A Fierce and Tender Blessing
The sudden return of golden sunshine to Seattle focused my attention this week on the golden statues placed within the Mishkan (and later the Temple). In the Holy of Holies, centered around the empty space where another temple might have placed a god, two gold cherubim face each other, wings outstretched (Exodus 25:18-20).
Here are my questions:
What is a cherub?
Why are there two in the holiest space?
What do these cherubim have to teach us right now?
All we know about the cherub from our Torah portion is that it has wings. Much later, when the Temple was built by King Solomon, their wings are described as “extended, a wing of the one touched one wall and a wing of the other touched the other wall, while their wings in the center of the chamber touched each other” (1 Kings 6:27).
Elsewhere, though we have a striking image: When Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden, “east of the garden of Eden were stationed the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:24). These winged things are guardians. An early midrashclaims that cherubim are angels of destruction. And the medieval commentator Chizkuni says that their form itself was frightening to behold, let alone the fiery ever-turning sword they wielded. Fierce!
This image of fierce guardian angels ready to destroy trespassers isn’t the only conception we have of cherubim, however. Through a variety of linguistic stretches, the Talmud (Sukkah 5b) clearly states that a cherub “had the face of a small child”. Many centuries later, Renaissance painters gifted us the now-inescapable image of a cherub as a tiny little baby angel.
However they looked, two statues of them were placed in the Temple. Why two? Perhaps they were understood to flank God’s Presence, acting as honor guards. Having only one would run the risk of looking like the cherub was the object of worship, and having more than two would be redundant.
The Talmud (Bava Batra 99a) suggests that the angel statues actually moved! When the Jewish people were in alignment with God, the angels stood face to face, and when the people were out of alignment, the angels looked away from each other. Two is the basic unit of relationship, and the cherubim functioned as barometers of the relational health between God and the people.
The Israeli poet Sivan Har-Shefi has a poem, In the Innermost Rooms, which explores the imagery of the cherubim in the inner sanctum as a metaphor for relationship.
When we build the house (bayit: same word refers to the Temple)Main doors to the four windsWindows to a crimson sunsetTo the rustle of the sunrise
We will leave one room emptyAnd in it we will stand all of our days…Close one to another and goldenMy wings upon you and your wings upon me.
And life will stir in the other roomsIn the kitchen and in the living roomIn the children’s roomsAnd rejoice and make noise and in them we will grow
But our quiet rootsAre from that roomAnd the heat and the light and the Sabbath
Close one to another and goldenFace to faceA blessing.
So what are we to take away from this encounter with the cherubim?
I imagine these golden angels within me, sometimes fierce and protective, sometimes a charming and tender expression of my inner child. We need both! Without the inner child, the fierce guardian becomes frightening and destructive. Without the fierce guardian, the inner child runs away from responsibility.
I imagine these golden angels protecting the quiet space where we can hear God’s voice.
I imagine these golden angels are us - when we remember that empty room where the quiet roots grow. Face to face, doing our best to make our shared lives a blessing.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Jay LeVine
