There's an idea I picked up from my university studies in cinema theory that I've found to be applicable not only to the critical deconstruction of film and media texts, but to observing and interacting with the mundane phenomena of everyday existence; it's an idea formulated by Sergio Eisenstein, the "father" of the Soviet cinema. He said that the degree of incongruity between any two images (photographic, cinematic, or otherwise), when juxtaposed with one another, determines the intensity of the impression made on the viewer. In other words, a shot of a steaming hot slice of apple pie sitting on a kitchen table immediately followed by an image of a small boy licking his lips hungrily makes MUCH LESS of an impression on you than if the apple pie shot was followed by, for example, an image of Godzilla ravaging the metropolitan Tokyo skyline -- I mean, sure, it makes total sense that hungry little boys love to eat apple pie -- but what in the world does apple pie have to do with a giant, mutant, skyscraper-devouring lizard ? Uhhh… they're both kinda green? They're both potentially hazardous to your health? They're both popular icons of American assimilationism? Is Godzilla hungry for this particular piece of pie at this particular moment in the story? Is it the source of his anxiety, the reason why he's destroying Tokyo? Did he himself bake it? If so, shouldn't this slice of pie be much larger than we originally imagined?
The "shock" produced by the incongruity of the Godzilla and apple pie images opens up a space in the viewer's mind for speculation, imagination, emotion, creative synthesis and inspiration, whereas the conventional correspondence between hungry little boys and apple pie creates a harmlessly familiar and an un"shock"ingly predictable narrative; hence, Eisenstein termed his new film technique "the montage of collisions," claiming that a revolutionary consciousness could be unearthed and triggered within the hearts and minds of the masses through the sort of creative, emotive thought evoked by contemplating the purposeful collisions of seemingly incongruous image-fragments. This "revolutionary consciousness," as later claimed by Walter Benjamin and the Surrealists, was nothing less than a heightened appreciation of the interconnectedness between all things and a distinctively "new and modern" way of cognitively apprehending the universe's secret innerworkings.
The Mishkan (Tabernacle) was arguably the biggest "montage of collisions" in the Torah. Think of all the different sorts of materials, designs, shapes, colors, specifications, and images that went into its construction, not to mention the myriad of different actions, services and rituals performed there, also not to mention the distinctly different types of people contributing-to, building and serving-in it. Talk about a bunch of seemingly incongruous juxtapositions! However, like with Eisenstein (who was a Yid, as I seem to recall), when all the fragments came together, as different and disharmonious as they may have seemed on the surface, the holy "shock" generated by their combination created the space within which a deeper, larger, more all-encompassing Reality could be imagined, contemplated, embodied and lived-out.
Even more fascinating is how, despite the fact that each craftsman fashioned his/her own component of the Mishkan independently, without once consulting any of the other craftsmen about size, shape, make, model or specification -- when Moshe gathered them together to assemble their individual pieces into a collective structure, each piece fit perfectly with the other pieces, like an enormous jigsaw puzzle! The Mei HaShiloach compares this phenomenon to a story told in the Gemara Megillah about the Greek leader Ptolemy who locked 72 of our Sages into 72 individual rooms without telling them why, and asked each Sage individually to provide a translation of the Torah into Greek. As the Gemara relates, each of the 72 individual Sages gave exactly identical Greek renderings of the Torah without having consulted each other once on the subject, thus convincing Ptolemy of the absolute indivisibility of the Torah's authorship and transmission. Similarly, says the Mei HaShiloach, each craftsman, observing the seamless way that their components fit with everyone else's despite the fact that they hadn't previously conferred, became convinced that G-d Himself had intervened in their work, and thus renounced any guyvah (self-directed pride) over the works of their hands.
Each day we are bombarded, from without and from within, with an unceasing montage of colliding and discordant stimuli -- I want to give love, I want to beat the living tar out of someone, someone really needs me, someone couldn't care less if I curled up and blew away, what a beautiful sunset, what a disgusting smell, why are these men destroying my front yard, I wish the electricity would come back on… thousands per day. Do we ever really make sense of them all? Do they ever coalesce into a unified picture for us? Perhaps the Mishkan provides us with a model to deal with the seemingly random nature of our clashing experiences by providing a collective framework within which they are given a form and purpose, and can moreover become part of a receptacle for expanded consciousness and holiness. Perhaps the "shock" of always experiencing one thing right after the other is actually an ever-present opportunity to open ourselves to new perceptions of how those seemingly disparate things are, in truth, intimately bound-together and fit together seamlessly. Perhaps through these new perceptions, we can transcend our own tendencies for guyvah and see G-d's hand guiding our collective as well as individual experience.
Jerry Silverman
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Jerry Silverman is a former student of Yeshivat Bat Ayin. He is working in new media, designing and managing media projects. He lives in Riverdale, NY with his wife Sarah and their two children. |