Prologue · 2 min read
Prologue — Four Words That Refuse to Close
Concealment as gestation
There are people in Torah whose greatness is disclosed through abundance. Avraham fills parshiyos. Moshe fills almost the entire Chumash. David fills Tehillim and the books that remember his kingdom. Their lives are opened before us through journeys, commands, prayers, failures, victories, arguments, children, enemies and covenants.
And there are souls whose greatness is revealed through concealment.
חֲנוֹךְChanochEnoch, seventh generation from Adam. The Torah records that he walked with Elokim and was taken, without the refrain “and he died” that closes every other life in Bereishis 5. The name shares a root with chinuch, formation.Glossary is one of them.
The Torah says almost nothing.
And precisely because it says almost nothing, the words it does say refuse to close.
וַיִּתְהַלֵּךְ חֲנוֹךְ אֶת־הָאֱלֹהִים וְאֵינֶנּוּ כִּי־לָקַח אֹתוֹ אֱלֹהִים.
Original text
“Chanoch walked with Elokim, and he was no more, for Elokim took him.”
The verse is strange because the chapter around it is not strange. Bereishis 5 proceeds with almost architectural repetition. A human being lives. He fathers. His years are counted. Then comes the refrain:
וַיָּמֹת.
Original text
“And he died.”
Adam dies.
Sheis dies.
Enosh dies.
Keinan dies.
Mahalalel dies.
Yered dies.
And then the rhythm reaches Chanoch and breaks.
No vayamot.
Instead:
וְאֵינֶנּוּ.
Original text
He is not here.
And then:
כִּי לָקַח אֹתוֹ אֱלֹהִים.
Original text
Elokim took him.
The Torah could have said more. It chose not to.
This does not make Chanoch absent from Torah. It makes concealment part of his Torah.
There are silences that mean there is nothing to say. There are other silences that mean what is being held cannot yet be spoken in its full form. Chanoch belongs to the second kind.
The written Torah gives the seed.
Later layers of Jewish tradition approach the seed from different sides. Rashi reads Chanoch through the vulnerability of the tzaddik. Midrashic and Targumic traditions enlarge the mystery. הֵיכָלוֹתHeikhalot“Palaces.” A body of early Jewish mystical literature describing ascent through celestial palaces, in which the identification of Chanoch with Metatron is made explicit.Glossary literature makes a far more dramatic identification: Chanoch ben Yered is transformed into Metatron. Later Kabbalah receives Metatron as one of the most elevated and difficult figures in the celestial order. The Gemara erects uncompromising boundaries around what may and may not be inferred from his greatness. Chassidus, arriving much later, gives us language for perhaps the deepest distinction of all: the highest revelation is still not עַצְמוּתAtzmusEssence. In Chassidic usage, the Divine as it is in itself, distinguished absolutely from every revelation of it, however exalted.Glossary. The greatest vessel remains a vessel. The Name is not the Essence.
The mystery therefore does not need another canon in order to return.
Chanoch never left.
He was concealed inside four words strong enough to survive until human consciousness possessed the vocabulary to ask what they were carrying.
And perhaps this is the first way to read him anew.
Concealment is not necessarily absence.
Sometimes concealment is the way height protects itself until the receiver is ready.