How do you use your creativity to explore your spirituality?

You could probably answer this question in two seconds. You use art, music, writing, ritual, philosophy and more. These give expression to your emotional and intellectual yearnings, to your interpretations of your received tradition, to your definitions of God.

But the quick answer would be a superficial answer. You are probably capable of more.

Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) speaks of two disciplines of deep thinking from Talmudic times: Maaseh Bereisheet and Maaseh Merkavah. 

Maaseh Bereisheet is literally “the work of creation.” Maimonides defines it as “cosmogony,” study of the origin of the universe. Cosmogony, he says, is a subtle subject, best taught one-on-one. Why? My answer: because it’s hard to grasp conceptually what existed before anything existed. Each person learns only as much as their mind can hold.

Maaseh Merkavah is literally “the work of the chariot.” The “chariot” is understood as a representation of the Divine experienced in prophetic vision. Teachings about it should only be offered in fragments, or in “subject headings” as Maimonides says. And only to individuals who are “wise and able to draw conclusions independently.” Why? My answer: because only fragments of teaching exist. A certain kind of wisdom is needed to unite and develop them.

What kind of wisdom? The creative kind.

Put yours to work on these subject headings.

The book of Exodus uses the Hebrew word chochmah ten times. In ordinary Hebrew, chochmah means “wisdom,” broadly understood. But Exodus uses the word chochmah precisely to refer to human artistic creativity. There, ten times, chochmah names the creative gifts of the artisans who built the mishkan (sanctuary).

In the book of Proverbs, Chochmah herself says: “God created me at the beginning…I was with Him as an artisan “(Proverbs 8:22-31). For how could God even begin to create without creativity? After all, says the Psalmist, reisheet chochmah, “the beginning is creativity” (Psalm 111:10). 

Torah begins:  b’reisheet bara Elohim. “With beginning, God created.” Or, if you read the words in order, as the mystical book Zohar suggests, “With beginning, was created God.” Reisheet, i.e., chochmah, i.e., human creativity created “God.”

Those are your subject headings. Wisdom. Creativity. Beginning. God.

Write these words at the top of a blank page. Write, sketch, sing, dream, discuss. Draw individual conclusions.

Share some of them, if you are so moved, in the comment section below.

And then, because you are always capable of more, revisit the subject headings next month and draw conclusions again.

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