Great mystery is associated with the two cherubim that were said to be sculpted on the cover of the Ark in the Temple in Jerusalem. They were believed to be enchanted, as demonstrated in this myth, where they are said to face each other like a loving couple if Israel fulfilled God’s will and to turn away if Israel did not. For more on the role of the cherubim, see “The Ever-turning Sword of Flame,” p. 404. The earliest reference to the cherubim is found in Genesis 3:24, where God places them at the gates of Eden. That passage does not indicate their sex, but the description of the cherubim on the Ark cover in the Holy of Holies implies that of a couple, and some sexual element is assumed. This is made very explicit in the talmudic tradition in B. Yoma 54a: “Whenever Israel came to the Temple for the Festival, the curtain would be removed and the Cherubim were shown to them, whose bodies were intertwined with one another, and they would be addressed: ‘Look! You are beloved before God as the love between man and woman.” This almost certainly refers to the uniting of God’s masculine and feminine aspects. When there is harmony between God and Israel, these aspects are in harmony, but when there isn’t harmony, the forces of exile predominate above and below. These notions were much further elaborated on in kabbalah, where the separation of God’s masculine and feminine aspects is portrayed as the exile of the Shekhinah.
Sources:
B. Bava Batra 99a; Introduction to Lamentations Rabbah 9; Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 19; Yalkut Shim’oni 474; Eliyahu Rabbah 1:3.
544. GOD’S JUDGMENT ABOVE AND BELOW
When God decided to destroy the Temple in Jerusalem, He first put aside the Holy Land above, the supernal city of Jerusalem, and cut it off from the sacred heavens that served as its nourishment. Seeing this, the angels wept bitterly, for it meant that the Shekhinah had been sent into exile. These are the ways of God. When He wishes to judge the world, He first passes judgment on the world above, and only then does He pass judgment on the world below.
Nor was the Shekhinah the only one in heaven to suffer. Even God suffered a change from what He was before—His light no longer shone. That is because blessings exist only where male and female are together.
So it was that from the day the Temple was destroyed, the heavens did not shine with their usual light. Nor will the light of the heavens be restored until the End of Days, when the Bride and Groom shall dwell together again as one.
Most myths about the Temple of God in the heavenly Jerusalem emphasize its eternal nature, in stark contrast to the earthly Temple, which was destroyed. But this myth is different, claiming that God cut off the heavenly Temple from the source of its nourishment. Isaiah Tishby identifies the Holy Land above not only with the Temple, but more specifically with the Shekhinah, suggesting that this myth from the Zohar is more of a myth about the exile of the Shekhinah than about the heavenly Jerusalem.
Zohar 1:182a provides a prooftext for the necessity of male and female to be together in order for blessings to exist: Male and female He created them and blessed them (Gen. 5:2). This emphasizes the heavenly parallels to the human condition, again underscoring the central kabbalistic tenet of “as above, so below.”
Sources:
Zohar 1:182a, 2:175a.
Studies:
The Wisdom of the Zohar, edited by I. Tishby, 1:408, note 164.
545. GOD’S CLEANSING OF THE HOLY LAND
From the day the Temple in Jerusalem was torn down, the Land of Israel has been broken down because of the wickedness of those who dwelt there, its holiness in exile. That is why, in the Days to Come, God will take hold of the corners of the land and shake it free from all unclean things, as it is said, To seize the corners of the earth and shake the wicked out of it (Job 38:13).
Here the Land of Israel is portrayed as being under some kind of curse, brought on when the Temple, the center of holiness in all the land, was destroyed. Although this is a rabbinic myth, no later than the eighth century, the notion that the Land of Israel was under a curse parallels the later kabbalistic notion of the kelippot, the shards of the shattered vessels in the myth of the Ari to which demonic forces cling. These forces of evil cling to the shards very tightly, and are hard to dislodge. However, they will meet their final defeat in the End of Days, the messianic era. This results in the same kind of purification as portrayed in this myth of God cleansing the Holy Land.
Sources:
Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 34.
546. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE
As long as the Shekhinah dwelled in the Temple, it could not be destroyed. But as the sins of Israel increased, the Shekhinah gradually withdrew from the Holy of Holies, leaving the Temple and the holy city of Jerusalem unprotected. Some say that after withdrawing from the Temple, the Shekhinah dwelt on the Mount of Olives for thirteen years before She returned to Her place on high. Jeremiah is said to have seen Her there.
After Jeremiah left Jerusalem, the Angel of the Lord came down from heaven, set his feet against the walls of Jerusalem, and breached them. Then the angel cried out, “Let the enemies come and enter the House, for the Master is no longer within. Let them despoil and destroy it. Let them go into the vineyard and cut down the vines, for the Watchman has gone away and left it.”
When the Temple was destroyed, five things were hidden that have never been seen again: the Ark, the menorah, the fires, the Holy Spirit, and the cherubim. They will remain hidden until the Temple is rebuilt. Then God will return them to their places and make Jerusalem joyous. So too, in the future, when the Temple will be raised up and renewed, its gates that are buried in the earth will all arise, every one in its place.
Jewish tradition holds that the Temple could not have been destroyed without God’s concurrence. Indeed, the Angel of the Lord, sent at God’s behest, is the one who breaches the wall, not the Roman army. So too does the angel invite the enemies to destroy the Temple because God, the Master, is gone. Thus the understanding that God had turned His face away from His people at that time. This is confirmed in the confrontation between God and the Shekhinah, as recounted in Zohar 1:202b-203a, where the Bride of God accuses Her spouse, God, of destroying Her home, i.e., the Temple, and sending Her children, Israel, into exile. See “The Exile of the Shekhinah,” p. 57.
An interesting variant to this myth is found in Eikhah Zuta and Yalkut Shim’oni, where God states that “As long as I am in the Temple, the nations of the world cannot harm it. Therefore I shall avert My eye from it, and shall foreswear all involvement with it until the End of Days. And the enemies shall enter it and destroy it.” According to this myth, it was at that very hour that the enemy entered the Temple court and set it aflame.
Zohar 1:26b traces the destruction of the first and second Temples to Adam’s sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. This demonstrates the link between the Fall and the destruction of the Temple in Jewish mythic consciousness. Both are regarded as cosmic catastrophes of equal importance. However, the same source in the Zohar also links the destruction of the two temples to the breaking of the two tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. It explains that because the people were under the domination of the Angel of Death, the tablets that derived from the Tree of Life broke and fell.
Not all myths agree that God played an active role in the destruction of the Temple. Some sources attribute its destruction to the Yetzer ha-Ra, the Evil Inclination. B. Sukkah 52a states that the Yetzer ha-Ra set its eyes on the first Temple and destroyed it, and killed the Torah scholars who were in it. So too did the Yetzer ha-Ra set its eyes on the second Temple and destroy it, and killed the Torah scholars who were in it. In these cases the Evil Inclination plays a role similar to that of the Evil Eye, which casts an evil spell on whatever it gazes upon. Other myths attribute the desire to harm the Temple to the demons, who sought to sabotage the building of the Temple in several ways. This is found in the frame story to The Testament of Solomon, where the demons, feeling that King Solomon and his chief builder were too powerful to bring down, instead sent the demon Ornasis to harm the son
of the chief builder, hoping to harm Solomon that way. See “The Vampire Demon,” p. 227.
Sources:
Pesikta Rabbati 26:6; Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 13:114b; Avot de-Rabbi Natan 34:102; Eikhah Zuta 26; Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 51; Yalkut Shim’oni, Eikhah 996; Aggadat Shir ha-Shirim 6:2; IFA 6556.
Studies:
Midrash Yerushalem by Daniel Sperber, pp. 100-103.
“The Power of the Evil Eye and the Good Eye in Midrashic Literature” by Brigitte Kern-Ulmer.
547. A STONE FROM MOUNT SINAI
All the stones used in the building of the Temple in Jerusalem were from Jerusalem and its mountains. Only one stone was brought from somewhere else—from Mount Sinai. It was put in the Kotel, the Western Wall of the Temple. And that is why only the Kotel was not destroyed and remained standing when the Temple was destroyed, because that stone was from the holy mountain on which the Torah was given.
Jewish tradition imagines that the Kotel, the retaining wall of the Temple Mount, was the only wall of the Temple that survived the destruction of the Temple. Here an explanation is offered for its survival—it contained one stone from Mount Sinai. Thus the holiness of that mountain, contained within a single stone, is credited for saving the one surviving wall of the Temple.
Sources:
IFA 553.
548. THE HAND OF GOD
The Temple in Jerusalem had been set aflame, and the moment of destruction had arrived. The High Priest went up to the roof, the keys of the Temple in his hand. There he called out: “Master of the Universe! The time has come to return these keys to You.” Then he threw the keys high into the air, and at that instant a hand reached down from above and caught them, and brought them back into heaven.
The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem brought an era of Jewish life to an end. None of the rituals connected to the Temple could be performed any longer. Therefore this talmudic legend recounts how the High Priest returned the keys to the Temple to God, and in a strongly anthropomorphic image, a giant hand reaches down from heaven to retrieve them. The theological implications of this legend are considerable. It presumes that heaven was both well aware of the destruction of the Temple, and that it was no accident, but was God’s intention. Of course, it also is a tragic event. From this perspective, the act of the High Priest in returning the keys to heaven is one of great despair. Nevertheless, even at this tragic moment in Jewish history, the link between God and His people, Israel, remains intact in the act of God accepting the keys to the Temple. The motif of returning a precious gift to heaven is found in the talmudic tale of Rabbi Haninah ben Dosa returning the leg of a golden table to heaven (B. Tan. 24b-25a) and “The Soul of the Ari” in Gabriel’s Palace, pp. 258-259. In 2 Baruch the High Priest casts the temple vessels to the earth, which opens, swallowing them up.
Sources:
Pesikta Rabbati 26:6; Y. Shekalim 50a; B. Ta’anit 29a; 2 Baruch 6:8-9
549. GOD’S MOURNING
When the Temple was destroyed, God tore His garment as a sign of mourning. Since then, God cries every day for the glory that has been taken from the Jews.
Once Rabbah bar Bar Hannah went to Mount Sinai and heard a voice call out of heaven: “Woe to Me that I have vowed that the Jews must go into exile. Now that I have vowed, who will annul My vow?”
When Rabbah reported this to the other rabbis, they said, “Fool! You should have said, ‘Your vow is void.’”
Here the wandering sage Rabbah bar Bar Hannah hears God mourning over the destruction of the Temple. God laments that He took a vow to destroy the Temple and now there was no way to annul it. The rabbis tell Rabbah that he should have called out “Mufar lakh,” meaning “your vow or oath is void,” the formula used by an authorized person for annulling vows and oaths.
Sources:
B. Bava Batra 74a; B. Hagigah 5b; Lamentations Rabbah 1:1.
550. THE PATRIARCHS WEEP OVER THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE
After the Temple had been destroyed, God said to Jeremiah, “Go, summon Abraham, Isaac, Jacob from their graves. They know how to weep.”
So Jeremiah went to the cave of Machpelah, where the patriarchs are buried, and raised them from their graves and brought them up to heaven, where they prayed before God: “Master of the Universe, how long will You sit on Your throne like a mourner? Are You not going to have mercy on Your children? Are You not going to show compassion?”
In that hour God replied to them: “Abraham, My friend, Isaac, My chosen one, and Jacob, My firstborn, I cannot now save them from their exile.”
Then the angel Michael, the Prince of Israel, wept in a loud voice, “Why, O Lord, do You stand aloof” (Ps. 10:1)?
Here God summons the patriarchs from their graves, and they, in turn, beg God for compassion for Israel. But when God puts them off, the angel Michael, Prince of Israel, cries out to God in despair. This demonstrates that all of the powers of heaven are deeply concerned about the fate of Israel. God initiates this confrontation by summoning the patriarchs, which is a reflection of His own guilt at the destruction of the Temple. Most telling of all is Michael’s cry of despair, since angels are primarily messengers of God and obey God’s commands. But here Michael’s cry borders on challenging God’s decision not to save Israel from exile.
The references to Abraham as God’s friend, Isaac as God’s chosen one, and Jacob as God’s firstborn are a reworking of Isaiah 41:8: “But you, Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham, my friend.” The changes in the text are significant, especially the identification of Jacob as God’s firstborn—while the verse in Isaiah says, “Jacob whom I have chosen,” suggests that this myth may be linked to the tendency of some to give Jacob virtually divine status. See “Jacob the Divine,” p. 366.
Sources:
Lamentations Rabbah, Proem 24; Seder Mahanot in Beit ha-Midrash 5:186-87.
Studies:
Arguing With God: A Jewish Tradition by Anson Laytner.
551. ABRAHAM IN THE TEMPLE
When the Temple was destroyed, God found Abraham standing in the ruins of the Temple. He said to him, “Why should My beloved be in My house?” (Jer. 11:15).
Abraham replied, “I have come concerning the fate of my children.”
God said, “Your children sinned and have been sent into exile.”
“Perhaps,” said Abraham, “they only sinned in error.”
God answered, “She has wrought lewdness” (Jer. 11:15).
Abraham said, “Perhaps only a few sinned?”
“With many” (Jer. 11:15), came the reply.
“Still,” Abraham pleaded, “You should have remembered the covenant of the circumcision.”
God replied, “The sacral flesh has passed from you” (Jer. 11:15).
“In that case,” said Abraham, “perhaps if You had waited for them, they would have repented.”
God replied, “For you exult while performing your evil deeds!” (Jer. 11:15).
Then Abraham put his hands on his head and wept bitterly and cried, “Perhaps, heaven forbid, there is no hope for them.”
Then a heavenly voice came forth and said, “The Lord named you verdant olive tree, fair, with choice fruit (Jer. 11:16). As the olive tree produces its best only at the very end, so Israel will flourish at the end of time.”
Here Abraham confronts God over the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the children of Israel, and proceeds to bargain with God as he did over the fate of Sodom (Gen. 18:22-33). God’s replies are taken from Jeremiah 11:15-16. Although God does not reverse His decree against the Jews, a heavenly voice holds out the promise that in the end Israel will flourish.
A related midrash is found in Lamentations Rabbah, Proem 24. See “Abraham and the Alphabet,” following.
Sources:
B. Menahot 53b.
552. ABRAHAM AND THE ALPHABET
God said to Abraham, “Your children have sinned and transgressed against the whole Torah, all twenty-two letters in it. Let the letters of the
alphabet testify against Israel.” All at once the twenty-two letters appeared. The aleph came forth to testify that Israel had transgressed the Torah.
Abraham said to the aleph, “You are the first of all the letters, and you have come to testify against Israel in its time of danger? Have you forgotten that God opened the Ten Commandments with you and that every nation turned you down except for the children of Israel, and you have come to testify against them?”
The aleph immediately stood aside and gave no testimony. Then the bet came to testify against Israel.
“My daughter,” Abraham said to the bet, “have you come to testify against My children who cling to the Torah, of which you are the first letter, as it is said, In the beginning God created (Gen. 1:1)?
The bet quickly stood aside and gave no testimony.
When the remaining letters saw how the aleph and bet had been silenced, they felt ashamed and did not testify. Abraham then began to speak before God, saying, “Master of the Universe, when I was a hundred years old You gave me a son. When he was a young man you ordered me to offer him as a sacrifice before You. I steeled my heart and bound him on the altar myself. Will You not remember this on my behalf and have mercy on my children?”
At this the mercy of God was stirred, and he said, “For your sake and that of your children I will restore Israel to their place.”
Here Abraham intercedes with God to spare Israel from condemnation. This is condensed from a longer myth in which not only Abraham, but Isaac, Jacob, and Moses all come before God to defend Israel. Finally the matriarch Rachel breaks her silence and tells of her suffering when Jacob was given in marriage to her sister, Leah, instead of to herself. God’s heart is softened, and this myth then identifies Rachel’s plea with the verse Rachel weeping for her children (Jer. 31:15).
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