Parashat Pekudei – 5785

Both Sides Now

A D’var Torah for Parashat Pekudei

By Cantor Robin Anne Joseph

Let’s look at clouds. From all sides now. Shall we?

Clouds are—what? The presence of God? A cover for God? A signal from God? In Parashat Pekudei, they are D) All of the above. And then some.

One cloud in particular makes a brief, but spectacular, cameo appearance as the curtain comes down on the second “act” (Book) of the Five Books of Moses. Not just any cloud, not just a cloud, but The Cloud (הֶעָנָ֖ן). As much a supporting actor in the Torah as anyone (or anything) else, I’m continually surprised not to see the word “cloud” capitalized in the English translation whenever the article “the” precedes it.

This is not the first time that The Cloud has made an appearance in the Torah.

As early as in the Book of Genesis, when God makes a covenant, a Brit, with Noah to never again destroy the earth by flood, God sets God’s “bow in the cloud.” [Gen. 9:13]

And it will not be the last. One example is later in the Book of Numbers, The Cloud will withdraw from Miriam and Aaron’s confrontation with Moses and leave Miriam stricken with white scales. [Num. 12:10] The list of Cloud sightings goes on. “The Cloud” appears close to one hundred times in the Torah; it is no “bit part.”

In this parashah, The Cloud’s entrance is grand and its powers are absolute.

It covers, it settles, it lifts (or doesn’t lift) and it rests. It is animated in a way which belies its ephemeral qualities. It accompanies God’s presence in the wilderness as an emissary of the Divine. Or is it, perhaps, Divine in and of itself?

The ancient Greeks certainly thought so. The comedic playwright, Aristophanes was so enthralled with clouds (or, at least, amused by those who were enthralled) that he wrote a play about them. In that play, aptly entitled, The Clouds, the character of Socrates dwells among them, converses with them, and calls upon them as goddesses to give guidance and wisdom to a local dolt who has sought out the School of Socratic Thought:

“Oh! most mighty king, the boundless air, that keepest the earth suspended in space, thou bright Aether and ye venerable goddesses, the           Clouds, who carry in your loins the thunder and the lightning, arise, ye sovereign powers and manifest yourselves in the celestial spheres to the eyes of your sage.” (Aristophanes, The Clouds, Act II)

In the play, Socrates even goes as far as saying to the slow-witted postulant that these, The Clouds, are “the only goddesses; all the rest are pure myth.”

For the Israelites, The Cloud functioned similarly: A sign from the Divine, reachable and unreachable, meant to show God’s presence and hide it at the same time. “יהוה went before them in a pillar of cloud by day, to guide them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, that they might travel day and night.” [Ex. 13:21]

Or when יהוה says to Moses, “I will come to you in a thick cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you and so trust you ever after.” [Ex. 19:9]

The connection grows. In a semantic twist, the Greek word for their goddess-clouds, nephele, sounds uncannily like the Biblical word nephilim, the fallen ones, the human-divine beings that the Jewish tradition understands to be angels or giants or some combination, fallen from Heaven (see Genesis 6:4). Granted, nobody anywhere links these two words; by all accounts, the Greek nephele and the Hebrew nephilim do not share an etymology. And yet, I would argue, they are practically the same word with a very similar function, if not meaning. Both are considered divine beings, or the product of them, occupying transitional spaces.

And the Greeks weren’t the only ones deifying clouds and making linguistic connections. There is possibly more of a case to be made for a link between the Hebrew word for cloud, ‘anan (עָנָ֖ן), and the Sumerian (and subsequently, the Akkadian) god of the sky, An or Anu, meaning sky or heights. (Wang, Xianhua [2011] The metamorphosis of Enlil in early Mesopotamia) The Israelites certainly seemed to understand that The Cloud was a thing to be obeyed, just like a deity: if it settled, they stayed put; if it lifted, they set out. [Ex. 40:36-37] It served as an extension of God.

What were clouds to the Ancients? They were the gateway to the Heavens, the emissaries of the gods, if not gods themselves. They were the Fallen Divine come to Earth to impart their wisdom and their protection. They are as mysterious as they are transitory—they come, they go, they settle, they lift—ultimately occupying that liminal space between the Heavens and the Earth.

Clouds are our intermediaries to the Divine.

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Cantor Robin Anne Joseph (’96) teaches cantillation as part of the faculty at AJR. A musician and composer, Robin’s liturgical and folk-rock compositions can be found through Transcontinental Music Publications and OySongs and sung at a synagogues world-wide. Past-president of ARC (the Association of Rabbis and Cantors), past-president of the Women Cantors’ Network, and the president emerita of Kol Hazzanim—the Westchester Community of Cantors, Robin has served the congregation of Temple Beth Shalom in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY for the last 44 years.