Of One and Two
Many commentators find themselves hard pressed to explain how the Torah could command us to affix golden cherubs to the cover of the tabernacle’s holy ark, given the tremendous emphasis throughout the rest of the Torah on the prohibition against creating graven images. How could the Torah mandate the placement of such images in the center of its holiest shrine?
I would like to address a related question which has been less addressed – if it at all – and that is the fact that it is not one cherub attached to the ark but two. Why are there two cherubs?
There is a lot we can learn from the concept of two, of duality, in the Torah. If we think more carefully, we see that the notion of duality is paradoxically a very important part of God’s unity. In human terms, this duality appears to be a recurring motif in how we are to understand Him. He is, after all, the God of mercy and of judgment. He is both immanent and transcendent, He is our father and our king … Moreover, God’s entire creation is based on this duality. What we have then is two that are really one.
And it is for this reason that Jewish tradition speaks about the cherubs embracing when the Jews would perform the will of God. For it is not just a world of duality that reflects the nature of God, it is a world where that duality ideally and eventually creates a bond or, if you will, an embrace. As the prophet says, haChesed vehaEmmet yenashuku, kindness and truth, which represent opposite orientations to reward and punishment, are meant to eventually embrace in the Divine scheme of things.
As such the two cherubs sit nicely upon the two tablets of the law located in the ark (as pointed out by Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch). These tablets themselves are filled with duality as Rashi most famously points out concerning the command of Shabbat being expressed simultaneously as both positive – zachor and negative – shamor.
The religious individual strives to perceive God’s presence in the world. Such an individual may find it easiest to discern God when good triumphs in the world and the Jewish people are at peace, such that God’s oneness is manifest. The Torah teaches us to also work to see him when the world seems to be at odds with itself, when all we see is duality. It is that duality which is so aptly represented by the two cherubs – two equal forces, facing each other, seemingly at odds, yet serving together as symbolic guardians of the manifestly holy objects housed in the ark.