Cherubs and Empty Space - VaYakhel - Mythic Torah

Kanizsa's Triangle

How many triangles are there in this picture?

There are several 'right' answers to this question, I think, but I'm most interested in the illusion of a white triangle pointed down at the center of the lines and circles. There isn't really a white triangle in this image, nor is there a secret magen david, a star of David. Instead the empty space is marked out through lines and sectors of circles such that your brain fills in the triangle.

Empty space is given structure and the illusion of form through its surrounding objects.

In this week's torah reading of Vayakhel, we see how the sacred space of the tabernacle is structured with wood, gold and cloth to create a form for the divine. Specifically, once we get to the holiest centre of the holiest space, we find the Ark of the Covenant, above which are two unusual figures (Ex 37):

Rewriting Radiance - Rashi for Keter/Crown

It's been a while since I posted an update on my Kabbalistic Fantasy novel, Radiance (check out the first draft here), and honestly, it's been a while since I worked on it.

But recently I started working on the final chapter of the book, before the epilogue, that I wrote in the style of Biblical prophecy. While I enjoyed the conceit, and felt like it worked for the novel, I realised that it made the ending quite ambiguous. Rather than offer total clarity however, which seemed to fly in the face of the reason for writing in Biblical style in the first place, I thought I would write a Rashi-style commentary to go along with it, in the best of Jewish traditions.

If you want to read the first draft of this chapter, check it out here. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the beginning of the 10th section of Radiance - Keter/Crown. Rashi commentary begins with the bold words quoting the text:


The word of the Lord came to Asher son of Eliav when he dwelt in the city of New York, saying:

            Thus proclaims the Lord:
       I have waited for you, My people, years I have waited beyond measure;
      And still you stir up My anger against you.
      Why do you sit in silence when My world cries out for justice?
      When My people suffer under the yoke of oppression, why were your words not heard?



    The city of New York: This is not coming to tell us a new word but rather a word that was created at the dawn of time, only now revealed to flesh and blood. Or alternatively, the verse is only coming to tell us where Asher son of Eliav lived, but the prophecy came when he was in the holy land of Israel.

    I have waited for you: This is what the verse says “The Lord, the Lord, God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger…” (Exodus 34:6).

    My world cries out for justice: This is according to its simple meaning, but according to the legend, in the future to come the earth will open its mouth and say ‘woe to me, that blood has been spilt on my back and it has not been avenged’

Top 10 Masks

In honour of the festival of Purim, I have written an article for Jewish Eyes on the Arts - Oholiav, giving my top 10 masks of pop-culture (with my own kabbalistic interpretation).

Check it out here!


And there's nothing written after the jump, why would there be?

Radiance 35 - Epilogue - Ein Sof/Without End

     Dan Black stood in his Manhattan-sized kitchen, and for the third time that evening, waited for the kettle to boil.
    ‘A watched pot never boils’, his mother would have said, but he didn’t like to leave the kitchen when the gas was on, not with Jonny wandering around and playing with everything he could get his fingers on.
    And if he was being honest, some of his guests in the living room were a little… unsettling.
    After that Saturday afternoon, he hadn’t expected Asher to show up again, not really. Five years without much of a word had felt like an eternity, even with the all-present Facebook keeping them in touch.
    But then a text message from nowhere - ‘can we meet up? I’ll buy us some beers -Ash.’
    And so they had met in a bar downtown, and, a little cautiously, renewed their friendship.
    There had been something different about Asher in that meeting, and not just the missing hand that Dan hadn’t dared ask about - something deep and dark, lurking beneath his eyes, a greater seriousness than he had ever seen before.
    “The daughter became the mother,” was all Asher would say about it, and laughed a little hollowly.
    Not that Dan himself had been fully present in the conversation. Since the day of the ‘earthquake’, nothing had been quite right in his mind. He could have sworn that he remembered witnessing a sanity-defying serpent rise up from the Hudson, serrated teeth like swords, black poisonous spines, mile-long coils spreading and wrapping themselves around the city, people screaming and dying as the world crumbled around them.
    But no one said a word about it - no one seemed to remember but him, and then only in the dark of night, when nightmares would find their way into his dreams.
    No, Dan hadn’t been himself for a while.

Radiance 30 - The first of His works

This week's chapter marks the beginning of the 9th part of Radiance, Chochma/Wisdom. I'm not entirely happy with the shape that this is in at the moment, and I think it needs a lot more work than I was able to give it this week (as I was finishing my time on Noam camp). Hopefully the poem is just a placeholder and will be improved for the next iteration. Thanks for your patience.

22] ‘The Lord brought me forth as the first of His works, before His deeds of old;

23] I was formed long ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be…

27] I was there when He set the heavens in place, when He marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,

28] when He established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,

29] when He gave the sea its boundary so that the waters would not overstep His command, and when He marked out the foundations of the earth.

30] Then I was constantly at His side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in His presence,

31] rejoicing in His whole world and delighting in the sons of man.
    -Proverbs 8

    And while the earth shook around him, and the city trembled before the onslaught of the Leviathan, Asher strummed Layla’s nylon strings, letting the beating chords wash over him, filling his soul with their rhythm. And when the pattern struck him, the words tumbled out in their wake, shifting with the music as it cascaded over him like the rising tide.

Radiance 28 - Proclaim Liberty

    By the time Emma finally reached the inner sanctuary, the court was already in session. Angels lined the viewing gallery, standing raised above the ground, hovering on wings upon wings. Scrolls and leather-bound volumes were strewn across marble floors and wooden tables, with parchment and paper coloured by age and long use. Candles over ten feet tall stood haphazardly around the room, shedding flickering but brilliant light and dripping golden wax. On the left, at the front of the court, an angel dressed in black stood at a lectern, consulting a dozen tomes, his face contorted deep in thought, while on the right an identical lectern was dark and empty. In the middle sat a divine being, neither angel, nor mortal, upon a chair of inlaid wood, a half-smile upon his shining face, while behind him, far at the front and wreathed in shadows, a colossal throne glittered dully, overseeing the entire court. And seated upon the throne, impossible to make out in the gloom, seemed to be something like a human figure, crowned and enthroned.
    As Emma timidly strode into the chamber, the room was bursting with song, snatches of Hebrew verse and prayer, but as she walked down the central aisle and approached the centre of the court, a hush fell on the angelic host. Myriad eyes followed her footsteps across the marble.
    How long she had been walking, Emma could not say. She had long since forgotten the taste of food, the feel of breath entering the lungs, all washed away in a haze of fire and ice. But it was the eyes that burned in her mind, all the angels she had passed with their near-unpronounceable names and roles, whose gaze had burrowed through her skin and to the very depths of herself. It seemed that she had not always been alone but could not trawl the memories from her mind. Amid the heat and the cold, something had been lost forever, and Emma could not even say what it had been.

Radiance 15 - Good to give thanks to the Lord

1] A Psalm, a Song. For the sabbath day.
2] It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and to sing praises to Your name, O Most High;
3] To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning, and Your faithfulness at night,
4] With the ten-stringed harp; with the melody of the lyre.
5] For You, Lord, made me glad through Your work; I will rejoice in the works of Your hands.
6] How great are Your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep.
7] A simple man does not know, neither can a fool understand this.
8] That when the wicked spring up like grass, and when all the workers of sin flourish - it is so that they may be destroyed for ever.
9] But You, O Lord, are on high for evermore.


    On her left was a river of fire - scorching, burning, dancing. On her right was a river of ice - freezing, flowing, shifting. In between walked Emma, half burnt, half frozen, remaining on the one path between the two that seemed tolerable. Her hair was beginning to singe, the smell filled her nostrils. Her right hand was turning blue, her left turning black. But she could not stop, the ascent, the descent, must continue. With a great effort of will she forced her right leg forward, then her left, on and on, each step carrying her a tiny fraction of the infinite path.
    Yet Emma knew that at the same time she was sitting in a small flat in Netanya, ‘The Book of the Chariot’ open before her. She did not know how long it had been since she last ate or drank anything, her own name seemed but a distant memory. Emma’s mind was full of ice and flames. But she had to keep moving.
    A wall rose up before her eyes, a wall of sapphire stones, refracting the light into a million shards of green and blue. And Emma was standing at a wooden gate that must have stood over a hundred feet tall and fifty feet wide.  On either side of the gate stood a monstrous creature with four faces - an eagle faced backwards, an ox head faced to the left, a lion to the right, and vaguely human eyes glared down at her. Silvery wings wrapped around these creatures, moving so fast they could barely be seen, and in their hands were enormous swords, black flames licking their razor edges, barring her way. These were true cherubim, she thought, absently turning the page of the book in her Israel apartment. Why couldn’t they look more like Raphael’s chubby babies?