Tal Ben-Shahar, and Israeli-born professor and teacher of the one of the popular courses at Harvard University, writes in his book Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment that an alignment between intrinsic and extrinsic priorities is essential for a meaningful life. He writes:
“Most of our choices are driven by many factors, some intrinsic, others extrinsic...The question is whether the intrinsic or extrinsic is more fundamental to the choice. If the primary driving force is intrinsic--in other words, the pursuit is self-concordant--then the person will experience it as something that he wants to do; if the primary driving force is extrinsic, the experience will be more of a have-to” (75).
Shahar’s analysis applies not just to happiness, but to all facets of our life, where the person most likely to feel satisfaction must try to develop the personal qualities on the inside that translate into being a positive example on the outside, a vision echoed in this week’s parasha.
Parashat Tetzaveh describes God’s instructions for what the Kohanim should wear when they ultimately serve in the mishkan, the tabernacle that is still being constructed, as this point in Sefer Shemot. God’s initial instructions state the following:
“And bring you near unto Aaron your brother and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, that they may minister unto Me in the priest’s office...and you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother for splendor and for beauty...that they make Aaron’s garments to sanctify him that he may minister unto Me in the priest’s office” (Shemot 28:1-3).
While it is obvious to most readers what it means to say that the sacrifices offered in the mishkan will be holy, it is not clear what it means when the parasha says that the garments of the Kohanim should be holy. Are the garments because the work itself is holy, or is there something about the garments themselves that makes them holy, with or without priestly service? Do the garments make the Kohanim holy, or is there something about the Kohanim as people that will make the objects holy? While our commentators answer these questions in different ways, ultimately our commentaries are united by a belief that the priestly garments teach us something essential about the importance of creating alignment between our inner and outer selves.
One way of looking at this passage is to take a holistic approach to our parasha’ context, and ask why God would want a specific group of people to wear holy garments at this point in time. The Akedat Yitzhak, a commentary on Rashi’s Torah commentary, argues that the Kohanim needed to wear holy garments because every person’s status is somehow identified with what clothing they wear. He writes:
“Just as man can be outwardly identified by his apparel whether he is a merchant, a knight or a priest, so we are able to recognize our inner character by our outward actions. The latter certainly afford a clue to our spiritual powers. Prophetic literature has already employed this association with respect to the Deity since He can only be perceived through His action: “You are clothed in majesty, the Lord is clothed, He has girded Himself in strength”” (Tehillim 104:1) (Akedat Yitzhak on Shemot 28:2).
This commentary takes the metaphorical statements from Tehilim that God is “clothed” in special garments and applies to that our everyday life, acknowledging that clothes inherently connote a special status. Furthermore, because the Israelites are making the transition from the mindset of slaves to the mindset of free people, it would make sense that the spiritual representatives of the newly freed Israelites would be commanded to wear regal clothing that connotes the people’s new status.
Another way of looking at this passage is to focus on the Kohanim specifically, and how the commandment to wear holy garments intends to instill a certain kind of mindset in the priestly class. Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin writes in his Ha-Emek Davar that by commanding Aaron to wear holy garments, Aaron would, by necessity, also need to sanctify himself:
“The reference is to Aaron, implying that Moses should inform the wise-hearted that I have filled Aaron with a spirit of wisdom. All this serves as a preliminary to the next sentence: “They shall make the garments of Aaron to sanctify him.” Since Aaron had been commanded to sanctify himself, the Omnipresent gave him holy garments to assist him in that task” (Ha-Emek Davar on Shemot 28:3).
Instead of connecting the priestly garments to the Israelite people generally, the Ha-Emek Davar focuses on how the priestly garments will benefit Aaron as a specific representative of the entire people. In other words, if a person is given the responsibility of sanctifying themselves before God, it would be helpful if they dressed the part.
Finally, we can look at this passage and see how it relates to what we wear each day, and what clothing says about us at critical moments in our lives. Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser, otherwise known as the Malbim, writes that these garments are holy because they symbolize the inner spiritual life of the Kohanim:
“Now the garments ordained were evidently external ones and the text is concerned to relate how the artisans performed the work. But in reality they symbolized inner vestments. The priests were to invest themselves with noble qualities which are the vestments of the soul. These vestments the artisans did not make. But commanded Moses to make these holy garments, that is to instruct them in the improvement of their souls and their characters so that their inner selves should be clothed in majesty and splendor” (Malbim on “Holy garments”).
In this final commentary, the Malbim points out that the garments of the Kohanim could only be called “holy” if the people wearing them embodied the qualities of a holy person. While this commentary limits itself to the Kohanim specifically, we need not look too far to see how it relates to us, as each of us are challenged to create synergy between our inner life and our “outer vestments,” whether those vestments are material, physical, or metaphorical.
Ultimately, helping our children grow up to embody Torah requires that they develop an alignment between inner life and their outer life. Like the garments of the Kohanim, our children can display certain signs about who we think they are, but the people who are happiest are the ones who can say that what they really are is the same as what we think they are. May we teach our children to embrace this challenge, so that we might be able to say our children wear “holy garments” each and every day of their lives.
Shabbat Shalom!
No comments:
Post a Comment