B'haalotekha. On clouds, veils and intimacy in the Insta-Age

What if, in the age of social media, Jewish mysticism had much to teach us about the virtues of intimacy?

Something strange takes place in Parashat Beha’alotekha.

Bnei Israel are in the desert.

After camping for nearly a year at the foot of the mountain following the revelation at Sinai, the text tells us of an almost meteorological detail that is not merely meteorological at all.

From the erection of the Mishkan, even before its inauguration, a strange phenomenon crowns it with mystery:

A cloud by day, a fire by night — constantly:

"כֵּן יִהְיֶה תָמִיד הֶעָנָן יְכַסֶּנּוּ וּמַרְאֵה־אֵשׁ לָיְלָה"

“So it was always: the cloud covered it, and the appearance of fire by night.”

At first glance, everything in this narrative seems entirely removed from our daily lives.

If we remained at the level of pshat, we might see ourselves merely as spectators to the improbable aesthetics of a mystical tale, in which divine providence — manifested in the text through miracles of nature — appears, by contrast, absent from our everyday existence.

And yet, if we focus today on the cloud as a symbolic metaphor, perhaps it silently offers us precious insights into relational intelligence.

I am speaking of the art of protecting intimacy — a challenge made all the more precious in the age of the public exposure of the self on social media.

In the biblical narrative, the anan, the cloud that covers the Mishkan by day, is not merely a guide for Bnei Israel on their journey.

It is also a space that surrounds — and therefore conceals from the eyes of others — the intimate encounter between Moses and the Divine within the Tent of Meeting:

"וְהָיָה כְּבֹא מֹשֶׁה הָאֹהֱלָה יֵרֵד עַמּוּד הֶעָנָן וְעָמַד פֶּתַח הָאֹהֶל וְדִבֶּר עִם־מֹשֶׁה"

“Whenever Moses entered the Tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the Tent, and [God] would speak with Moses.” (Exodus 33:9)

Like frosted bathroom windows, like sheer curtains we place on our windows to let daylight in without exposing ourselves to view, the cloud protects intimacy from the gaze of outsiders.

This is also, in a certain sense, the role of the sukkah. Rabbi Eliezer, in the Talmud (Sukkah 11b), suggests that this temporary hut — designed precisely to leave the sky visible — is in fact a metaphor for the Ananei HaKavod, the Clouds of Divine Glory.

And for the prophet Isaiah, the sukkah is also a metaphor for the huppah of newlyweds — that even more temporary structure which symbolizes both the sukkat shalom, divine protection, and the future home the couple will build together.

Why does a cloud makes a home?

Because building a home requires intimacy, and intimacy begins when one withdraws from the gaze of others by hiding behind a cloudy screen.

At a time when our culture glorifies the public sharing of intimacy on social media, the teaching of the cloud may be a precious reminder of what protects us from the disintegration of the self when nothing any longer shelters the intimate.

The wisdom of the cloud is manifold.

It is the source of the veil placed over the bride before she enters the huppah: a cloud veiling the self within another cloud — the huppah itself — which envelops the union of the couple beneath its protective sukkah before they proceed, precisely, to the heder yihud, the chamber of union and intimacy, where they remain for a time completely withdrawn from the eyes of others before rejoining the celebration.

Thus, the cloud, like the huppah, offers us an essential lesson in the art of relationship:If I want there to be a “we two,” there must come a moment when we step outside the collective “all of us.”

And that requires withdrawing from the gaze of others.

Whether for meditation, prayer, or romantic love, certain moments of intimacy — with oneself, with the Divine, or with the beloved — call for a form of seclusion, like the protective cloud in the biblical narrative which veils intimacy and preserves it: the source of what we call modesty.

But the metaphor of the cloud also reminds us that intimacy itself, if it is to protect what it shelters, must itself be protected.

The cloud — essential for concealing the yihud, the intimate union between Moses and the Divine in the biblical text, and beneath the huppah, the birth of a new intimacy between two beings — is both fragile and ephemeral.

The metaphor of the cloud, like that of the sukkah, the huppah, or the bridal veil, therefore becomes a call addressed to us:We bear a double responsibility toward intimacy.

First, we are responsible for continually recreating its framework — that is, its conditions.

It is up to us to renew each day the conditions that make intimacy possible in our lives, by protecting the cocoon that opens its space through concealment, and by continually going to meet the one who awaits us far from the gaze of the world, beneath the huppah of intimate union.

This is true for my intimacy with my own soul, which I learn to cultivate through meditation; for my intimacy with the Divine, which I cultivate in prayer; and for my relationship with the beloved, which I nourish in intimacy.

Second, we are responsible for protecting the quality of our intimacy.

The image of the cloud quietly reminds us that we must cultivate forms of intimacy that breathe rather than suffocate.

Like skin, the cloud veils in order to shield from outside eyes those whom it protects, yet still allows the light of day to pass through.

A relationship completely cut off from the outside world would become suffocating.

Healthy intimacy requires protection from public gaze, but it is not meant to sever us from the world.

And so today, at a time of compulsive self-exposure on social media, when culture encourages the exhibition of intimacy across the surfaces of screens, the teaching of the cloud appears as a precious remedy to the paradoxical illness of our age: the physical and emotional isolation increasingly suffered by individuals in the era of hyperconnectivity.

There is goodness in openness and sincere sharing.

Yet psychologists have already shown for years the damage inflicted upon the psychic and emotional life of individuals by this new social norm of limitless self-exposure before the blind and indiscriminate collective of social media — this undressing of the self before an unknown crowd to whom we grant the power to evaluate us through likes and casual comments, often without realizing the cost in terms of self-esteem and the loss of the taste for genuine encounter: the kind that requires us, if only for a moment, to withdraw from the gaze of all in order to open the doors of intimacy.

The cloud — fragile protection requiring care, an ephemeral veil that shelters without imprisoning — thus becomes the metaphor for the art of relationship:the veil that allows for a “we two” without severing us from the “all of us,”the veil of modesty that nourishes desire while respecting the mystery of the other,the veil that protects intimacy so that it may truly be savored.

The teaching of Jewish mysticism may be more relevant than ever when it reminds us that the truest delights may not found in what makes itself most visible.