Dvar Torah on Parshat Tetzaveh

In this week's parsha, Tezaveh, we get into the details of the Tabernacle, including the garments to be worn by Aharon, the high priest, and the other priests. Early in the parsha, God commands Moshe to make "sacred clothes for Aharon your brother, for honor and glory." The Torah then goes into some detail about each article of clothing, including a number of garments which contained gold and precious stones.

Nachmanides (known as the Ramban, 1194- 1270) discusses the need for and nature of these ritual garments, and the nature of the "honor and glory" that somehow accrues to the wearer. He says that these articles of clothing were necessary for the high priest "so that he will be honored and glorified by clothes which are honorable and glorious... for these garments are similar in design to those worn by royalty at the time of the Torah..."

This is an interesting explanation. It would seem that, according to Nachmanides, the Torah, when given the opportunity to make an esthetic statement, did not seek to innovate, to create something uniquely Jewish, but chose, rather, to borrow from the non-Jewish world with which the Jewish people were familiar. The garments of the high priest, while making a statement about his position, sanctity, and chosenness, do not make a specifically Jewish statement. On the contrary, God apparently feels that in order to do what clothes do - tell us something about the person wearing them - these priestly garments must speak a language which is understood by the general population. If the clothing of the high priest is meant to say something about his position, this message must be communicated in a way that is understandable to all. The Torah chooses to use the sartorial semiotics of the general population, to be part of the conversation that the world is having about glory, honor, and position, through clothing, using the language of that world, rather than a more hermetic, inward-looking, specifically Jewish language. We are not told here to create our own set of esthetic rules, rather, we freely borrow from what the rest of the world sees as denoting "honorable" and "glorious", and, by doing so, accept, to a large degree, the general definition of these qualities.

I think that this indicates three things. One is that the Torah assumes that our own people, the people of Israel, will, as a matter of course, assimilate general, non-Jewish assumptions about esthetics, and therefore need to be spoken to in that language. The Torah does not demand that we close our eyes and ears to non-Jewish esthetic statements (shouting "goyishe zachen" ('gentile things' in Yiddish) as we do so). Rather, it assumes a degree of knowledge of, respect for, and participation in those general esthetic negotiations.

Secondly, the Torah, by telling us to make clothing for the high priest which looks like clothing for non-Jewish royalty, is encouraging us to engage in a conversation with the rest of the world about that which is important, honorable, and holy to us; we want to tell the world that our priests are honorable and glorious, that our Temple is sacred, our relationship with God important, in a language that the world can understand, in a way that will impress the world.

A third point is found in the Ramban's statement that the high priest's garments were modeled on clothing "...worn by royalty at the time of the Torah." The implication clearly is that the esthetics of royalty, of honor and glory, of sanctity, evolve, develop, and change with time. It would follow, then, that our understanding of these qualities themselves evolves along with the changing representations of them. They are not fixed, static values. Rather, they are part of an ongoing, human attempt to understand, define, and represent that which has meaning and value to us.

In our ongoing struggle to establish identities for ourselves - individually and communally - as both Jews and human beings, I find it reassuring, helpful, that the Torah makes this statement about the garments of the high priest. The fact that the Torah allows us, encourages us, to consider what everyone else thinks is glorious and honorable when we want to express (and thereby define) those qualities is liberating, in the sense that it encourages us to be aware of a non-Jewish set of esthetic assumptions, to integrate those assumptions into our own esthetic system, and, thereby, engage in a dialogue with the rest of the world about these, and other, values. The Torah does not, here, call upon us to make our priests look like specifically Jewish priests; we are told to use non-Jewish esthetic strategies when labeling and packaging them as honorable and glorious holy men. Naturally, this activity will encourage an interaction with the non-Jewish world founded on an openness to, and a willingness to learn from and engage with, the evolving culture of that world. I am not sure how far we can legitimately, reasonably, and safely extrapolate the attitudes described above to other issues and values, but the possibilities opened up for us here are interesting.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix