Vaykel-Pekudei and Pi

If nothing else, this past months’ worth of parshiyot has made one thing clear...God is a detail fanatic. Everything in God's house has an exact place, an exact measurement, a perfect set of assembly instructions. The instruction manual for the Mishkan and its contents that God gives to Moses and Moses, in turn, gives to the People of Israel has chapters and chapters of complicated and wordy building specifications. For sure, this how-to guide would never pass Ikea's standards of simplicity.

Today we read the fourth in a series of five special haftarah portions leading up to Pesach. Today, Shabbat HaChodesh, we heard part of the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of the restoration of Israel and the Temple, and the proper observance of festivals and holidays in the Temple. This week’s portion appropriately includes the eating of the Passover sacrifice in the Temple.

However, I found the usual, un-read, haftarah a little more interesting. Instead, if it were not Shabbat HaChodesh we would realize that not only do we have a double portion of specifications for the Mishkan, but in today’s usual haftarah portion we have a parallel set of details regarding the building of the Temple in Jerusalem. In this way, we are able to see that in addition to being meticulous about God's mobile home, God’s zeal for detail extends to the blueprint for a more permanent sanctuary in Jerusalem.

But maybe God isn't as meticulous as God seems...

One of the many details we're given in 1st Kings describes a huge vessel. And though at this point we might be tired of listening to details we can find something a little strange about the vessel's design.

Va-ya-as et ha-yam mutzak eser ba'a'mah mis-pato ad s'fato a-gol saviv v'chamaysh ba'a'mah komato v'kav sh'loshim ba'a'mah yasov o'to saviv[1]

"Then he made the tank out of cast metal, ten cubits across from brim to brim, completely round; it was five cubits high, and it measured thirty cubits in circumference."

Does something seem strange to you?

Let me give you a clue.

This month we celebrate a wonderful holiday. A holiday where we celebrate a little irrationality, with a lot of frivolity and a tasty fruit filled pastry. No, not Purim…

 This month we celebrate Pi Day.

 Thursday, March 14th, 3/14, will align with the first three digits of Pi, 3.14. This is a day that nerds and geeks alike set aside not only to have a holiday of their own, but also to acknowledge the wonder that is Pi - a Transcendental and irrational number. Pi goes on forever and we can never predict what the next digit might be because it has no pattern. There is no logic to Pi. And yet, we see Pi again and again in creation.

 So how is it that God would want a vessel in God's own Temple that is just one in a long list of annoyingly detailed specifications and not get the measurements correct? How could God demand a vessel that is ten cubits across and thirty cubits around when that would make Pi equal to 3, not 3.14159265…?

 Is God capable of a simple miscalculation? Or is there more to this quirk?

 And why in the world, you might ask, would I be using Pi to demonstrate a point about God's Temple and the Mishkan?

 In both of God's sanctuaries the detailed instructions are missing one piece of the puzzle. In each project there is one place that we don't know what its interior looks like. This mysterious place is the place that God claims only for God's self. The Holy of Holies, God’s private sanctuary in which only the High Priest can enter, and even then only once a year. These places are the said to be the actual locations where God’s presence resides; God does not leave this room. In Exodus 26:33-34 God gives instructions to hide this room from humanity:

 V'na'ta'ta et ha-parochet tachat hak'rasim v'hei'vei'ta shamah mi'beit la'parochet et aron ha'eidut v'hiv'di'lh ha'parochet l'chem bein hakodesh u'vein kodesh ha'kodashim. V'natata et ha'parochet al aron ha'eidut b'kodesh ha'kodashim.[2]

 "Hang the curtain under the clasps, and carry the Ark of the Covenant there, behind the curtain, so that the curtain shall serve you as a partition between the Holy and the Holy of Holies. Place the cover upon the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies."

This act of hiding God’s presence is the physical representation of a metaphor for the abstract concept – a concept that expresses our human inability to understand God.  

We can know so much about the things around God. What they look like. What they're made of. How big they are. But we can never really know God. There is always a piece of God hidden from our understanding. God is infinite and can never fully be quantified or measured like things.

This is the essence of Pi. This is the reason we're so interested in Pi. Not only modern mathematicians but great rabbis have pursued this curiosity as well. They also tried to understand the nature of Pi, the nature of God's instructional oversight. They even used the same technique to calculate Pi as centuries of pre-computer mathematicians – saying in the Babylonian Talmud, Middot 14a that calculations of this round object was "looked upon as if [they] were square" – because, truthfully, squares are much simpler than circles. And it is in our nature to attempt to understand life's complexities - and God's - by making comparisons to simpler things.

 Maimonides responds to the puzzled rabbis by saying:

 "You need to know that the ratio of a circle’s diameter to its circumference is not known and is never possible to express it precisely. This is not due to a lack of our knowledge...but it is in its nature that it is unknown, and there is no way [to know it], but it is known approximately...As it will never be perceived but approximately, [the Hebrew sages] took the nearest integer...and they contented themselves with this."

 So in essence, our pursuit for a full understanding of Pi, and of God, could be an exercise in futility. According to Maimonides it doesn't matter how much we know or how many calculations we do - we will never quite reach the fullest understanding of Pi or of God.

 Maimonides also said in his philosophical book "Guide to the Perplexed" that

 "All we understand is the fact that [God] exists, that [God] is a being to whom none of Adonai's creatures is similar, who has nothing in common with them, who does not include plurality, who is never too feeble to produce other beings and whose relation to the universe is that of a steersman to a boat; and even this is not a real relation, a real [metaphor], but serves only to convey to us the idea that God rules the universe, that it is [God] that gives it duration and preserves its necessary arrangement."

 Maimonides explains that no matter how much we try to understand the mystery that is God through other things, we will never reach the truth. We can only approach understanding of the true divine nature. Perhaps this is why the People of Israel put so much effort into following the instructions for the Mishkan, and built the Temple as they did, and spent centuries studying and calculating Pi. Perhaps, it is through all these acts that we attempt to bring our tangential understanding of God a little bit closer to truth.

 But at what point do we start to think that our metaphors for God, are God? When do our pursuits of God get in the way of actually getting to God?

 In Exodus 36: verses 6 and 7 we read:

Vay'tzav moshe va'va'a'vi'ru kol ba'machaneh leimor ish v'isha ya'a'su od m'la'cha lit'ru-mat ha'kodesh va'yi'ka'lei ha'am ma'ha'vi. V'ham'la'cha hayita da'yam l'chol ham'la'cha la'a'sot otah v'ho'tair[3]

"Moses thereupon had this proclamation made throughout the camp: “let no man or woman make further effort towards gifts for the sanctuary!” So the people stopped bringing. Their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done."

It seems to me that Moses knew that at some point our work on the Mishkan needed to stop. He knew that at the Israelites needed to stop adding layers of metaphor in order to understand that which is not understandable... There comes a time when we need stop decorating the Temple... Eventually we need stop calculating digits of Pi...

We cannot let our divine metaphor get in the way of divine truth.

Maybe God hid God's self in the Mishkan, and the Temple, and in all the intricacies of God's creation. Maybe God left clues in their details to encourage us to study them and look deeper than the physical level in order to find God. How much more could we understand God if we stopped pursuing the things that are only metaphors for God? What could our world be like if we were able to see God in every single thing and concept, including the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter? What if God's fervent passion for the details of the Mishkan and Temple are really a plea, an instruction book, to find God hidden in everyday things?

When we let the metaphor take the place of the un-understandable we are doing ourselves a disservice. Admitting that God and Pi are beyond our understanding allows us to encourage a different kind of understanding – an understanding based on faith. We can see Pi in the world, and we can sense God in our lives, and our faith can allow us to do as Moses did, by letting us stop attempting to understand the metaphor and simply let God, and Pi, exist.

[1] וַיַּעַשׂ אֶת־הַיָּם מוּצָק עֶשֶׂר בָּאַמָּה מִשְּׂפָתוֹ עַד־שְׂפָתוֹ עָגֹל סָבִיב וְחָמֵשׁ בָּֽאַמָּה קֽוֹמָתוֹ וְקָוה [וְקָו] שְׁלֹשִׁים בָּֽאַמָּה יָסֹב אֹתוֹ סָבִֽיב:

[2] וְנָֽתַתָּה אֶת־הַפָּרֹכֶת תַּחַת הַקְּרָסִים וְהֵֽבֵאתָ שָׁמָּה מִבֵּית לַפָּרֹכֶת אֵת אֲרוֹן הָֽעֵדוּת וְהִבְדִּילָה הַפָּרֹכֶת לָכֶם בֵּין הַקֹּדֶשׁ וּבֵין קֹדֶשׁ הַקֳּדָשִֽׁים: לד וְנָֽתַתָּ אֶת־הַכַּפֹּרֶת עַל אֲרוֹן הָֽעֵדֻת בְּקֹדֶשׁ הַקֳּדָשִֽׁים:

[3] וַיְצַו מֹשֶׁה וַיַּֽעֲבִירוּ קוֹל בַּֽמַּֽחֲנֶה לֵאמֹר אִישׁ וְאִשָּׁה אַל־יַֽעֲשׂוּ־עוֹד מְלָאכָה לִתְרוּמַת הַקֹּדֶשׁ וַיִּכָּלֵא הָעָם מֵֽהָבִֽיא: ז וְהַמְּלָאכָה הָֽיְתָה דַיָּם לְכָל־הַמְּלָאכָה לַֽעֲשׂוֹת אֹתָהּ וְהוֹתֵֽר: