PARSHAT VAYAKHEL WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING, AND KNOWLEDGE

By Rabbi Michael Gold

"Moses said to the Israelites, see the Lord has singled out by name Bezalel, son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. He has endowed him with a divine spirit of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge in every kind of craft." (Exodus 35:30-31)

This week we return to the building of the tabernacle, a portable tent carried through the wilderness during the Israelites journey. The tabernacle will be described in great detail - every curtain, fastener, piece of furniture, and utensil. Moses received a detailed picture of what the holy tabernacle would look like. But Moses was a lawgiver, not an artist. The detailed handiwork was given to Bezalel, a man blessed by God with unusual artistic gifts. Today there is an art school in Jerusalem that carries his name, the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. Artists have a gift from God. The Torah actually mentions Bezalel's three gifts, wisdom (Hochma), understanding (T'vuna, usually called Bina), and knowledge (Daat). These three are often mentioned together in Jewish tradition. We pray for wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. What do these three words mean? To answer that question, we need to turn to the Jewish mystical tradition or kabbalah.

The kabbalah teaches that God did not create a universe separate from God's self. Rather God's self literally flowed into space-time, through a series of steps called sefirot. These sefirot are like a transformer, taking the power of God into the material world. The metaphor I have heard is that it is like the power of a hydroelectric dam. You would not try to plug your iphone into Hoover Dam to charge it. You would probably blow it up. There are a series of steps to bring the electricity of a dam to the plug in your bedroom. So there are a series of steps or sefirot going from Ein Sof(the unknowable God) to the material world we live in. Three of those sefirot near the top are known as the intellectual sefirot - Hochma, Bina, and Daat. (Technically, many kabbalists do not count Daat as an actual separate one of the sefirot, but see it as a quasi-sefirah. For our purposes we will count it as one of the sefirot, the divine steps in the emanation of the world.) What are these three steps? Hochma means wisdom. It is that first seed of an idea, that aha moment. The kabbalist saw the Hochma as something masculine; just as males create with a seed, so Hochma is a mere seed. To explain this, I keep thinking of Einstein's aha moment when he discovered relativity. He sat in the patent office in Bern, Switzerland, thinking about what would happen if he chased a ray of light. As he moved faster, the ray of light would appear to slow down. If he could go fast

enough, the light would appear stationary. But Einstein knew that was impossible; light always goes at the speed of light. It was here that Einstein had his aha moment, his Hochma. Light may go at a constant speed. But space and time contract and expand. The universe of space and time are not what we think; they are malleable. Einstein understood why he could not catch up to the ray of light, the faster he travelled the more space would shrink and time would stretch out. Bina means understanding. A seed to grow must be implanted in a womb. The kabbalists saw Bina as feminine, a structure in which the seed could grow. As Einstein's seed of an idea grew in his head, it did not occur in a vacuum. Einstein already knew about Lorentz transformations, a mathematical way to turn space into time and time into space. Lorentz's ideas would fit perfectly with his aha moment. Of course Einstein's head was filled with other ideas including Newton's laws. These became the structure in which his aha moment grew. Put Hochma and Bina together and they become Daat, which means knowledge. Suddenly Einstein had new knowledge of the universe. Up until that moment, every physicist assumed that matter could not be created or destroyed. But if Einstein's ideas were correct, matter could be turned into energy and energy into matter - E=Mc2. Out of an aha moment, Einstein had discovered how to split the atom. Hochma, Bina, and Daat are three steps in intellectual creativity. In

fact a large Hasidic group takes the first letter of these three words to create their name - Habad. Whether it is Betzalel building a tabernacle, Einstein discovering relativity, or each of us using our intellect, we humans have God's gift of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge.