Being a Jew Through and Through

Any survey of the midrashic literature for the parshiyot dealing with the collection of material for and the construction of the mishkan, the sanctuary in the desert, will note that most of it focuses on a few sentences, largely avoiding the technical aspects of the project. I surmise that this is for the obvious reason that most people either have little interest or an inability to focus on technical plans. Still, a tradition’s sacred literature is its sacred literature and as a result, determined sages worked hard to derive meaning from the details of the mishkan’s construction.

In order to do, there was a need for a different hermeneutic or reading strategy, something that anyone familiar with midrash will take note of. Allegory is a strategy in which one searches out symbolic or representative meaning not otherwise obvious in the pshat or plain meaning of the subject being interpreted.
The construction of the ark, the holiest of the accouterments of the sanctuary, is a case in point:

And they should make an Ark of acacia wood, two and half cubits its length and a cubit and a half its width, and a cubit a half in height. And you shall overlay it in pure gold, inside and outside you shall overlay it, and you shall make upon it a gold molding all around… (Exodus 25:10-11)

The fact that the Ark, which would house the Tablets of the Law, needed to be overlaid with gold both inside and out struck a note with the sages. For one Babylonian sage, who lived long after the actual Ark was no longer a physical presence in the life of the Jewish people, this description took on great symbolic meaning, as the Ark became a symbol of the haham or sage who bodily “housed” the wisdom of the Torah:

[The verse states concerning the Ark:] “And you shall overlay it in pure gold, inside and outside you shall overlay it” (Exodus 25:11). Rava said: [This alludes to the idea that] any Torah scholar whose inside is not like his outside (tokho k’varo), [i.e., whose outward expression of righteousness is insincere,] is not to be considered a Torah scholar. (Yoma 72b)

Why is the Ark covered in gold on the inside and outside? According to this midrash, it is to symbolize that a sage must act accordingly, otherwise, he [or she] is symbolically defiles the Torah and is unlike the holiest item in the Ark in the mishkan!

A teaching found in Midrash Hagadol, a medieval Yemenite midrashic collection, elaborates the significance of this analogy:

And is this not a case [the comparison between the Ark and a sage] of kal v’homer [interpreting from a less significant example to a more significant one] – Just as the Ark, which can neither hear nor speak, nor does it know what is contained in it, [still,] it is written regarding it: “inside and outside you shall overlay it”, in order that its inside should be like its outside; a Torah scholar, who can see, hear and understands what he (or she) contains and is judged on the smallest thing, how much more so! (Midrash Hagadol Shmot, Terumah 11; Margoliyot ed. p. 577)

We might derive from this teaching that if there is an expectation for an inanimate object to have some sort of “material” integrity; how much more so, a sentient being. I think the message is even deeper than that.  Since the sage is supposed to be a personification of the Ark of the Covenant, one who represents both in word and in deed the message of God’s Torah, we expect him or her to be the real thing – an embodiment of God’s word. No less.

Of course, this expectation is not exclusively intended for the sages amongst us. It is something we should all strive for. Not an easy task, but personal integrity is the essence of representing God on earth, the role assigned to us as human beings and as Jews. The epitaph “k’tokho k’boro” is one all of us should strive for.