Exodus 25:1-27:19
Here we have another parsha that is less narrative and more instruction. And I like that. Just as we have four children and different answers for them during the Passover seder, we have different narrative styles for different people and different emphases on what we need to do as part of our family to exist.
We have instructions instead of storytime. Instructions on how to build the holiest artifacts we ever had. Instructions on who was to build them. Instructions on how they should look, where they should be placed, and what they should be composed of. Everything from inside to outside, the supports, the textures, the materials, the fibers, anything you can think of.
What stood out to me about this was the description of the menorah, specifically its organic inspirations. It’s described as branches from its sides, each ending in a cup, like a flower, surrounded by petals with a calyx underneath it, with the cups resembling almond blossoms.
Is this a surprise? Considering our Torah is our etz chayim, our tree of life. Considering our multiple holidays around and immersing ourselves in nature, including tisha b’av and Sukkot. Considering our commandments to feed our animals before we eat, not to salt fruit fields, and the myriad others to protect earth and reduce cruelty. Even our first prophet was lead to G-d by a plant. With all this, we could just as easily be called “people of the land” as easily as “people of the book.”
I want to talk about plants, specifically sage.
After moving back here in September, I picked up something that’s difficult to maintain while traveling and impossible to maintain while walking. A plant. Well, a bunch of plants. I picked up an aloe vera, a lavender, a lipstick sage, and a Jerusalem sage. What can I say, I love fragrant plants. One of my favorite hedonist pastimes is smelling every plant I can. Creosote and sages in the desert, different pines in the forest, every bright flower from manzanita to lupine. Different dirts have different scents and I loved each of them. Even air, walking along a mountain ridge and smelling clouds as they swirled over a rock outcropping around me.
There are at least 24 kinds of sage in the land of Israel, among them Salvia dominica, pungent sage; Salvia hierosolymitana, Jerusalem sage; and Salvia verbenaca, or vervain sage. The name “salvia” comes from the Latin “salveo” meaning “I save”. Unsurprisingly, these cousins of the mint family have been used medicinally for millennia.
Yes, Jews used plant medicine. And why wouldn’t we?
But beyond the medicine, many of these sages resemble the menorah. They have flowers at the top and come off a branch in multiple straight lines. Many of them have leaves below the stems, leaving them looking like a menorah when flattened out. Salvia judaica might be the most striking example, with broad leaves at its base, striking dark stems branching up from the central stalk, and vibrant lilac flowers lining those stems.
Plants, just like us, rely on much to exist. We need lessons, community, and knowledge to survive. Plants have different instructions encoded. They have physical triggers embedded in their seeds which, when set off properly, cause an eruption of life from soil. Soil is often not dead, though. There’s a vast network of mycelium, or fungal, networks helping support many seedlings, juvenile, and mature plants. There are insects, bacteria, birds, and any number of influences that prop up plant growth.
It’s appropriate that our symbol might be modeled after a plant. Just last week Daniel Nyman said not one person can fulfill all the mitzvot, and I think it’s up to us as a people to fulfill them all. Not one organism can produce fruit, but a network of them can produce an orchard. We have Torah and Talmud and Pirkei Avot and modern thinkers, some of whom we agree with and many whom we don’t. All of it is important to sustain us and keep our lamps lit.
But what do we do with plants? What do we do with this botanical inspired menorah?
We place it next to the most ornate, valuable, heavy object we could conceive of making. An object of solid gold, heavy acacia wood, and fine materials possibly representing different elements of earth and nature. Again, with the nature. And we place these together, along with an altar and other important pieces inside our most holy room.
Can you even be surprised that many of us enjoy having houseplants when we have a menorah that looks like our desert plants inside the sanctuary? We have a special value for plants and, now that we’re no longer wandering, we can bring them inside with us. We can cultivate them. Plants are as much a part of civilization as our people, our laws, and our animals. Plants are so important to us that our prayer for Israel relates it to a plant:
Avinu shebashamayim, tzur Yisrael v’goalo. Barekh na et m’dinat Yisrael, reyshit tz’mikhat g’ulateynu.
Our father, who is in heaven, Rock and Redeemer, bless the state of Israel, the first sprouting of our redemption.
Thursday, in a profound example of bigoted cowardice, the Rialto Theater here in Tucson canceled a show by Pennsylvania musician and rapper, and Zionist Jew, Matisyahu. The Rock, a smaller venue, called up Matisyahu, and offered him a space to perform, for free. Word quickly got out that the show was on, and I was able to attend, along with a few other members of this synagogue. This show was amazing, Jews showed up for Jews, and we overcame.
This brings me back to the delights we can find in this parsha. As we are fashioned in G-d’s image, we are to fashion objects in images resembling the world we interact with. As a sagebrush fills the air with its complex perfume of spice, and earthy ground, and sweet; the menorah fills the room with light; and we must do the same with each other. Just as one branch on a plant can’t sustain the whole organism, one branch of a menorah cannot fulfill the mitzvah, and one person cannot sustain the community. But together, with all of us, we are the organism, we are the people Israel, we are the community, all of us, together.
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