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What is so Wrong with Pillars?Isaiah Cox

22 August 2009

There is a most peculiar mitzvah in Parshas Shoftim: You shall

not erect for yourselves a pillar (a matzeva), which Hashem yourG-d hates. The context makes it clear that the problem is not thebuilding of a structure itself, but specifically building it as areligious object, a way to worship Hashem. Pillars can beunderstood as the obelisks from the ancient world, like the onefrom ancient Egypt shown on the right (they all look alike astraight tower with a pointy top). Obelisks were popular in theancient world so popular in Rome, for example, that the Romansimported and rebuilt Egyptian obelisks in Rome at the height ofthe Roman Empire there twice as many Egyptian obelisks inRome than in Egypt!

Why does G-d so dislike pillars that they inspire hatred?

One possible answer is that building a pillar betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of therelationship between man and G-d. This relationship, at its most intimate, is supposed to belike the relationship between man and woman. G-ds love for us is like marital love: theTorah is full of such imagery, with Shir HaShirim the most explicit of these. But who is theman, and who is the woman?

Rabbi Eitan Webb points out that the language is consistent: Hashems is the masculine role,that of the giver, and the Jewish people have the feminine role, welcoming and receivingHashem.1

So when worshipping Hashem, establishing a pillar, a phallic symbol like no other, shows aprofound confusion about the nature of the relationship between man and G-d. It isforbidden because building a devotional pillar is a perversion.2

But there are deeper reasons. To find them we have to go back to first principles: what is thepurpose of our existence? The short answer is that Jews are meant to complete thecompletion of the world, specifically by healing the divisions Hashem made when he

1Except, Rabbi Webb points out, in the Beis Hamikdash, where the roles are reversed, and Hashems Shechinah is in the

feminine. (The Beis Hamikdash is the exception, and is not in any event a place where all Jews can have the samerelationship as the Cohenim.)2 But didnt our forefather set up matzevos as well? Rashi, in Parshas Shoftim, says that our forefathers erected Matzevos,but I do not see any references except to three incidences by Yaakov: Once was to mark the division between Lavan andhimself, so it served a legal and not a religious function. Once was to mark the place Rachel was buried, so it served thesame function as do the matzevos (tombstones) that we erect today.

And the third is when Yaakov, on his way out of Israel, set up a matzevo on the place where he had dreamed of the angelson ladders, to mark the spot as holy, and to commemorate his vow to build a house of G-d (a vow that Hashem remindshim of, but he never fulfills). In this case it is clear that Yaakov aimed only to mark the spot, so that he (and others) wouldbe able to use it to build a home for Hashem in the future. The highly spiritual nature of Yaakovs vow in this episode mayprovide some counterweight to the fact of the physical matzevo itself. Additionally, I understand that Yaakov built amatzevo and not a mizbeach because he lacked anything to offer as a korban offering.

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separated the light and the dark, and the waters above and below. These are the samedivisions that Adam and Chava became aware of when they ate of the Fruit of Knowledgeof Good and Evil. G-d made the world of divided and irreconciled elements, and it is ourjob to find good, holy ways to reunify all these dichotomies: Jacob and Esau, man andwoman, man and G-d, and heaven and earth.

Of these, the last is most fundamental. We are meant to admix the physical world and thespiritual world, combining them in holiness. To do this, among other things, we use wordsto say blessings, to thank Hashem for even the smallest physical gratifications. We dipourselves in the water of the mikva to achieve a spiritual purity. Our souls combine with ourbodies and work to fulfill G-ds will. For all mitzvos, the spiritual and the physical must worktogether, and not independently. Just as we are not allowed to take the spiritual path, andseparate our souls from our bodies in a mystic quest, we are equally forbidden to exist solelyin the physical plane, acting only upon instinct and desires. We must always strive to fuse thetwo.

This explains why building a pillar is not acceptable. A pillar is just rock. Like the Tower of

Bavel, it is a high structure pointing up to the heavens, but there is no spiritual componentwhatsoever. And like the Tower of Bavel, it is unacceptable in G-ds eyes. Even symbolically,(and skyscrapers notwithstanding) we must never think that our goal is to reach the heavensby building towers that pierce the skies.

The obvious contrast, of course, is with an altar (mizbeach). Altars are part and parcel of theTorah all the forefathers built them and made offerings on them, as did the Jewish peoplein the desert and in Israel. A mizbeach is similar to a matzeivoh, in that both are devotionalstructures, and both are made out of stone. But the difference is that in a mizbeach, anoffering is made, so on top of the earth, there is a sacrifice (which was a living thing), andthat is consumed in turn by fire. The resulting smoke blows up toward the heavens, an

acceptable combination of matter and energy representing the melding of heavenly andearthly elements together, a sweet savor unto the Lord.