Exodus Cycle Five Tetzaveh

 Tetzaveh 

Fire on Top of Fire

 For every level of understanding there is a higher more delicate and defined level. For every state of enlightenment there is a greater arc of that same enlightenment. 

There are places of comfort and there are places so unknown we must feel an order in our hearts to go there. That fire that we create in our heart leads to the next fire that leads to the next that then leads us to be active in reaching for an intimacy with God we had not before known.

The organization of three fires, the Ner Tamid, the Animal Altar and the Incense Altar manifest the above process. It’s all charted out in Tetzaveh.

 We begin with the Ner Tamid. We are to create it from shemen zit zach catit.  Pure crushed olive oil.  The thing about olives is that they are personal.  In Talmud we read that the fig that falls over someone’s fence is open to anyone. Not so with the olive. The olive has a mark of ownership, its individuality.  Olive trees in the mid-east are stamped by wear and tear, the care of the family, the earth, the many years of its survival. The intimacy of the olive therefore points to a very intimate fire. The crushing of the olive….by hand or by heart….infers a flame jump-started by heart.   Rashi says that the flame ascends by itself.  In Shabbat 21a we read that  the flame must ascend by itself and not because of anything else.  

You can see the Ner Tamid as the jump-start. Once we feel this light…our light…in Torah we have the inner-drive to prepare the priests for their consecration. Their clothing can be seen as a vase that holds the most exquisite flower…or as a shield that keeps them protected. The word potach is used to describe the engraving of the twelve tribes of Israel on the stones to be worn on the ephod. This same word (potach) is used most often to point to an opening.  One can surmise therefore that there’s great mystery and beauty that embraces the sacred clothing.  After all, the Hebrew words designating the twelve tribes of Israel are literally pulled out of the openings in the stones (according to the shoresh) and must therefore carry all the nutrition and metals known within the materials themselves. They are of this earth. We have the ability to open stones…open earth…and reveal our very ancestry.

Moving on, a Baraita said that the priest who did not perform sacrifices in his sacred clothing was liable to death by heaven. The clothing  is important in itself (of course) but this importance is elevated because it is the agent  connecting the Ner Tamid to the Animal Altar,  the second fire.

 The Animal Altar is copper, huge and outside for the community.  This is where animals representing our communal prayers are offered up to God. The offerings themselves are relegated to our animal-selves.  They can bring us only so close to God. Much is done though to describe the process of the animal-offerings. The detail is exact.  There’s a methodology here and an important structure.  What we must realize though is that here Aaron and his sons are always brought by the Israelites or the Israelites are bringing animals close to these same priests. In short, Aaron and his sons are passive in this list of instructions concerning the animal offerings. They are doing a lot. But only because they are being led to the place of doing.  We don’t read Aaron will do this or that. We do read, have Aaron do this or that. As important as he is, he is still the passive leader. He isn’t taking charge. His ability to take charge comes from the heart of the Israelites. Only when he eats of the sacrifice is his action written in the active tense.

All of the instructions pertaining to the Animal Altar then lead to the consecration of that same altar. And once it is consecrated we have our third fire; the Incense Altar.

So to review, we have the jump-start fire first. The Ner Tamid. Sacred Clothing and bodily protection connect the first fire to the second fire, the Ner Tamid to the Animal Altar. And the consecration of the Animal Altar now connects both fires to the third; the Incense Altar.

The Incense Altar is the highest form of intimacy, the closest we can rise to God. Here, Aaron acts on his own in an active tense. He isn’t brought anywhere or anything. We never read have Aaron do so-and-so. Aaron acts on his own because he has the power of the two fires below him to move forward independently. He has already risen to a height beyond the communal Animal Altar and the animal-soul to the God-soul (the nefesh-Elohim). This is an important moment. All of the detail involving the Animal Altar, all of the words and space set aside for animal-offerings in this parasha have led to this one moment. It’s all there for this one moment, fire on top of fire, flame sitting on flame. This is where the Yom Kippur atonement offering is done to further forge the connection of the altars and the fires. This is the final jumping off point, the highest we can get in our quotidian reality, from where we can rise to God.

What does all this mean though? It means the following: On Shabbat we wake up with the fire in our hearts or we find it by crushing the oil of our individual heart-light and opening our eyes to the rising sun.  Then we place our necessary coverings on, anything that will symbolically remind us that we and our ancestors are made of powerful elements and  are holy for God. Then we gather in the place of the Animal-Altar and pray with the community…allow ourselves to serve the community… make our prayer-offerings and accept the heights and limitations. Then we bless our community and go independently to the place of Incense Altar, wherever that may be for each  of us. It’s an individual thing, the nefesh Elohim, the offerings on metaphoric Incense Altar. But it is the fire-on-fire-on-fire. It’s the sacred-space empowered by all the previous work, where we can glow in our purity and find God in a lover’s kiss. 

May we all safely rise within the beautiful flames.