God the master developer bestows the Israelites with a blueprint for the Mishkan and, this week, a pattern of dress and decorum for the priests who enter it. To a cynic with an historical bent, this construction consisting of materials not commonly found in a desert and the institution of the priesthood were perhaps addenda later inserted by the P source: Temple priests legitimizing their role as authentically stemming from desert days. As intellectually compelling as this argument is, it is more imaginatively compelling to ponder a people freed from bondage, seeking a place of their own and striving to welcome the Divine Presence as a permanent resident in their camp.
Last week’s parsha recounted how, in preparation for crafting the Mishkan, gifts were accepted from every person whose heart so moved them. These materials were donated out of love, not carried on the backs of slaves. In Egypt, the Israelites constructed buildings for the pharaohs; now they expend labor for God’s sake. Or rather, they work at the behest of God, but who is the beneficiary of the Mishkan?
The God who travels in a pillar of smoke and a pillar of fire cannot be contained in a box, even one lined with gold. At this point in their history the Israelites are not exactly adept at understanding abstract concepts. They possess an overwhelming need for tangible and constant expressions of God’s nearness, whether through miracles or the reassuring presence of God’s conduit, Moses. In fact, this need for a continual link between them and the nearness of God is illustrated by the story of the Golden Calf, situated at the heart of this narrative cycle. The directives for building and tending the Mishkan are in a symbolic language the people can understand. In other Near Eastern religions exultation required that a deity have a throne room of its own. (Even today, there are those who cannot get past the comic book image of a white bearded man enthroned in the clouds.) The difference here is that the heart of the tent and curtains and nestling boxes of the Mishkan, unlike a reliquary, does not contain a relic or an idol invoking or symbolizing the remote deity. It is this hollowness that permits its hallowness. And like the materials used in its construction that were gifts from the heart, so too is it a reminder of the space people must make in their hearts for God.
When demanding a sacrifice, God typically says, "bring Me" or "make Me." When instructing the import of pure olive oil for the ner tamid in the opening of today’s parsha, God states, "Bring to You." This light is not for the benefit of God. Certainly lighting a fire for God, who first appeared to Moses as an unconsumed flaming bush and descended upon Sinai in fire, would be bringing coals to Newcastle. God is the giver not receiver of light and, ever since God created order out of chaos with the command, "Let there be light" and determined that the light was good, light has delineated the sacred from the profane.
The ner tamid is the only mitzvah related to the Mishkan that has remained intact, burning as an eternal light in front of most synagogues’ arks, although I doubt kindling is the appropriate verb describing changing light bulbs. But this kindling is also a precursor to ritual candle lighting. Havdallah, signifying the conclusion of Shabbat, literally means "to distinguish." This distinguishing is not just between day and night, but marks the passing of time in a more metaphorical sense: whether opening or concluding Shabbat or holidays, observing a yartzeit or even lighting birthday candles, light consecrates time. And, since we are measured out in days, light is life.
But light is not just life, it is life lived well. Proverbs states that, "The path of the righteous is like radiant sunlight…The way of the wicked is all darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble." The Torah is a beacon, its words bestowing safe harbor to whomever studies them. Nehama Leibowitz points out that this approach is eminently pragmatic: the study of Torah makes one wise and prevents one from falling into error. An alternate approach regards the ner tamid itself not as a symbol of the Torah studied but of the commandment performed. Just as a lamp supplies light to others without diminishing it own, so too do mitzvot perpetuate themselves. Adherence to the mitzvot sets a spiritual refining process in motion. Even the word ner is taken as an acrostic for nefesh ruach, implying that spiritual life requires regular kindling.
Moses is instructed to initiate the bringing of oil for lighting, although he is not named directly. Much ado is made over the absence of Moses’ name in this parsha, the only such omission in the last four books of the Torah. The Vilna of Gaon mundanely explains that this parsha falls the week associated with Moses’ death and he is not named out of deference. To other commentators this anonymity is indicative of Moses’ humble and gracious willingness to share the limelight with his brother.
More dramatically, this erasure is attributed to Moses’ reluctance to accept God’s mission at the burning bush. In a midrash God says to Moses, "I am telling you, ‘Go!’ and you tell Me, ‘Send by the hand of someone else!’ I will pay you back! When the Mishkan is constructed, you will expect to become High Priest, and I will tell you, ‘Call Aaron to be appointed High Priest!’" Thus, Moses is omitted from the parsha and the priesthood as a poignant punishment. This interpretation portrays a jilted Moses both envious and jealous of Aaron. Envy is wanting what someone else has whereas jealousy is not wanting someone else to have what you have; essentially, Moses envies Aaron’s appointment and is jealous of his brother usurping his relationship with God.
The medieval scholar Alsheikh smoothes out this somewhat unkind portrait by linking the exclusion of Moses to the double pronoun formula of "you-yourself" that replaces the familiar "and God said to Moses" three times in this parsha. The three instances where this is used – commanding the Israelites to bring oil, consecrating Aaron and his sons to serve as priests, and requesting artisans to make vestments – God reassures Moses by emphasizing that even the roles in which Moses does not directly partake are fulfilled through him. Although he does not light the lamp or manufacture the garments, Moses makes spiritual illumination possible. He is the facilitator, investing and dressing others to serve as emissaries to the divine in his stead. Unlike Aaron, Moses cannot found a dynasty: he is unique and his intensely personal relationship with God cannot be inherited or replicated.
When asked why he favored priests in his studio’s films Louis B. Mayer, the Jewish founder of M-G-M, declared, "Rabbis don’t look dramatic. A priest has all these trimmings and all this stuff." (Coincidentally, a search on the Internet Movie Database revealed he died the same year Paramount made The Ten Commandments.) In true Cecil B. DeMille fashion, an entire chapter is dedicated to detailing the haberdashery of Aaron and his sons. The colors and design of this garb are the hallmarks of royalty and, like Joseph’s coat of many colors, they signify a singling out, an election. But this election, Cassuto asserts, flows from the will of God, not from the people.
Their elaborate getup separates the priests from the people. This dynasty of kohainim are to replace Moses as the intercessor between God and the Israelites, with Moses consecrating them and commissioning their formal attire. God specifies that these garments are for dignity and adornment or, in the old fashioned translation, for splendor and for beauty. They enhance the dignity of the wearer and imbue him with an aura of splendor, albeit a shallow earthly imitation of the splendor of God, whom they serve. But with this emerges the dilemma of having the man fit his suit.
Akedat Yizhak points out that throughout the Bible the same terms refer to both human qualities and clothing, indicating that inner character is recognizable by outward actions. But these vestments are not a window to the soul as much as they facilitate the transformation of Aaron and his sons into holy office. For actors, putting on a costume is often the most effectual final step for completely inhabiting a character. The elaborate attire of the priests, with each item perfectly in place, becomes a metaphor for investing oneself with good moral qualities. The high priest’s diadem inscribed with "Holy to the Lord" and the breastplate inscribed with the names of the twelve tribes indicates that he is holy because God is always on his mind and the good of the people in his heart.
Through donning the vestments, the high priest becomes fully invested, transcending the merely personal and striving for a pure consciousness, allowing the holy clothes to make the man. Yet there are dangers in this. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg reminded me of The Non-Existent Knight, a novella by Italo Calvino, a fantastic author sadly neglected by American readers, and I feel no guilt taking advantage of an opportunity to promote him. The protagonist of this story is Sir Agilulf, a knight in the wars of Charlemagne. So completely does he identify with his sparkling white suit of armor and so impeccably does he follow his rituals, he simply does not exist – there is no one under the visor. He is his armor and his armor is him, "doffing and donning make no difference;" he is fully invested in his attire.
As Zornberg sees it, this is one quandary of ritual garments, the role completely subsuming human identity. On the other end of the spectrum is the hazard of the wearer succumbing to the insincerity of the material world. Clothing is indispensable but, like all self-representation, there is the risk that it obscures the inner truth; Hamlet exclaims "Seems, madam! nay, it is; I know not ‘seems’… But I have that within which passeth show, These but the trappings and the suits of woe." In the state of Denmark, there is dissonance between mourning clothes and inner sentiment.
Although there is the risk of fine attire becoming self-glorifying and a vain end in itself, rather than a means to dignity and splendor, good craftspeople bridge the gap between representation and reality by exercising contemplative power, kavanah. Fine craftwork is wearable art and, like art, it can elevate the wearer and viewer. Seeking refuge from the throngs in the Art Institute’s recent exhibit on the Medici and Michelangelo, I snuck downstairs where the textile department held a quiet sister show. The intricate fabrics on display were splendorous and just looking at the velvet I could sense its weight. Imagine the strength of character necessary to properly wear the High Priest’s robe, sash, ephod, breastplate and frontlet heavy with symbolic meaning.
God, often described as girded in light, made the first clothes, garments of skins for Adam and Eve. Unlike tilling soil, building cities or any other mark of civilization that humans learned on their own, clothing was providentially provided. Benno Jacob explains that clothing is the primary and necessary distinguishing mark of human society, not merely a social convention but an extension of the work of creation. In most cultures women, the biological creators, have been the primary producers of textiles. This was not limited to the domestic front; in Medieval and Renaissance Europe spinning and weaving guilds were among the few trades that admitted women among their professional ranks. Perhaps the Israelite women in the wilderness were the artisans whom God singled out and endowed with skill. A midrash relates that women did not participate in the sin of the Golden Calf; I propose it was because they were too busy carrying out God’s design of the priestly robes to stray from God’s designs. Occupied with sanctifying the material world, they resisted the temptation of idolatry’s short cut to holiness.
