The Rock Read Free Page B

did he say?”
    “He said that God was in a watery mist without shape or form.There was no Heaven, no Earth, no height, no depth, no name. Just a milky-white mist the pallor of a dead man’s face. He created the sky and the waters out of that mist. He sat his throne upon the water. Still, there were no separate things with or around Him. Then, the Shaikh said, God dried up the original water upon which His throne sat, thus forming the Earth. Mountains were pushed into place by the froth left on the surface of the water as it was drying up.”
    “Something troubles you about what the Shaikh said?”
    “The fact that water comes first, before mountains and rocks. He didn’t mention rocks.” I needed to know how Ka’b accounted for the holiness of the Rock, if Shaikh Abdallah was right.
    Instead of answering the question, Ka’b began solemnly to recite words handed down by Solomon:
    The Lord made me the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old
.
Ages ago I was formed, before the establishment of the Earth
.
When He made the Heavens, I was already there,
when He drew a circle on the face of the deep
.
    “Father, who is speaking?” I said, interrupting him before it was too late.
    “Wisdom.”
    “Are you saying wisdom came first in the order of creation, before water?”
    “Yes,” he replied, “according to the great Solomon himself.”
    “But the Holy Book opens with: In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. Wisdom is not even mentioned.”
    “The beginning is not necessarily the
very
beginning. In the very beginning, God did not create things like the Heavens or the Earth, and certainly not men or demons. He created wisdom, by which He founded the Earth.”
    “What is this wisdom?”
    “It is the great underlying plan according to which the Heavens and the Earth and all that lies in between are laid out.”
    “What does that have to do with the Rock?”
    “Everything.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Does not the idea of a circle precede its drawing?”
    “It does.”
    “And to execute that idea on the face of the deep, does one not need a point upon which to stand?”
    “You mean like the stone tied to the end of Shaikh Abdallah’s piece of string when he is drawing a circle for us in class?”
    “Exactly. The Rock was that fixed point in relation to which the Lord laid out the rest of creation. Just as Shaikh Abdallah’s circle would not have appeared without the fixed end of his compass, so wisdom would not have become manifested in the world without the Rock.”
    “But I
see
his circle. I cannot see wisdom.”
    “Can you see good or evil? The Rock is to wisdom what the body is to knowledge of good and evil.”
    “What did God make the Rock from?”
    “He plucked a jewel from underneath his throne and plunged it into the abyss. One end of it remained fastened there, while the other stood out above. Upon this end He stood while He went about the rest of creation, spreading the earth to the right and to the left and into all directions until it became as you see it today.”
    “I don’t see a jewel,” I said, pointing in the direction of the esplanade. “What happened to the jewel?”
    “It was tarnished by our sins until it metamorphosed into the thing you see before you. The People of the Torah call it the Rock of Foundation, because this was where God began his work on the first day of creation. We call it simply the Rock. But the two are one and the same.”
    “Jerusalem is littered with rocks. How can you tell which one of them is the Rock?”
    “Just as the navel is the center of the human body, so the landof Palestine is the center of the world. Jerusalem is the center of Palestine. The Mountain is the center of Jerusalem. Upon its summit, Solomon built the Temple. The innermost precinct of that Temple, the Holy of Holies, is the center of the Temple, and at the center of the Holy of Holies is the Rock of Foundation.”

    (photo credit 1.5)

Locusts and