Cloudy Modernity
The History of Clouds From Aristophanes to Amazon and Genesis to Wordsworth
The Lord went before them in a pillar of cloud (b’amud anan) by day, to guide them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, that they might travel day and night. (Exodus 13:21)
I have set My bow in the clouds (be’anan), and it shall serve as a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds, I will remember My covenant between Me and you and every living creature among all flesh, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures, all flesh that is on earth. (Genesis 9:13-16)
“But heavenly Clouds, great divinities to idle men; who supply us with thought and argument, and intelligence and humbug, and circumlocution, and ability to hoax, and comprehension.” (Aristophanes, Clouds)
When they were walking, Onkelos said to the troop of soldiers: I will say a mere statement to you: A minor official [nifyora] holds a torch before a high official, the high official holds a torch for a duke dukasa] a duke for the governor, and the governor for the ruler koma. Does the ruler hold a torch before the common people? The soldiers said to Onkelos: No. Onkelos said to them: Yet the Holy One, Blessed be He, holds a torch before the Jewish people, as it is written: “And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light” (Exodus 13:21). They all converted. (Avoda Zara 11a)
As soon as the people leave Egypt, and find themselves wandering in the desert, they are shown the way by God, in the form of a cloud pillar. The last time we saw clouds in the Torah they were above us. God offered us a heavenly sign in the story of Noah—a rainbow—as a pledge not to destroy the world. Clouds recur in God’s first covenant to preserve the world, although we would not be faulted for missing them, focused as we were on the bow. Clouds morph: they can show signs of brewing storm or calm afterwards. They can be opaque and dense or light and cheerful. But whatever their temperament, they are above, and they are in the background. In Exodus, the cloud is not above, but below. The cloud is no longer a setting, but a kind of protagonist. The cloud is no longer the place where God sets a sign, but the place where God lives. The cloud is God’s abode.
Starting with parashat Beshalach, this week, the people no longer have to look up at a sign that God will not destroy them. They can follow the presence of the One who fulfilled a promise of non-destruction by saving them from bondage. Actions speak louder than words. A traveling cloud pillar is more reliable than a pretty rainbow.
A rainbow brings beauty, but it’s a momentary relief. A cloud pillar was a constant in the lives of the people for forty years, a daily reminder and driver of mysterious salvation. True, the cloud pillar must have been spectacular as it escorted the horizon, but I suspect it was also a kind of new message: Don’t look for the rainbow, Israel, be the rainbow. Don’t look up to the sky anymore for hope, look in front of you.
Aristophanes parodies Socrates in The Clouds, suggesting Socrates worshipped clouds as great divinities, sources of thought. The Western imagination from Aristophanes to Amazon Web Services, from Wordsworth to Snowflake, from cloud worship to cloud computing, sees God’s dignity in distance and abstraction, but the Hebrew tale inverts the figure of the cloud—the cloud is not abstract or distant, but palpable and near. God does not wander lonely as a cloud, but guides humbly as a cloud. The cloud is not a conclusive state of being, but a transitional situation, not too solid, not too liquid, not too gaseous. The solid God is an idol. The liquid God is worshipped only for rain, for results. The gaseous God is nowhere to be found, pure dispersion. But the cloud pillar God is a God who lives in the between, who is immanent and transcendent, horizontal and vertical, personal and impersonal. The cloud hides and reveals light. Like the burning bush, it is banal yet awesome. Like the burning bush it is paradoxical. Like the name YHWH it is a visual cue of eternity and temporality taken together, endurance and transience.
The Talmud offers us a compelling story about Onkelos, said to be the translator of the Torah into Aramaic and a Graeco-Roman convert to Judaism. In what is likely a riff on the Gospels, Onkelos avoids political capture by converting his enemies to Judaism. Christianity was spread throughout the Roman Empire by soldiers and so it is fitting that the Talmud offers us a kind of fantasy or subjunctive history in which we might imagine Judaism as the popular religion of Roman soldiers. How does Onkelos convert them? By telling them that the God of Judaism is not an authoritarian tyrant who rules from above via command and control, but an indwelling and accompanying God who leads the way, humbling Godself by holding the torch for the people. The sages of the Talmud accept Onkelos’s teaching because in Kiddushin 32a it is taught that God’s traveling in the form of a cloud pillar and fire pillar means “God can forgo God’s honor.” In Jewish law the notion that a person of superior rank can (and should) waive his honor in favor of the dignity of creation (kavod habriot) is a profound theme.
Is it appropriate for God, so to speak, to abase Godself by becoming a sojourner on earth? No and yes. In contrast to Christianity which takes the doctrine of incarnation to its logical end, and seeks to literally humanize God, the cloud seeks to have it both ways—God is not a human being, but God is among us, with us. Onkelos teaches the idea of incarnation theology for those who would be uncomfortable with the idea of God literally having a body. But Onkelos is a bridge, a translator, a cloud, showing us that the pshat, the plain meaning of the Torah is consistent with an evolving theological understanding of God as gracious companion.
Following a cloud pillar is a good image of faith generally, which requires some combination of following evidence (there really is an undeniable cloud there) and openness to experience (who knows what is in this cloud, whether it’s credible, where it will lead). The greatest, most heroic, most impactful, most transformational decisions involve not the following of set paths but the following of cloud pillars. The cloud doesn’t take us the shortest way, but it takes us the way we need to go. Viewed with the right attitude and frame, we can make uncertainty our friend and guide. Instead of staring at the cloud and wondering will it rain, will the world be destroyed, will a rainbow appear, what’s the forecast, we can simply follow the cloud intuitively, putting foot after foot until we are in a new place.
The Creation of the world established a natural order in which everything has a proper place. But the Exodus of the Israelites re-established and upended it. The God of history parts seas. The God of history displaces clouds. Naturalism can’t bring justice, for it will say that might makes right. The ability to say that what is is not the same as what ought to be comes only when you ask must the cloud only be above? By coming down to the people, the cloudy God changes forever the way we think of rank. God’s greatness lies not in God’s towering height (with which the Tower builders sought to compete), but in nimbleness, portability, presence. The way out of Egypt is led by a figure that is paradoxical, uniting the inscrutable and the legible. Please, God, show us the way.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins