I am very excited for the opportunity to share words of Torah with you. Each week, in this spot, I look to share an idea I've found that speaks to me and that I think will resonate with you as well. This week, I share an excerpt from an article by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Z"L entitled ‘The Beauty of Holiness or the Holiness of Beauty’ about the Jewish perspective on art in the Mishkan and today.
In Ki Tissa and in Vayakhel we encounter the figure of Betzalel, a rare type in the Hebrew Bible - the artist, the craftsman, the shaper of beauty in the service of God, the man who, together with Oholiab, fashioned the articles associated with the Tabernacle. Judaism - in sharp contrast to ancient Greece - did not cherish the visual arts. The reason is clear. The biblical prohibition against graven images associates them with idolatry. Historically, images, fetishes, icons and statues were linked in the ancient world with pagan religious practices. The idea that one might worship "the work of men's hands" was anathema to biblical faith.
More generally, Judaism is a culture of the ear, not the eye. As a religion of the invisible God, it attaches sanctity to words heard, rather than objects seen. Hence there is a generally negative attitude within Judaism towards representational art.
[...] Yet as we see from the case of Betzalel, Judaism is not indifferent to aesthetics. The concept of hiddur mitzva, "beautifying the commandment," meant, for the sages, that we should strive to fulfil the commands in the most aesthetically pleasing way. The priestly garments were meant to be "for honour and adornment" (Exodus 28:2). [...]
The key to Betzalel lies in his name. It means "In the shadow of God." Betzalel's gift lay in his ability to communicate, through his work, that art is the shadow cast by God. Religious art is never "art for art's sake." Unlike secular art, it points to something beyond itself. The Tabernacle itself was a kind of microcosm of the universe, with one overriding particularity: that in it you felt the presence of something beyond - what the Torah calls "the glory of God" which "filled the Tabernacle" (Exodus 40:35).
The Greeks, and many in the Western world who inherited their tradition, believed in the holiness of beauty (Keats' "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know"). Jews believed in the opposite: hadrat kodesh, the beauty of holiness: "Give to the Lord the glory due to His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" (Psalms 29:2). Art in Judaism always has a spiritual purpose: to make us aware of the universe as a work of art, testifying to the supreme Artist, God Himself.
Have a Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Davies
Rabbi@SOICherryHill.org
