Charles and Ray Eames, following a visit to India, gave an account that became something of a parable and an emblem of principle in mid-twentieth century modern design.
As Charles told it: “In India, the poorest, those lowest in caste, eat very often off of a banana leaf. Those a little bit up the scale eat off of a sort of low-fired ceramic dish. And a little bit higher, why, they have a glazed platter, a thing they call a tali. And there get to be some fairly elegant glazed talis, but it graduates, if you're up the scale a little bit more, to, why, a brass tali. And a bell-bronze tali is absolutely marvelous, it has a sort of ring to it. And then there are things like silver-plated talis, and there are solid silver talis, and I suppose some nut has had a gold tali that he's eaten off of, though I've never seen one. But you can go beyond that, and the guys that have not only means but a certain amount of knowledge and understanding go the next step, and they eat off of a banana leaf.”
I think of that, as we read in the Torah this week of the vestments and the ornaments and the fittings and the fixtures for the portable tabernacle built by Moses and Aaron and our ancestors in the wilderness for the journey between Mount Sinai and the Promised Land.
To sample: “You shall make an altar for burning incense; make it of acacia wood. It shall be a cubit long and a cubit wide, it shall be square, and two cubits high, its horns of one piece with it. Overlay it with pure gold: its top, its sides round about, and its horns; and make a gold molding for it round about. And make two gold rings for it under its molding; make them on its two side walls, on opposite sides. They shall serve as holders for poles with which to carry it.” (Exodus 30:1-4)
To apply the design parable of the banana leaf, we may ask: What is the core purpose and the essential experience that the highly ornate tabernacle is supposed to fulfill and bring about, and what is it that all the embellishment and ornament are meant to celebrate? And, if we can discern that, and if we then look past everything extraneous and decorative, can we find our way back to the core purpose and essential experience – and what would that look like?
So we might say: Our ancestors wandered out into the wilderness, away from the finery and the pretentious grandiosity of Egypt; and in the desert, in an atmosphere of purity and majesty and wonder, they encountered the commanding presence of the Divine. Perceiving an imperative to treasure and to lift up and to take with them their experience of revelation, they set about constructing a sacred tent, with tapestry walls and acacia wood beams, and finely colored skins for covering; and they furnished it with a treasure-box for the law they had perceived, and with gold-covered altars for incense and for offerings to fill the place with a sacred atmosphere and with their own dedication. And later they transposed all this into a temple even more imposing and grand, until perhaps the grandeur of the embellishment seemed to be the point and became seductive. But you can go beyond that, and there are some in those later days – like Elijah the prophet – who walk away from all the grandiosity and the finery and wander out into the wilderness and encounter the commanding presence of the Divine.
Now, the Sabbath of this week coming just before the holiday of Purim, we have the rather dissonant pairing of the tabernacle, on the one hand, in our principal Torah-reading, and, on the other hand, the blood-grudge, as narrated in our reading from a second Torah-scroll and then from the First Book of Samuel, between our people and the nation of Amalek – the opportunistic predators who menaced the weakest among us, as we came up weary out of Egypt. And that is followed by our reading, on Purim, of the Book of Esther, with its story of opportunistic Haman in the days of Artaxerxes, menacing the Jews of Persia with predacious malice and the authority of high office.
The readings to do with Amalek on this Sabbath are meant to signal the oncoming holiday of Purim, and that they do, literarily. But there they are then, attached, by confluence in our sacred calendar, to the Torah’s account of the tabernacle. And, spiritually, the habits of classical rabbinic interpretation set one on a search for some meaning in this linkage, and I come up empty —
Until I reflect on how, this week, some of our students here at Harvard gathered together for a conversation informed by Jewish values and teachings — like love for the stranger, and remembering that we were once slaves in Egypt — asking what our obligations may be toward foreigners today in our midst who may be menaced and made unsafe by a sudden application of laws with the power to return them to lands where they may face perils and sufferings and predations from which they have fled seeking refuge and opportunity in this country.
The tabernacle and its ornaments get me thinking of the banana leaf and of essentials. So I reflect on how we in North America live in a society of highly developed law, fashioned and refined over centuries and decades into articles and paragraphs and sections that fill tomes and bookshelves. And somewhere, at root, are founding sensibilities and principles and stories – like liberty, and sanctuary, and fleeing hostile circumstances to find refuge on new shores.
For myself – as a Canadian in the midst of a Green Card process – well, I feel something like the bell-bronze tali fellow, I enjoy a certain comfort and can reasonably afford to abide by a certain amount of somewhat byzantine procedure. But one can go beyond that, and there may be circumstances in which very direct feeling and recollection and application of essential principles and original ideas – like liberty and sanctuary and refuge, and love for the stranger, and remembering that we were once slaves in Egypt – may be quite appropriate. And perhaps we can afford that, too. And maybe it is not merely a return to the more primitive.
“And I think,” said Charles Eames, “that in these times when we fall back and regroup, that somehow or other the banana leaf parable sort of gets to working there, because I'm not prepared to say that the banana leaf the wealthy fellow eats off of is the same as the poor fellow eats off of – but it's that process that has happened within the man that changes the banana leaf. And as we attack these problems, the banana leaf idea might have a great part in it.”