God appears to Moses in the form of a burning bush and then later on a fiery mountaintop. Fire can be a tool for communication with the divine. There is a third even more enigmatic kind of fire: sacred fire. Yet the mystery of fire cannot be understood solely through the duality of constructive and destructive.
Fire can burn down your apartment or keep you warm and cook your food. Fire is at once wildly destructive and completely necessary. Why the specific prohibition of fire? In pondering this question, Sforno, a 16th-century Italian rabbi, raises a simple and yet impossibly complex question: Is fire a constructive or destructive force? The answer is, of course, yes. But the Torah itself specifies only one particular action that is forbidden on Shabbat: “You shall kindle no fire throughout your settlements on the sabbath day.” Entire libraries could be filled with debates about all the various proscribed actions derived from those 39 categories. It is from the building of the mishkan - and specifically, the 39 categories of labor it required - that the manifold prohibitions observed on Shabbat are derived. But the dangers of fire become clear immediately upon its completion, when Aaron’s two sons die from “strange fire” during the dedication of the building.įire plays yet another role in the story of the mishkan. Rashi goes into great detail describing how fire was used to make the structure and the contents, especially the solid gold menorah. The use of fire in the building process is evident from the amount of gold and silver used. We learn about the dual nature of fire in this week’s Torah portion, which describes in incredible detail the intricate construction process of the mishkan, God’s home while traveling with the Israelites through the desert.
No doubt, fire was used in multiple ways to rebuild the cathedral, the same flames that destroyed it put to constructive use. Images of conflagrations like the burning cathedral sear into our minds, a constant reminder of the dangerous and destructive nature of fire. The building, which took 200 hundred years to construct, was destroyed by fire in just hours in April 2019.
With detailed descriptions and breathtaking photography, the February 2022 issue of National Geographic covers the rebuilding of the Notre-Dame Cathedral. My Jewish Learning is a not-for-profit and relies on your help Donate
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