Living Walls

Is a sacred text fixed, like a stone, or changing? Does it flow? If we observe it long enough, does it start to move? According to rheology, the science of the flow of matter, some things that appear to be solid are actually in motion -- or we could say, on a journey.

Religious traditions that are text-centered (Judaism, Christianity, Sikhism) tend to refer to their texts as "Living"; in other words, they breathe and move. (See John 1:1-14) This contradicts the image of sacred texts written on stone tablets (see Exodus 31:18), such as the Ten Commandments, but even those tablets are dynamic -- Moses shatters them almost immediately in protest at the unfaithfulness of his people.

Stones in the ancient world were especially useful in accounting. The Latin word for stone is calculus, meaning "reckoning, account," originally, "pebble used as a reckoning counter" (Online Etymology Dictionary).

Artistic mosaics formed from pieces of tile, glass or stone called tesserae were ubiquitous in the Roman empire.  A tessera, or individual piece of a mosaic is also called an abaculus -- related to the word, abacus -- and both are derived from the word calculus. Mosaics are therefore beautiful creations of counting stones, or numbers.

The word "mosaic" calls to mind both art and religion. It has two distinct meanings that derive from the Latin words Musaicum, meaning "from the Muses," and from Mosaicus, meaning, "from Moses." Mosaic texts are the first five books in the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Pentateuch (Greek), or Chumash (Hebrew). In Jewish and Christian religious teaching, Moses is attributed as the author, or "conveyer" of this text, because God gave it to him.

Clearly, artistic mosaics are "from the Muses," and the Hebrew Bible is "from Moses." But the Hebrew Bible is arguably very much like a tile or stone mosaic. Here's why:

The Pentateuch could be described figuratively as a creation of counting stones (tesserae) because it is written in Hebrew, which is an alpha-numeric writing system. Hebrew letters are also counting numbers: Aleph = 1, Bet = 2, Gimmel = 3, etc. The text of the Torah can be read as a string of numbers, which inspired the Kabbalists (Jewish mystics) to derive spiritual meanings from number combinations (words and phrases) in the text, a practice which is called gematria.

Here's a rabbinic tale about coffee in the Jewish Spirit Journal, vol. 1  by Yitzhak Buxbaum to illustrate the practice of gematria:

"Milk Or Coffee First?"

"Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev once visited the Seer of Lublin. The Lubliner brought him some coffee and wanted to pour the coffee into the cup first and then add the milk. The Berditchever, however, asked him to please put the milk in first, and then the coffee, since, he said, "when I drink milk with coffee, I intend mikveh," because milk, halav, in gematria is mem and the letter mem together with kiveh (coffee) equals mikveh.

When the Berditchever drank coffee, was he meditating on the mikveh somehow?"

A little background on the mikveh: it is a ritual purification bath in Judaism that represents re-birth. The water of the mikveh must come from a natural source, as natural water sources are primordial symbols of beginning. When a convert to Judaism immerses herself into the bath, she emerges from a new womb and takes on a Jewish identity.

In addition to being a mosaic of numbers, the Pentateuch is a mosaic of genres (history, poetry, law and aggadah, or myth) as well as text fragments from four distinct earlier sources. The source theory is well accepted by biblical scholars and is called the Documentary Hypothesis. The four major sources are called J (Yahweh), D (Deuteronomy), P (Priestly), and E (Elohim). 

Richard Elliott Friedman, in his wonderful book, Who Wrote the Bible? argues that the ancient redactors of the Bible, in bringing together multiple sources, gave us a new and complex picture of God -- a God that embraces paradoxes, who is both Kingly (Yahweh) and humble (Elohim); ineffable, and capable of grieving at his heart (see Gen. 6:6).

While Islam tends to regard its most sacred text, the Qur'an, as a monolith, uttered directly from God in one voice, not filtered through the lens of human interpretation, the Hebrew Bible is a fragmented whole. Nothing more visually symbolizes this textual difference than the most sacred sites in both religions: the Kabah, in Mecca, and the Kotel, or Western Wall, in Jerusalem. The Kabah is a cube, and it gives the impression of wholeness and impenetrability:

Kabah, Photograph by Jak Kilby (1991)

The Western Wall is literally a remnant, a fragment of the Second Temple period that was destroyed in 70 C.E.:

As a symbol, it is a place of sadness, but also of memory, hope and renewal. I had a Jewish professor who wouldn't fast on Tish B'Av, the fast day to mourn the destruction of the Temple, because he argued that the destruction of the Temple caused the development of Rabbinic Judaism, which was the best thing that could happen for the Jewish people. Unlike Israelite Temple religion based on animal sacrifice that was rooted to Jerusalem, Rabbinic Judaism was capable of enduring over space and time. The rabbis replaced sacrifices with textual study as the primary religious obligation, which could be done anywhere. Textual study produced commentary and interpretation, which many consider to be the crowning beauty of the Jewish tradition.

The vast interpretive Jewish tradition of the Torah is an example of a religious text that is on a journey. The next time you visit a synagogue on Shabbat, think about this as you watch the parading of the Torah around the congregation, encircling all who are present in its living walls. Both Judaism and the Torah, as we know them today, were re-born out of the rubble of the Second Temple. They are fragments that live.