Pillars

February 1, 2008
Rabbi Seymour Rossel

We speak about a "pillar" of the community and we mean someone who is a tower of strength, a leader, a support, a rock. In the Bible, though, the word "pillar" has meanings more familiar to scholars than to ordinary citizens.

There are two Hebrew words for "pillar." One kind of pillar is an Amud, a "column," from the Hebrew root that means "to stand" as in the Amidah or "standing" prayer. The most famous pillars of this kind are the pillars of cloud and fire sent by God to lead Israel in the wilderness. Other Amud pillars include the wood and bronze pillars of the tabernacle in the wilderness, the pillars of Solomon's Temple, the pillars in Ezekiel's vision of a new Temple, the pillars Samson pushed apart to bring down the house and kill the Philistines, the marble pillars in the palace of the Persian king in the Book of Esther, and the pillars of silver on Solomon's carriage in the Song of Songs.

This week's portion begins with the words: "These are the laws you are to put before the people." It contains very practical laws, or Mishpatim, that include the rights of slaves, the rights of women, community safety, repayment of debt and a caution against lending money at interest, the rights of the stranger living among us, and so on. You can think of these laws the way the editors of the Torah did: first God gave the basic Constitution (which is the Ten Commandments); then God spelled out the meaning of the Ten Commandments in detail, (like the Bill of Rights adds meaning to the Constitution).

If you placed these laws side by side with the laws of Hammurabi, you would be astonished at how similar the two sets of laws are. Hammurabi ordered that his laws be written on a stone pillar and that the pillar be set up in the downtown square of the city of Babylon. That was about 500 years before Moses lived and probably 750 years before our version of these laws was included in the Torah. In this way, Hammurabi was the first to accomplish some astonishing things that we usually associate with our Torah. First, Hammurabi commanded that his pillar be written in Akkadian, the language of the common folk. Therefore, any literate Babylonian could read the laws for himself or herself. Also, since the laws were on public display, they became immutable -- no petty official could arbitrarily change them, even the king was bound by the same laws as his subjects.

Those are things that we Jews are proud of bragging about when it comes to our Torah -- that even the king had to follow God's laws and that every Jew could read the laws for himself or herself. We can still brag, but we should be in awe of that pillar of Hammurabi that even today stands in Paris in the Louvre, reminding us that the tradition of equality under the law goes back way before Rome and long before Moses.

Moreover, at the bottom of the pillar of Hammurabi there is a postscript or epilogue which calls on the various gods of Babylon to bless the laws of the land and bless the king. At the end of the laws of Mishpatim there is a similar epilogue, promising blessing to the people if they follow the laws. God is quoted as saying:

I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since My Name is in him. If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land [Ex. 23:20-23].

Who is this mysterious angel being sent to lead the people? Actually, we already know this angel. This angel is in charge of the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. Just before the Jews walked across the Sea of Reeds, the Torah told us: "The angel of God, who had been in front guiding Israel's army, withdrew and went behind them. So the pillar of cloud moved from in front and stood behind them, coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel" [Ex 14:19-20]. Through the night the angel of God stood guard and the pillar of cloud kept Pharaoh's chariots from going near the people.

In this portion, we hear again about the same angel, God's angel of the pillars, getting ready to lead the people into the promised land.

But a few lines on, we also hear about a different kind of pillar, not an Amud, but a Matzeivah, from the Hebrew root for "condition" or "position." Jacob set up a matzeivah pillar to mark the spot where he dreamed of the staircase. Lot's wife was turned to a matzeivah pillar of salt when she stopped to look back. Matzeivah pillars were also set up to show a place where people made a special agreement or to mark a grave.

But in Canaan, the matzeivah pillar was set up for a different reason, to be worshipped. So right here, at the end of the laws, God tells Moses, "Do not bow down before the gods [of the Canaanites] or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred matzeivah pillars to pieces" [Ex. 23:24].

The thing about a matzeivah pillar that sets it apart is that it can be used for good or for bad things. To mark the covenant with God, Moses set up twelve matzeivah pillars at Mount Sinai, one for each tribe. As a monument and memorial, the pillars were permitted. Only when they were worshipped, used as gods by the Canaanites, were the monuments forbidden.

This is the final lesson I want to draw for you. The things we build and the things we possess are never bad in themselves. They only become evil when we use them in evil ways. The pillar of cloud was a good thing, and so was the pillar of Jacob and the twelve pillars of Moses. The pillar of Hammurabi was also a good thing. People respected it without worshipping it. The sin is not in the pillar, the sin is only in us when we forget and worship what we have as a pillar, placing it above our love for God and our love for one another. To be a true pillar of the community, that is what we should aim for. And let us say, Amen.