag of the United States of America. But that is just its name. The flag doesn’t stand for the United States of America. Instead the flag stands for an ideal republic where there is liberty and justice for all. We pledge our allegiance to this ideal republic not to the government of the United States of America. Indeed allegiance to the ideal republic, if we take it seriously, often entails defying the government of the United States of America.

Perhaps the same can be said for many of the rituals of biblical Judaism. They incorporated elements of neighboring cultures and utterly but subtly subverted their meaning. For example, several modern commentaries presume that circumcision was commonly practiced in biblical cultures, but most commonly as a rite of puberty. Infant circumcision subverted this practice by changing the meaning from one of preparation for marriage to one of renewing the marriage of Israel with God.

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