How Many Sides Are There To This Story?
Torah reminds us that there are more sides to any story than there appear to be at first reading. This is true even about a text as seemingly rule-oriented as the book of Leviticus. There are only two narrative episodes in Leviticus. The rest is a list of rules, most of which concern how to perform the various sacrifices and offerings in the sanctuary.
I enter Leviticus skeptical about its relevance to me: "when any of you bring an offering of an animal to God..." We haven't done that for 2,000 years! I know there's a chapter in this book about providing food for the hungry, paying in a timely fashion those who work for us, and being honest in all our dealings. Can't I just skip ahead to those parts? Yet, as I read the Hebrew of the very second verse closely, I notice something intriguing about the grammar. The order of the Hebrew words actually seems to translate as: "when you bring an offering from yourself...." I see it now speaking to me. As a Hasidic re-articulation states it: I am to surrender something of myself, my animal self, to God; to turn it into smoke. Thousands of years after our Leviticus verse, Freud, himself the descendant of a great Hasidic lineage, wrote about how critical sublimation is to living a life of health and harmony with others: "It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct."
As I move through the early chapters of Leviticus, I read the protocol Moses is to follow in dressing his brother Aaron for his ordination as High Priest. In the absence of Moses or Aaron, or a High Priest for that matter, is this anything but a historical curiosity? Yet, there, right over the Hebrew word describing how Moses slaughtered a ram as part of Aaron's ordination, is the very rare trope symbol shalshelet. It prescribes how the word "slaughtered" in this verse is to be chanted. Its peculiar agitated musical intonation hints that this is a moment of anxiety for Moses. The text's musical score shatters my assumption that Moses is obediently accepting this secondary role of dresser to his brother.
Even in a text as ritual-bound as Leviticus, Torah teaches us again and again that every moment, everyone one of us, and God too, contains depths and dimensions longing for exploration. A measure of wisdom is the capacity to assimilate multiple perspectives, even those that seem to contradict one another. One of the greatest sins we could commit is to limit our view.
Seurat's Circus Sideshow
George Seurat's Circus Sideshow presents a rather straightforward narrative illustrated in a geometrically precise composition: a nighttime scene of a street show enticing passersby to buy tickets for the circus within.
Yet, virtually everything about Seurat's presentation stirs an anxiety in us: we sense that it contradicts what we expect such a sideshow to be like. The sideshow originated as part of the open-air fair, dating back to the Middle Ages, which were held on saints' days or other public holidays. The sideshow served as a dynamic advertisement for the paid performance. Loud music, wild antics, outlandish costumes, acrobatic wonders, startling tricks, and exotic animals announced an even more wondrous experience within.
Seurat here defies our expectation. The rousing music has been tempered. The jostling crowd is replaced by a well-behaved series of individuals, who seem as interested in looking at one another as at the circus performers. There is no shouting barker urging us to spend our money on the magic that awaits us. Instead of a make-shift, sagging tent, the venue appears to be a solid, permanent structure. Seurat has tamed both performers and audience. Silenced the music. Wrangled chaos into order.
The French artist Leon Dehesghues presents us with a very different experience of a sideshow.
His The Fair at Neuilly - "Let's go and see Marseille," painted in 1884, contradicts Seurat's image. The performers appear as distinct personalities. In the forefront are the well-known wrestlers, the Marseille brothers. The crowd, isolated static individuals in Seurat's painting, here is a dark mass of movement. There are dangerously competing centers of activity. A man's face is illuminated as he lights a cigarette. Another stands above the crowd exhorting it. Performers and patrons mix on the stage. A performer stage left draws our attention while another stage right pulls us in that direction. It is a volatile concoction.
Which of these two paintings entices us more? Dehesghues' assures us that we have come to the right place. Seurat's destabilizes us. If we are challenged by the exterior presentation, who knows what we might discover once we cross the threshold.