Vayakhel-Pekudei 5786: Delusion Illusion

GOOD MORNING! Perhaps one of the most disconcerting things about living in the 21st century is seeing the amount of delusion that is so prevalent in the world. From religious fanatics murdering hundreds in homicidal bombings in the name of a “peaceful religion,” to adolescents murdering fellow students and teachers in school shootings, to murderous regimes purporting to protect their citizens by slaughtering 30,000 “rioters” in the course of a couple of days; it’s all deeply disturbing.

To be sure, delusional behavior has been around for as long as mankind has existed. But much of it went unnoticed because, for the vast majority of human history, people were preoccupied with survival; hunting, gathering water, building shelter, and farming. Not to mention that those daily activities were only relevant when they weren’t dealing with outside existential threats like marauding armies or diseases like smallpox.

But over the last one hundred years the world has shrunk due to the explosion of interconnectivity through communication systems (radio, television, internet) and efficient means of travel (trains, planes, automobiles) and mankind has become overly aware of the world outside themselves. The Industrial Revolution also gave the majority of the developed world the luxury of time to think about the lives of others and consider what’s missing from their own.

With the onset of the 24-hour news cycle, where every single world event is now streamed directly to our (permanently attached) devices, and the tsunami of intrusive social media, information overload is almost impossible to escape. Perhaps the shock of it all is that we do it to ourselves; we invite these intrusions in to disrupt and distract us from having meaningful lives.

While it’s true that delusion has always been a part of the human condition, as society becomes increasingly self-centered we also become more susceptible to deluding ourselves. I am continuously astonished that some of my friends feel compelled to work into their mid-seventies because they feel obligated (or guilted) to support their children’s dream of full-time Torah study. They have abdicated all responsibility of teaching their children to take responsibility for themselves and develop into independent adults.

Today, the number of adult children aged 18-34 living with their parents has reached a shocking average of 33%. In New Jersey and Connecticut, the numbers are 44% and 41% respectively. This is particularly concerning when you consider that in the year 2000 it was “only” 12%.

The primary driver is a “standard of living gap.” Essentially, the cost of maintaining a middle-class lifestyle – independent housing, reliable transportation, and healthy food – has outpaced the entry-level wages many young adults can earn.

In other words, rather than become independent and responsible adults, they forego the hardships of starting out (roommates, public transit, ramen) for a cushier lifestyle; living in their parent’s home, eating food their parents pay for, and driving their parents’ cars. This is what happens when parents habitually make their children feel like they are the center of the universe and that they are entitled to everything in life without having to earn it. This is the result of abandoning parenting responsibilities.

A few years ago my father was approached by a struggling single mother of three children who had been asked by her daughter (at the direction of her teachers in seminary) to take on a second job so that her daughter could earn a degree (without taking student loans). This would eventually enable her daughter to support a husband in his full-time Torah study. My father told her that she was prohibited from doing such a thing and the very thought was ludicrous and anti Torah values.

We see this very same delusion in great people who become overly enamored with their own self-worth. According to Jewish tradition, two of Aaron’s children (Nadav and Avihu) were considered even greater than Moses and Aaron. Yet, when it came to following the same rules as everyone else (by Mount Sinai) they ignored their true status and their inflated egos caused them to “peer” into a place in which they were unworthy.

According to our sages, they would have been punished and killed on the spot, however the Almighty did not want to dampen the festive atmosphere (they eventually died the following year when they once again ignored the laws that they felt shouldn’t apply to them during the inauguration of the Tabernacle).

We have another instance in the Talmud (Chagiga 14a) in which four great sages attempted, through kabbalasitic meditative techniques, to enter the “pardes – everlasting paradise” (notice the cognate of paradise to the Hebrew pardes). Three of them completely failed: one died, one lost his mind, and one became an apostate. The only one who went in “peacefully” and left in peace was the famous Rabbi Akiva.

Moses was able to achieve all that he did because, for all his greatness, he had no inflated sense of self. The Torah informs us (Numbers 12:3) that Moses was humblest of all men on earth. It is no coincidence that the Talmud (Menachos 29b) records a story in which the Almighty shows the future school of Rabbi Akiva to Moses and shows him lecturing. Moses, seeing the greatness of Rabbi Akiva, asks God why he didn’t choose Rabbi Akiva to deliver the Torah to the Jewish people. Obviously, Rabbi Akiva was also exceedingly modest like Moses.

We find a fascinating connection to this concept in this week’s Torah portion. The Almighty told Moses to direct the uber-genius child prodigy Betzalel to be the master architect of the Tabernacle. “And Bezalel made the ark of shittim wood; two cubits and a half was its length, and a cubit and a half its breadth, and a cubit and a half its height” (Exodus 37:1).

The sages are bothered by the fact that the entire Tabernacle was under his direction; so why does the Torah say specifically by the Holy Ark that it was made by Betzalel? In fact, the only place that his name is mentioned by a vessel is the Ark. The sages ask, why was the Ark specifically associated with Betzalel?

The Midrash (Tanchuma Vayakhel 7) answers that there are two reasons: First, the mystical aspects needed to create the Holy Ark required the unique talents that only Betzalel had, and second (quoted by Rashi in his commentary ad loc) because he sacrificed his soul specifically for the building of the Ark – more than any of the other vessels of the Tabernacle. What does the Midrash mean by this?

In several places the Talmud states that the Holy Ark had a unique spatial presence; that is, it didn’t take up any space. The Holy of Holies (the place in the Temple where the Holy Ark was kept) measured 20 cubits by 20 cubits. Yet when someone would measure from the edge of the Ark to the northern wall of the room there were ten cubits, and when they would measure from the other edge of the Ark to the southern wall it would also measure ten cubits. This means that the space occupied by the Holy Ark was inter-dimensional and not subject to the laws of space as we know them.

It was only possible for someone to create this who understood the very essence of the atomic particles of creation. The Talmud (Brachos 55a) says that Betzalel knew how to combine the Hebrew letters with which heaven and earth were created. Meaning, he understood the basic elements of creation. We actually have a glimpse of this concept in quantum mechanics; the possibility of something existing in two places at once without necessarily being in either specific place. This entails understanding the essence of wave function (a map of probabilities of a particle including its position) and “superposition” – that a wave function can exist in multiple states until a measurement is made (this is the essence of the famous Schrödinger’s cat experiment).

An easier way to understand it is to imagine a coin lying on a table. If it shows heads, it is definitely heads. If it shows tails, it is definitely tails. But when the coin is spinning, it is not clearly heads or tails. It is in a combined state of both possibilities. Only when you stop the coin and look do you get one definite outcome. This is known as decoherence.

The point is that Betzalel had a deep enough understanding of quantum mechanics and subatomic particles to be able to create the Holy Ark in such a way that it permanently repelled decoherence. The issue, of course, is that when a person has such an enormous gift of seeing things in different dimensions, he tends to lose touch with reality.

Many of history’s greatest geniuses (i.e. those who had a vision that transcended the reality in which everyone else exists) often suffered from not being able to come back to reality – like 3/4 of the sages who went seeking the pardes but could not return. Newton, Tesla, and Gödel all suffered delusions, intense paranoia, or were convinced that aliens were communicating with them. There are many other examples.

By creating the Ark, Betzalel (whose name means “in the shadow of God”) risked his grip on reality. But the Torah says that the Almighty blessed him with da’as – a special connection to self-awareness, and it protected him. He never fell victim to self-delusion or the abyss, which he understood better than anyone else. He stayed rooted in reality. He risked his life to create the Holy Ark and that is why his name is particularly associated with it.

The key to avoiding self-delusion is to never lose sight of who you really are; don’t buy into the hallucination that your natural insights and enormous talent make you better than anyone else. We must remember that we all remain in the shadow of the Almighty; no different than anyone else.

Vayakhel-Pekudei, Exodus 35:1 - 40:38

Moses relays the Almighty’s commands to refrain from building the Mishkan (the Tabernacle or Portable Sanctuary) on Shabbat, to contribute items needed to build the Mishkan, to construct the components of the Mishkan and the appurtenances of the Cohanim. The craftsmen are selected, the work begins. The craftsmen report that there are too many donations, and for the first and probably the only time in fundraising history, the Jewish people are told to refrain from bringing additional contributions!

Pekudei includes an accounting of all the materials that went into the making of the Mishkan and details of the construction of the clothing of the Cohanim. The Tabernacle is completed, Moses examines all of the components and gives his approval to the quality and exactness of construction, the Almighty commands to erect the Tabernacle, it’s erected and the various vessels are placed in their proper place.