SECTION 1 - via - School of Visual Arts

same culture of forms used to build the ancient Tabernacle, the first shrine of moral
monotheism.
The square, as in Egypt, is the basic form underlying all the architectural elements of the
Tabernacle complex. The surrounding Outer Court is a double square and the Sanctuary within
it is a long building ten cubits high, ten cubits wide and thirty cubits long. The Holy of Holies,
containing the tablets of the Covenant, is a cube shaped room, ten by ten by ten cubits. It is the
most sacred space in Jewish history. Though larger and higher, Solomon’s Temple retains the
square floor plan for the Holy of Holies. 11
In the death and rebirth rituals of Egyptian religion can be seen the basic elements of all
nature worship which involves the centrality of Eros and Thanatos. Between the potency of
Eros and the mysterious trauma of Death, all life is bracketed. Yet wherever these forces
dominate religion through ritualized worship, their aestheticization becomes irresistible and the
spiritualizing power of moral monotheism falters. The centrality of the Torah, a written moral
and legal code, cannot be sustained against equal footing with Eros and Thanatos and yet no
religion can fail to deal with the latter. Judaism makes its great contribution in its resolution of
the paradox between the ever intrusive but amoral natural order and the virtually unprovable
moral order.
In every ritual from the burnt offerings at its altars to the prayers and commandments of its
daily ritual, one can detect this dialog of the disestablishment of nature as final arbiter of
existence and its replacement by the single transcendent G-d and His Divine Teaching. Indeed
the Patriarchal stories, beginning with the Creation itself and subsequent Prophetic writings
establish this same dialog. No less is it evident that this same dialog goes forward in the subtle
choices, combinations, additions and omissions of : shapes, forms, proportions, colors and
rituals recorded in those same sacred texts. It is Judaic civilization’s great contribution to art
that it created an aesthetic ritual art that subordinates the amoral natural order beneath the
centrality of divine order. Thus the Egyptian square shape of altars is retained but instead of a
cube shaped box containing four jars of primal human viscera, four primal covenantal Torah
texts are inserted in a cube. The cube replicates the Holy of Holies. This cube shaped room
contained the original two tablets of the covenant placed in the Ark which was faintly visible
through the veil in front of the Holy of Holies.
The two tefillin boxes also echo the two square shaped altars of the Tabernacle. The altar of
offering outside the Sanctuary was for animal offerings where blood was sprinkled. Here the
four types of offerings were done, one of which is the atonement for sin. I infer that this altar
corresponds to the (shel yad—of the hand) tefillin box which is placed on the left arm
alongside the heart, the organ of blood and passion, our animal dimension.
On entering the Sanctuary or Holy Place, (which only the High Priest entered), we see a second
much smaller altar of beaten gold, the Altar of Incense. Upon this altar, the High Priest burned
the sacred incense and, approaching the Holy of Holies, made atonement to G-d for his own
and for Israel’s sins. The Altar of Incense is echoed in the second tefillin cube, the (shel rosh—
of the head), metaphorically mind and thought, our spiritual dimension. While both tefillin
contain the same four Torah passages, in the tefillin of the head, the passages are inscribed on
four separate parchments which are then carefully rolled up, bound and inserted into this
tefillin cube’s four separate compartments.
The two tablets of Moses which could easily have been one are two because a pair symbolized a
covenant between the G-d of this testimony and His people. The two tefillin, which also could
easily have been one, echo the covenantal theme of the two tablets of the covenant at Sinai.
Additionally by converging upon heart/hand, and head, tefillin express the Torah’s command
to subject every part of our being: physical, mental, and spiritual to G-d’s will.
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