Dome of the Rock

The first doctoral student of the Hebrew University was a folklorist, an anthropologist who would one day change his name to Raphael Patai. He was trained as a rabbi, but when he left Budapest for Palestine in 1933 he found religious contentment collecting and studying the ancient texts, their outward performance unnecessary. In those early days, the chief concern of the scholars of the university was to substantiate the continued historical Jewish presence in the land. They called this field Palestinology. Patai’s first book, Man & Temple in Ancient Jewish Myth & Ritual is a study of that critical site of communion, the axis mundi, stairway between heaven and earth, Omphalos, belly-button of the world – God’s Earth house, the Temple of Jerusalem.

As he wrote the book from his office on Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus, he would rise from his chair for a view over the Kidron Valley to Mount Zion, to feast his eyes on the actual place where the temple had stood, the majestic golden dome atop the Temple Mount, the postcard image of the holy city, Al-Aqsa mosque, the Dome of the Rock crowning the old stone walls of Jerusalem. When most Jews visit the Western Wall they do not ascend the Temple mount, religious Jews stay away out of precaution not to set foot in the place where the Holy of Holies once stood. I have been up there. I was on a trip to Israel and Palestine with a group of rabbis and Protestant pastors. I was in the heat of my spiritual training and every sacred site we visited occasioned mystical states, mosque, church, temple it didn’t matter. The vibrations of prayers past and present came through my hands as light and I made prayers for peace, though my politics were not as clear as they are now. But as Jews and Christians we were not allowed to enter the mosque within the Dome of the Rock, and I did not wonder what was inside.

One day in the summer of 1933, Patai was brought to the mosque by his friend Sheikh Ahmed al-Kinani. From without they circled the octagonal structure in prayerful circumambulation before crossing the threshold into the sunless darkness of the shrine. There before them was a large rough native rock, roughly six feet tall, forty three feet east to west and sixty feet north to south – the Dome of the Rock. “This, then, was that most sacred spot on earth, the Navel of the Earth, the Foundation Stone of the Earth, the highest point on earth, the connecting link between heaven and earth. Here, over this Rock, stood the Ark of the Covenant with its golden Cherubim, surrounded by the walls of the Adytum, the Holy of Holies, into which only the High Priest was allowed to enter, and even he only once a year, on the most solemn Day of Atonement … the old Biblical epithet for God, ‘Rock of Israel,’ kept sounding in my ear … (Patai, Man & Temple, xiii).

In the days when the sacrifices of the Temple were alive, the most important holiday was not Yom Kippur. It was the seven day festival of Sukkot, when the farmers and shepherds of the countryside made pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and every evening concluded with the ancient equivalent of Burning Man – Simchat Beit Hashoeva, the Joy of Water Festival.  It was a twenty four hour program – the crowds attended the morning sacrifices, then off to little stone synagogues for prayer, back to the Temple for the additional sacrifice, off to the study house, lunch and wine and backgammon in the streets, then to the evening sacrifice. Parties at night, they lit a giant menorah with wicks made from the underwear of the priests, Levites on the steps with oud, violin, shofar and timbrels, wine frivolity and music. All the rabbis doubled as circus performers, acrobats and fire jugglers. Whosoever has not seen the Joy of Water Festival, so the saying went, has not known joy in her life.

But with the first cockadoodledoo of the morning rooster, shofar blasts erupted signaling the end of the night festivities. The crowd of pilgrims processed out of the city’s eastern water gate to the pools of Siloam בריכת השילוח. They collected willow branches and filled a golden pitcher with waters flowing from the spring of Gihon מעיין הגיחון, and returned up the hill to the temple. They laid the bright green willows over the basins of two libation bowls, and filled the vessels, one with water drawn from the spring, the other with wine from the grapes of the summer harvest. The sounds of the shofar cried as the people circled the liquid altars singing “Ana Adonai Hoshia Na – please God help us.” Corks in the bottom of the libation bowls were removed and the liquids flowed through shafts (שיתין) labyrinthine drain pipes which had been dug into the deep of the sanctuary. Every seventy years they sent little kids to clean out the shafts, where the water wine had turned into congealed cakes resembling dried figs, and they burned these on the altar. As the ritual came to an end the sun was rising and it was time for the morning sacrifice and another day of the festival.

The anthropologists and professors of religion will tell you that the goal of water festivals on the occasion of the new year was the reinvigoration of nature, a reenactment of the creation of the world, kindling the light as god had made it, pouring the water as god had stretched out the heavens, song dance and trumpets offered as gifts of gratitude in exchange for the gift of rain. But the true meaning of the rite is hidden in an even earlier story, story within a story, of how  King David excavated the site upon which the Temple would be built.

King David wanted to build the Temple on earth that had gone untouched by human hands since the day God made the world. He bought the threshing floor on Mount Moriah from Arauna the Jebusite, and began to dig tunnels (שיתין) into the deep of the mountain to see if the earth was pure. After hours and days of digging to a depth of one thousand and five hundred cubits he hit a shard. God damn it he said. So much trouble and now this shard. But God gave a voice to the shard and it spoke to David, “This was not my original place. When the Earth shook and split when God gave Israel the Torah, I fell to this place. If you don’t believe me, look, the Deep, Tehom, is just here beneath me.” David lifted the shard, and the waters of the deep sprang up and overflowed to flood and destroy the world. David called out, “If there is anyone who knows how to make the waves subside, if they do not speak let them be suffocated.” Ahitophel, his consiglieri appeared and said, “Inscribe the secret forty-two letter name of god on the shard, and cast it over the deep.” David did as he said. The stone held down the Deep, and the waters descended to sixteen thousand cubits. Seeing that the nearer the deep is to the Earth, the better the land can be kept watered, he took out his oud and played a set before the waters of the deep calling them to ascend. Shir Hamaalot, the Songs of Ascent, later transcribed in the Book of Psalms, numbers 120 to 134. Hearing David’s prayer song, the deep rose fifteen thousand cubits, remaining just a thousand cubits below the surface.

To this day the site of the Temple is of supreme significance – all the wars between Israelis and Palestinians begin with an intrusion into the mosque of the rock, then the rockets fly. But what makes the place holy to the children of Abraham has nothing to do with the sanctuaries built over the surface, everything to do with the waters of the deep flowing beneath. The foundation stone, the first piece of earth placed in the boundless primeval water, the Omphalos, Belly Button of the world, touchstone to the deep.

“Just as the body of an embryo is built up in its mother’s womb from its navel, so God built up the earth concentrically around this stone, the Navel of the Earth. And just as the body of the embryo receives its nourishment from the navel, so the whole earth too receives the waters that nourish it from this Navel. The waters of the Deep crouch underneath the Shetiyyah stone at a depth of a thousand cubits, and down to them reach the shitin, the shafts, also created according to a legend in the days of creation. Thus when the libations flowed down from the bowls on the altar into the shafts, they finally reached the waters of the Deep and could so fulfill their mission. They raised the level of the Deep, a task in which, as we have seen, they were assisted by the singing of the fifteen songs of ascent. Now, as the subterranean waters that supply the whole earth all issue from this place, the raising of the waters of the Deep here set the whole invisible irrigation system of the earth functioning.” (Patai, Man & Temple pg. 85-86)

To understand the fullness of the symbolism of water we will turn to another mind, Gaston Bachelard, French philosopher of space, dreams, matter and the imagination. But if we told a different story of creation where water, not light, was the primary substance of the imagination we would have greater appreciation for depth as the primary motif in the design of human beings and the divine, in self discovery and the capacity for communion. Where light concludes its investigations at surfaces, the surface of water is only the doorway of its being. In this story God says, “Let there be water,” and our lives take place between waters above clouds, rain atmosphere, and waters below springs, cisterns, water tables and reservoirs. And just as the world is nourished by raising her deep, we’re nourished by acts that take us on pilgrimage to the subterranean temples we are covering. The essential act of prayer and being human is the descent to the pools of Shiloach, drawing liquid from the heart of Tehom, sharing that vulnerability with the community in our midst. With each descent and pour we precipitate the Deep’s ascent and heaven and earth inch a little closer together.

Rabbi Abahu taught – when do we begin to recite the blessing for rain?  When the bridegroom goes out to meet the bride. (Berachot 59b)