As Belinda Carlisle famously sang back in 1987, heaven is—or
at least can be—a place on earth.
In this week’s Torah
portion, Naso, Moses erects the mishkan, the sanctuary-tent that the
Israelites carry through the desert: “On the day that the Tabernacle was set
up, the Cloud covered it. . . . In the evening, it rested over the Tabernacle
in the likeness of a fire until morning.”
Cloud by day, pillar of fire by night—the Divine Presence, as it were,
dwells among the people.
Indeed, Jewish tradition teaches, when Moses brought the
community together to construct the mishkan,
he metaphorically wed heaven and earth.
The Midrash Pesikta de Rav Kahana notes that in the beginning, God dwelt
among us. A series of transgressions,
beginning with Adam and Eve in Eden, caused the Divine Presence to
withdraw. But a series of righteous
acts, ending with Moses’ work on the Tabernacle, invited the Holy One to return.
When we act out of justice and compassion, heaven and earth
are one. An old folktale tells of a
rabbi who longed to see Paradise. One
day, Elijah met him and agreed to show him heaven, on the condition that he
make the journey blindfolded. The rabbi
consented, so Elijah covered his eyes and led him for several days. When they “arrived”, Elijah removed the
blindfold. The rabbi blinked his eyes
with astonishment, because what he saw was so familiar: a bunch of sages
arguing over the meaning of a page of Talmud.
He turned to Elijah and said, “This can’t be heaven—it looks just like
the house of study that I attend every morning!” To which Elijah replied: “The sages are not
in heaven. Heaven is in the sages.”
Heaven is in the sages—and in us, when we live by their
sacred legacy. On Tuesday night, we will
celebrate Shavuot, z’man matan Torahteynu,
the time of the giving of the Torah. May
we be ready for, and worthy of, this ever-new and remarkable gift. And may we follow its map to heaven—right here
on earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment