Shabbat
Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Terumah (Exodus 25:1-27:19). This
is when the people are told to bring all their gifts to Moses for the building
of the Tabernacle, and Moses seemingly gets the blueprints for how it is to be
constructed, although those instructions are not explicitly shown in the Torah.
At the end of the last parasha, Moses ascended into the cloud of God and was
consumed by the mist and the fire on the mountain top and disappeared for forty
days and forty nights. Immediately following this beautiful and intense description
of Moses encounter with God, the Torah proceeds with a seemingly profane list
of material things that will be needed to build the Sanctuary in which God can
dwell on Earth.
The
idea that God needs such banal objects in order to be among the people of
Israel, that God needs a physical dwelling place on Earth, would likely be a
difficult concept for Moses. According to a midrash from the Tanhuma
Yashan Shemini explains that Moses had particular difficulty with the
fashioning of the menorah to go inside the Tabernacle. God, being a patient and
understanding teacher, engraves the patterns upon Moses’s hands, and this is
the meaning of verse 40 in Chapter 25 of Exodus, “Look and fashion them
according to their patterns.” The patterns, according to the Midrash, are on
Moses’s hands, etched in so that he not only can refer to them visually but can
retain the memory of the tactile experience of how they should be shaped. As
with the mark of the bris, this is an incision into the flesh with can never
leave and will be forever a marker of God’s relationship with Moses and the
people of Israel.
About
a month ago, at a recent potluck, the topic of tattoos came up at a table, and
I admit I was a little surprised by how generally open and positive the
conversation was. Tattoos are a taboo subject for many Jewish people, even
progressive communities in which individual members may be tattooed and in
which the general population is not traditionally observant. The most recent
Reform Responsa on this topic still rules that tattooing for the sake of body
art (as opposed a tattoo as part of a medical procedure) should be considered “pointless
destruction of the human form,” and an insult to the Maker. A footnote on the
responsa is clear that the mark of the tattoo should in no way be compared to
the mark of circumcision, and yet that is precisely what Avivah Gottlieb
Zornberg does with the story from Midrash Tanhuma: “The transcendent
fires are, essentially, tattooed onto his hand …. As with circumcision, Moses’s
hand-inscription ivolves an incision into the skin which ‘never leaves,’ but is
not innate, which is interior and exterior at the same time,” (Zornberg, The
Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus).
Having
the menorah engraved on his skin, Moses is now able to grasp at the plans and
patterns for the building of the Tabernacle and all that will adorn it. The symbol
left forever represents something that is beyond the simple visual of the tattoo
or the sense memory left from their marking. Zornberg also notes that the word
for “lawgiver,” which the Talmud calls Moses, rightly so, also means “engraver.”
Engravings on the skin can be reminders and symbols of rules to follow, mantras
to live by, markers of community and belonging. Some of you, particularly those
who recall the conversation at the potluck to which I referred earlier, may know
that I have two small tattoos on my forearms. They were not put there by God
and they do not hold blueprints for God’s physical dwelling place on Earth, but
they do hold Torah for me. They are reminders and symbols of rules to follow,
mantras to live by, and a memory of one no longer on Earth: to love myself and
my neighbor equally, to appreciate the world in spite of its difficulties, to
honor my family, and, a little like Moses’s menorahs, to create space in my
life for Divine presence.
I
recognize that tattoos are pretty unambiguously against Jewish law. I
understand why many people who otherwise don’t follow Halakha feel
uncomfortable with tattoos and why some take solace in the fact their discomfort
is supported by Judaism. I don’t mean to suggest that tattoos should become
more accepted in Jewish communities or that this is an issue on par with other
inclusion topics I might talk about. But I couldn’t ignore this Midrash when I
came upon it in Zornberg’s book. The framing of Moses’s engraved hands as an
essential tool in his ability to move onward in his quest to lead the Jewish
people and create space among them for God deeply resonated with me. If you are
someone who is generally uncomfortable with body art, I would like to suggest
that when you come across tattooed Jews, or tatjews, as I like to call them, you
consider what Torah may have inspired those tattoos, and what Divine quest that
person is fortified for now that they have the blueprints on their body. If you
are a tatjew, I would like to suggest you open up about your Torah that
inspires your tattoos and how often you look at them years later to still
garner strength from their symbolism. I never even really noticed people’s
tattoos before I got one myself, and now I love to hear about the histories and
inspirations behind them, and especially from fellow Jews.
This
Shabbat, as we read and learn about the beginning process of building the
Mishkan, may we consider what blueprints we may need to bring holiness into our
own dwelling places. May we consider what patterns and symbols we would want
etched in the forefront of our minds, if not bodies. May we find strength from
those patterns and symbols, and success in our own mishkan-building. Amen and
Shabbat Shalom.
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