Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin
Rabbi Yitschak RudominCourtesy

Tetsave (Exodus 27:20 - 30:10)

Clothes, everyone needs them! Whether you are living in the hot jungle with only a loincloth or covered in furs inside an igloo, clothes are part of the human condition. The only practical exceptions are the times we need to wash our bodies and for intimate relations but even those can be done partially clothed! We seldom think about the MEANING of the clothes we wear. It's not just about covering up, or revealing, parts of the body, it's actually an extension of ourselves.

In modern Western societies people tend to "dress down", reserving formal attire for special occasions. But this Torah portion has a special message: Clothing is "divine" because, for example, God cared enough for Adam and Eve to make for them garments of leather - Kotnot Or, that can also be interpreted as "garments of light" after He expelled them from the Garden of Eden. The body itself is a physical garment for the Divine Soul within every Jew.

The shape of the body is the most magnificent and Divine thing. Head on top with a brain in it. Heart and organs on the inside. Two sides to the body representing the two extremes of Mercy and Judgment. Ten fingers to match the Ten Commandments and the ten mystical Sefirot, the "emanations" of the Divine. Then on top of that, as Jews, we are supposed to adorn the body with unique clothing that signals our special status as the Am HaNivchar - the Chosen Nation.

The higher up you go in the hierarchy of the nation, the higher are the clothing standards and requirements. In this Torah portion the Torah describes how God commanded Moses about the clothing that the Kohanim, the priests, especially the Kohein Gadol, the High Priest should wear. This Torah portion has ten sub-portions dealing with:

1. Oil for the Tabernacle's lamp/s i.e. The Menorah;

2. The priestly vestments/clothing;

3. The Ephod i.e. a Cape or "Skirt";

4. The Gold Settings i.e. golden rings and strings;

5. The Breastplate;

6 The Robe;

7. The Other Vestments i.e head-plate, turban, tunics, sashes, hats, pants;

8. Consecration of the Priests;

9. Consecrating the Altar; 10. The Incense Altar. (From "Contents" in The Living Torah by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan).

Six out of the ten sub-sections deal with the subject of priestly clothing! These are commandments given in the Torah and many of them are repeated again in later portions in the book of Exodus especially in the last portion of Pekudei.

It would be really stunning to see the Kohanim (priests) and the Kohein Gadol (High Priest) dressed in their full regalia. There are some wonderful illustrated works that are available that present accurate depictions of the Tabernacle and related subjects such as by ArtScroll Publications but it still does not capture the glory of what it would be like in real life and in real time.

Sadly for Judaism, it has been the Roman Catholic Church that has its clergy dress up in clothing that is designed on many of the ideas that applied to Israelite priests and the high priests especially if one looks at the garments that the Pope and bishops wear when conducting Christian church services. Like many parts from Judaism, the Catholic Church has taken over some of the most dramatic religious things that originally were reserved for the Kohanim and the Kohen Gadol. But so be it because until such time as the Third Jewish Temple is to be rebuilt and the priestly service will be re-instituted we can only pray for that time to arrive soon.

Let's get back to the theme of clothing in general. As we noted with the High Priest topping off all of it.Historically, the higher up one goes in society the fancier the clothere is a hierarchy in the dress code for the Israelite priests,thing. This is literally meant to send a message by a status symbol. Just as a king and queen wear crowns to indicate their top position in a monarchy, and just as the highest officers in an army wear symbols of their high rank, so too the Jewish priests and kings wore clothing to indicate their high status in society.

Civilised humanity wears clothing not just merely for utilitarian practical purposes but as a symbol of being higher order beings. Animals do not need to wear clothing because they are not possessed of a Divine Godly Soul. By example, one can kill a million beasts of any kind and one is not guilty of murder, but woe betide if someone kills a single human then one is guilty of the capital crime of murder and subject to the severest penalties and punishments possible. Therefore when human beings wear clothes they are in effect like a small microcosmic "high priest" wearing what God requires of all civilised moral people.

Adam and Eve were created without clothing, but wait were they? Adam and Eve were created by God Himself and were on the highest spiritual level at the time of their creation. Jewish sources teach that the heavenly Angels mistook Adam to be God because Adam was so infinitely spiritual.

There is a mystical question of just when did Adam and Eve become corporeal in the sense of being normal physical human beings that we can understand as being our own physical progenitors? One opinion is that it was only AFTER they disobeyed God and sinned by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil did they "shrink" so to speak from their sublime virtually Godly status, down to the a smaller size, yet still big enough to be considered gigantic but now with physical bodies surrounding them and clothing their Divine Souls.

It therefore transpires that the human body itself is a "set of clothing" for the inner soul within a human being. In fact for Adam and Eve there was still no difference between their bodies and souls but it became clear to them that they were naked and they made for themselves "Chagorot" or "belts / loincloths" made out of fig leaves (Genesis 3:7) because they felt some shame about being totally unclothed before they were confronted by God about why they ate from the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

When God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden He clothed them yet again in special garments that He tailored for them. Being naked or partially naked in the Garden of Eden is one thing, but coming out into the real world there is no question that God wants people to be dressed. God did not cover Adam and Eve with a layer of fur like Neanderthal apes but instead carefully made for Adam and Eve "garments of leather ": וַיַּעַשׂ יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים לְאָדָם וּלְאִשְׁתּוֹ, כָּתְנוֹת עוֹר--וַיַּלְבִּשֵׁם "And God Lord made for Adam and his wife leather garments and dressed them." (Genesis 3:21) So from that point on they were not just fully physical but actually dressed in specially made clothes by God Himself to be ready to go out to live in the world as we know it to be.

The Jewish sages teach that the purpose of having a Jewish nation is to bring humanity back to the level of Adam and Eve BEFORE they sinned and were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Every step of the journey in the formation of the Hebrews from the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, down to the times of Moses and the Children of Israel, all the way down to our own times and the long history of the Jewish People is to restore the glory of God and of Humanity to what it once was and what it can become, like Adam and Eve before they sinned by disobeying God and eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And there is a hierarchy for this in the Universe and in the world of Nature:

* Nothingness

* The world of inanimate matter

* Vegetation

* Animals

* Humans

* Children of Israel the Jewish People

* Levites, the Jewish Priests

* The Jewish High Priest, the Kohen Gadol

Humans wear clothing as a sign of their Divine origins and do not walk around like "Naked Apes". A "nudist colony" is an aberration of life and the antithesis of the Torah and Judaism and a degradation of the human condition. The Jewish People must dress differently to the nations and people around them, this is part of Halakha, Jewish Law. The priests in the Tabernacle and later in the Jewish Temples dressed, served and acted as commanded by the Torah. At the top of the social and human pyramid stands the High Priest and in particular when he performs the Avoda, the holy service on days such as on Yom Kippur, must be dressed in the highest type of clothing and ornamentation as a sign of his being able to approach the Holy of Holies and have an "audience" with God Himself to get atonement for the World.

At every stage, the clothing that is worn by all people is a reflection of the Godliness that God wants them to symbolize and reflect.

* Tetzaveh means "Command" from Exodus 27:20 "And you command the Children of Israel..."

Contact Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin at: [email protected]