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By We believe that God is beyond gender and sex, so it is startling to see rabbinic sources use sexual terms to depict the kirvah (closeness) that is the ideal result of korbanot (sacrifices). For example: [The ark’s poles] protruded through the curtain, looking like a woman’s breasts. As it says (Song of Songs 1:13): “My lover is like a sachet of myrrh lying between my breasts.” Rav Katina said: When the Jews ascended to the Temple in Jerusalem for the festivals, [the kohanim] would roll back the curtain so everyone could see the intertwined keruvim (cherubs), and would proclaim, “Look! The love between you and God is like the love between a man and woman.” (Yoma 54a). Elsewhere, Chazal state that the Temple is like a marital bed (Sanhedrin 7a; Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:16:3). The ketoret (incense) is like perfume, and the korbanot are like kisses and consummation (Ibid., 1:2:1).  

THE FOUR STAGES OF LOVE

Writing in Tradition, Dr. Russell Jay Hendel cites these sources and adds to the metaphor: [W]e can divide the general phenomenon of love into four phases: (i) the general state of love (corresponding to which we have the general commandment to love God); (ii) the performance of concrete actions by each of the lovers to provide and fulfill the wishes and desires of the other (thus humanity performs the commandments and God reciprocates by granting us protection); (iii) dialogues expressing mutual love, common i nterests and commitments (thus we have prayer from humanity to God, and Torah and prophecy from God to man); and (iv) sexual relations (korbanot) – specific procedures involving physical objects whose purpose is to induce a psychological state wherein it is conducive to feel closeness. The ultimate goal is true love and commitment. This, however, does not negate the indispensability of certain means toward these goals. In other words, the male-female relationship and the God-human relationship can be compared such that their culminations are, respectively, sex and the sacrifices.  

IN DEFENSE OF KORBANOT

Two Israeli teachers suggest that this comparison can help us deal with a common contemporary challenge to korbanot: Don’t they seem primitive and b’diavad (non-ideal)? Why should we pray for the Temple to be rebuilt, anyway? Rav Yuval Cherlow responds (Hebrew) as follows, slightly paraphrased: Korbanot aren’t b’diavad, in the same way that the physical relationship between a man and a woman who are in love isn’t b’diavad. We humans don’t want platonic love! We want our romantic relationships to express ourselves fully. So too with religion. . . . Korbanot are ideal because when we are bursting with religious fervor and the desire to be close to God, we need to express it with every fiber of our being. . . . The deep emotional relationship with the divine can best be expressed when all of our parts work together in harmony. Rav Amichai Gordin agrees (Hebrew translated here), with a slightly different formulation: [L]ove between a man and a woman must begin with spiritual contact, with falling in love. But it must then continue to a physical relationship. . . . One of the most basic obligations of a husband to his wife is to maintain proper sexual relations. . . . Spirituality is not enough. The link must be anchored in the world of actions. Sacrifices [too] are an anchor that establishes the link between the Almighty and human beings.

WHERE THE ANALOGY BREAKS DOWN

Nevertheless, as with any analogies to God, there is a caveat. Rav Gordin calls it a “significant difference between the two types of love”: The Almighty has no need for our sacrifices. “Why do I need your many sacrifices?” (Isaiah 1:11) As opposed to human [relationships], the Almighty [is “nourished” not from] the results of the sacrifices but only the actions themselves. This can be compared to a father . . . when his young son offers him to share a snack from a bag that the father just gave him. The father is overjoyed to see that the child gives up some of his own snack. The act of giving the snack is what makes the father happy, not the taste of the snack. The Almighty does not need our sacrifices. But when we offer to Him part of the snacks which He gave us, we feel more closely aligned with Him – and He becomes more closely linked to us. With this caveat in mind, we are permitted to compare sexual relations and the sacrifices. Next week we will address sacrifices in the future.

By “When you take the sum of the children of Israel according to their numbers… This they shall give, everyone who goes through the counting: half a shekel according to the holy shekel (shekel ha-kodesh)” (Exodus 30:12-13). Nahmanides (13th century Spain) was puzzled by what could bestow holiness on a coin (a shekel being the base unit of currency in the desert, as well as in modern Israel). He posits that the usage of the shekel in various rituals and in the fulfillment of mitzvot is what grants it holiness. Similarly, he goes on to say, Hebrew is a “holy” language (leshon ha-kodesh) insofar as it, too, is used as the instrument of holy purposes – communicating Torah, prayer and prophecy. Ramban further suggests, in his mystical interpretive way, that God Himself “speaks” Hebrew, and with that holy tongue He created the world. Maimonides (12th century Egypt), who favored a more rationalist, less mystical orientation, disagreed. In his monumental Guide for the Perplexed (III:8) he claimed that Hebrew is holy because it contains no naughty words, favoring euphemisms for sexual functions and organs. (Contemporary Hebrew speakers are aware that the really choice curse words are often borrowed from Arabic, Yiddish, Russian, etc. – saucy linguistic equivalents of the falafel, shmaltz, and borsht we grafted onto our culture.) This difference of opinion was reflected (perhaps un- or sub-consciously) by different early 20th century figures at the heart of the Hebrew revival. Gershom Scholem, in a 1926 letter to Franz Rozensweig, warned of the “apocalyptic thorn” embedded within the “actualization of Hebrew” in secularizing the holy tongue for managing the affairs of a modern society. So doing overlooks the fact that “it is impossible to empty out words which are filled to the breaking point with specific meanings… Would not the religious power of this language perforce break open again one day? ... Fraught with danger is the Hebrew language! ... God will not remain silent in the language in which He has affirmed our life a thousand times and more.” The national poet H.N. Bialik, on the other hand, thought that the language could be redeemed of this danger by being secularized, that is, emptied of its sacred baggage and “reprogrammed” for everyday, modern use. Here he was making an etymological play on words in which “desecrate” and “redeem” are related (cf. Deut. 20:6). However standing apart from and above Scholem or Bialik, Nobel laureate S.Y. Agnon neither feared Hebrew nor considered that it could be neutralized of its embedded values. Agnon’s magisterial use of the language is a distillation of the dialects of the Beit Midrash throughout the millennia – biblical and mishnaic Hebrew, their style and rhythm; the cadences and “suggestive power” of the Talmudic Sages, aggada and midrash; word plays and allusions to the entirety of the Jewish book shelf. But that is merely on the aesthetic plane. If contemporary linguistic theory, post-Chomsky, is correct, that language is not the reflection of a universal human hard-wiring, but far more culturally specific and determined, with the ability of any one language to leave differentiated, deep and lasting cultural, social, and valuative impact on its speakers, anyone committed to the role of Jewish learning in Jewish life, ought to re-explore and recommit him- or herself to the pursuit of mastering the Holy Tongue.