{"id":42532,"date":"2018-10-21T21:00:25","date_gmt":"2018-10-21T18:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=42532"},"modified":"2022-05-18T06:23:07","modified_gmt":"2022-05-18T03:23:07","slug":"the-color-of-water-the-cry-of-a-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-color-of-water-the-cry-of-a-child\/","title":{"rendered":"The Color Of Water, The Cry Of A Child"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What do you see when you see God? In chapter 24, Moses, Aaron, his sons, and the elders “see God”, but the Torah’s mysterious description only speaks of what lies at His feet. “Under His feet, like the work of <\/span>livnat hasapir<\/span><\/i>” (here translated as \u201cpavement of sapphire\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n

If “the earth is His footstool”, perhaps the Torah is suggesting that what is most significant and relevant about the ultimate religious experience (and thus about every lesser religious experience) is not what it tells us about God, but how it lets us see our world.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is much disagreement concerning the identity of the ‘<\/span>sapir<\/span><\/i>.’ According to Rabbi Meir, it was something similar to the sea, and to the sky. It’s reminiscent of James McBride’s beautiful phrase, “God is the color of water.” But it’s not entirely true that, as he continues, “water has no color.” When seen up close, in small quantities, water appears colorless, as does the sky. But when seen as a whole, both appear a brilliant azure. Azure in Hebrew is <\/span>techelet<\/span><\/i>, which we can creatively connect to the word <\/span>tachlit<\/span><\/i>, meaning ultimate purpose. When seen up close, detail after detail, our lives can seem colorless, drab, meaningless. A religious experience should allow a person a wider, heavenly perspective which sees a whole more brilliant than the sum of its parts.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there is also a danger to an overly holistic perspective, that a grand ideology makes us lose sight of the individual. The Midrash offers a radically different interpretation that serves as complement and corrective. Creatively reading “<\/span>livnat”<\/span><\/i> not as a color, but as “<\/span>leveina”<\/span><\/i>, the bricks the Jews prepared in slavery, and <\/span>“sapir”<\/span><\/i> as “<\/span>shfir”<\/span><\/i>, a fetus, the Midrash weaves the story of a pregnant Jewish slave in forced labor collecting straw for bricks amongst thorns and bristles, whose infant falls into the mixture of blood and mud. The mother’s anguished cries rise to the Heavenly throne, and the angel Michael descends to carry the fetus to lay at God’s feet. A religious experience can’t be so grand and idealistic that we ignore the cry of the child. Just the opposite, it must raise our consciousness to the brokenness and pain of reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which perspective is correct? As usual, the answer is yes.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":65569,"id":65569,"title":"is13-baby","filename":"is13-baby.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/is13-baby.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/a-special-hell-for-women-and-children\/is13-baby\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"is13-baby","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":65560,"date":"2019-11-11 12:44:37","modified":"2022-05-18 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