Me'ilah: Holiness of the Concrete

That these two images, letters and Temple, appear as equally important throughout Sefer Yetzirah is profound. These two intertwined images are a reconciliation of two conflicting Jewish themes: sacred text and sacred space.

In biblical Israel, Israelites used the Temple and other shrines as places to worship God. Later, the Jews who evolved from the exiled Israelites and returned from exile, faced displacement from their land and the destruction of their Temple, turned to sacred text in order to keep their faith and identity. Having lost their sacred shrine twice, they focused on Torah as a portable gate way to holiness. Sanctity came to dwell in books and commentaries rather than in embodied places. Yet there continued to be a longing for a sacred place. Sometimes this longing was contained in prayers for the restoration of the Temple in messianic times, poems lamenting the Temple's loss, or mystical visions in which a heavenly Temple still existed.

Whoever wrote and/or edited Sefer Yetzirah chose an expansive way to relate to the Temple: they re-imagined the Temple as the entire world. They were not alone in seeing the Temple as a physical echo of the world: Midrash Tadshe, a Talmud-era collection of writing, sees the pillars, wash-basin, and altar of the Temple as representations of the mountains, the sea, and the earth. But Sefer Yetzirah went one step further: it hinted at the Temple not as a symbol of the cosmos, but as the cosmos itself. The Temple was not and could not be lost. It was all around, always. The Temple that had stood in Jerusalem was only one manifestation of a Temple created at the beginning of time and present throughout all of human experience and history. Kabbalah scholar Elliot Wolfson describes the Temple imagery of Sefer Yetzirah as "a way to depict the topography of the divine realm precisely in the absence of an earthly Temple."

These two sections of the Torah are side by side, each in a different literary unit, and each containing the relatively uncommon term ma'al, which is translated here a "breaking faith."

This section of the Torah comes to teach us that all who benefit unwittingly from God's sacred items, whether they are sacred offerings from the altar or sacred items related to the Temple, this is ma'al, and a person is obligated to bring an Asham (guilt) offering...which is called an Asham Me'ilot / Guilt Offering of Trespasses, and thus they are obligated to pay for the sacred item for the value of the benefit with a 1/5 additional fine alone (which does not come from a sacred item or the like), which is based on 1/4 of the value of the main item itself (which is sacred), as we have explained in other places, such as the one who benefits from a sacred item with the value of 20 p'rutas, one it obligated to pay for the sacred item twenty five p'rutas: twenty for the value of the item itself, and five p'rutas which are the 1/5 fine.

In the JPS Tanakh translation, the term ma'al is variously translated as:

It is crucial to note that that the person who has the apple in hand, but has not yet eaten that apple has not committed the crime of Me'ilah yet. Whether they acquired the apple through legal means or not, this term does not yet apply until they actual derive benefit (i.e. nourishment) from the apple.

This also reminds us that neither purchasing through legal means or acquiring through illegal means have any metaphysical reality when it comes to ownership. The only way to make permitted what is forbidden is to address the Creator of the Universe.

Holiness does not wink at us from “beyond”…but appears in our actual, very real lives… The beginnings of holiness are rooted in the highest heavens, and its end is embedded in the “end of days”…but the link that joins together…is the halakhic conception of holiness…the holiness of the concrete.

An individual does not become holy through mystical adhesion to the absolute nor through mysterious union with the infinite…but, rather, through his whole biological life…actualizing the Halakhah in the empirical world… Holiness is created by man [sic], by flesh and blood. Through the power of our mouths, through verbal sanctification alone, we can create holy offerings…

The sequence of words in a Hebrew blessing is like a path of stepping-stones. Each word is a spiritual exercise. Taken together, the opening six words common to all brakhot are an invocation or an overture, announcing our intention to channel blessing and raise up sparks of holiness. The words prepare the path for our offering as a theater stage anticipates and makes space for a play. As we engage each of these words, we set the stage, raise the curtain, and bring up the spotlights.