The ark of the divine

The ark sits at the very core of Judaism. It’s the ultimate symbol of the power and glory of the Torah. It’s the crown jewel of the Temple. Covered entirely with gold, the ark is popularly known as “the golden ark”.

But that’s not how the Torah describes it. In saying, “And they shall make an ark of cedarwood,” the ark is referred to not by its golden encasing, but rather by its internal structure made from wood. Why does the Torah describe it as “an ark of cedarwood” when, in fact, not a speck of wood is visible?

Furthermore, if the ark is meant to symbolise the absolute integrity of the Torah and the Torah scholar, his total purity within and without, why is a layer of wood interposed between the two layers of gold? Wouldn’t total purity mandate that the ark be solid gold through and through rather than a gold veneer on a wooden base?

The commentators explain that gold and wood represent two distinct aspects of the human personality. Gold represents the sublime and ethereal aspect, spirituality in its purest form. The golden side of the human personality soars above the mundane world and reaches out for the divine. Wood, on the other hand, represents the human connectedness with the earth, the prosaic, and the mundane. Just as a tree is rooted in the soil, so is a person rooted in the physical world.

The ideal Torah scholar, or spiritual giant, is more than just a golden ethereal spirit passing through the world in blissful oblivion of the realities of the human experience. At their core, the Torah scholar must have a heart of wood, rooted in this world, supremely sensitive to the divine resonance in all aspects of creation.

This then is the Jewish paragon, not a monastic recluse nor a sensualist but a person imbued within and without with the true spirit of Torah yet rooted in deep resonant connectivity to their interaction with people themselves, and the world around them.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov taught that the general view of spiritual experience is that the purpose of eating food is to be able to have the strength to study Torah, although the higher spiritual level is that we study Torah to be able to learn how to eat food in a more spiritually connected way.

The Torah doesn’t want us to achieve spirituality by withdrawing from the world and isolating ourselves from the lived experience of every moment. On the contrary, the Torah wants us to retain a powerful connection with the world around us and to find spiritual resonance within it. If we can clothe ourselves within and without with the golden garments of the Torah yet retain a deep-rooted vitality in our hearts, we not only experience the divine bliss of the moments of deep remove, but also the divine connection and infinite energy found within all.

Rabbi Shmuel Ozhekh – Ohr Somayach Cape Town and the founder of Rejewvinate and The Eden Meditation App