Torah of Recovery: Tetzaveh

Torah of Recovery's Mission: To interrogate Torah deeply so as to create space, connection and safety for people with addictive patterns and behaviors that have led them to a crisis of the spirit to tell and shape their stories for the purpose of healing, growth, and a return to their whole selves.

(1) ואתה תצוה, whereas in 25,2 Moses had been told by G’d to raise the donations for the building of the Tabernacle with the words ויקחו לי תרומה, and that had referred to a one time contribution, now Moses is instructed of the ongoing obligation to provide oil for the Menorah in the Tabernacle. The syntax has been changed here with the introduction of the word תצוה, “you will command.” Whenever that root occurs the subject matter it addresses is one of ongoing importance, not a commandment to be carried out only once, only because of special circumstances. This principle has been spelled out by Torat Kohanim in Leviticus at the beginning of Parshat Tzav, as well as in Sifrey on Parshat Nasso section 1. (2) זך, free from sediments. The olives are to be crushed in a mortar for if they were to be ground in a mill the result would not be satisfactory.

USCJ & RA, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 503

regularly. The Hebrew words ner tamid can refer to a lamp that burns without interruption or to one that is regularly kindled.

Rabbi Shefa Gold, Torah Journeys, p. 87

When I was a child attending synagogue I was fascinated by the ner tamid, the 'Eternal Light,' that hung above the ark. No matter if I was bored or sad or confused, the ner tamid filled me with hopefulness and curiosity. Everything changes; everyone dies; yet here was a light that would shine on regardless of circumstances. No matter what storms of doubt I suffered, this small light was constant. Through winds of change, through the tumultuous rains of my shifting experience, the ner tamid did not falter or flicker. I took refuge in this light and found it within me. Tetzaveh begins by blessing us with the light of eternnity. We learn that this light, which is consciousness itself, requires our daily attention.

Shemot Rabbah 36, 3, ref and translated by Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot II, p. 515

See how words of Torah give light to man when he is occupied with them. But whoever is not so occupied and is ignorant, he stumbles. It may be compared to one who is standing in the dark. He feels his way, comes up against a stone and stumbles thereon, come up against a gutter, falls therein, his face striking the ground. Why? Because he went without a lamp. So it is with an ignorant man who knows no words of Torah.

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, The Everyday Torah, p. 141, Kindle edition

It isn't enough merely to build the menorah. Each of us must bring to it our own supply of clear, pure oil. It isn't enough to own the Torah nor even to read it regularly. Each of us must implement its teachings, demonstrating them in deeds to the four corners of our lives. In that way, we allow God's light to shine on us, so that we in turn can shine our light on God.

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah, p. 134

In lighting the menorah, we are told that it is to be a ner tamid (an eternal light). We remember this and fulfill this mitzvah by having this light in front of the Ark in the synagogue. This light is to remind us that the covenant between us and God is forever, it is an active part of our daily lives, and the way to bring our living in line with our covenant—that is, to live a life of integrity—is to study and be with Torah. The ner tamid illuminates the teachings and the road map to living with God in God’s world.

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah, p. 138

The ner tamid originally was meant to burn from evening to morning. At the darkest time of the day, this light, placed in front of the Ark of the Covenant, reminds us that God never leaves us. We do not have to fear disconnection from God when it is dark; rather, we can take comfort that God is always near. God never forsakes us. Now, I know that many of us feel lonely and lost when darkness in the form of illness or death comes upon us. This light does not guarantee that sickness will leave or that death will not arrive. It is a reminder to us and for us that the path to dealing with anything and everything that comes our way is through God and, by extension, our community. God being with us gives us the strength and courage to face all of life, the good and bad, with hope, determination, and certainty. The certainty is that with the help of God, family, and community we will be able to retain our dignity through all of life’s situations.

USCJ & RA, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 503

That which fuels the m'norah must be pure, uncontaminated by jealousy, selfishness, pride, or greed.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Exodus: The Book of Redemption, p. 220, Kindle edition

Judaism is unusual in that it recognises not one form of religious leadership but two: the navi and the kohen, the prophet and the priest. The figure of the prophet has always captured the imagination. He (or she) is a person of drama, “speaking truth to power,” unafraid to challenge kings and courts, or society as a whole, in the name of high, even utopian ideals. No other type of religious personality has had the impact as the prophets of Israel, of whom the greatest was Moses. The priests, by contrast, were for the most part quieter figures, apolitical, serving in the Sanctuary rather than in the spotlight of political debate. Yet they, no less than the prophets, sustained Israel as a holy nation. Indeed, though the people of Israel were summoned to become “a kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6) they were never called on to be a people of prophets (Moses did say, “Would that all God’s people were prophets,” [Numbers 11:29] but this was a wish, not a reality).

USCJ & RA, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 503

This parashah is the only one in the last four books of the Torah in which the name of Moses does not appear. Noting this literary curiosity, some commentators explain it as Moses' generously stepping aside to let the spotlight fall on Aaron and his priestly functions. Others point out that the traditional date of Moses' death, the 7th of Adar, always falls during the week in which T'tzavveh is read; they see his absence from the Torah reading...as part of an effort to ensure that no cult of Moses worship would ever arise.

But in this instance the Israelites asked of the Holy One, blessed be He: Do you mean like Moses and Aaron, of whom it is said: Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity (Ps. 133:1)? They loved and cherished each other. At the time that Moses took the kingship and Aaron the priesthood, they bore no resentment toward each other. In fact, they rejoiced in each other’s exalted role.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Exodus: The Book of Redemption, p. 235, Kindle edition

Here, for the first time, there is no hint of sibling rivalry.[4] The brothers work together from the very outset of the mission to lead the Israelites to freedom. They address the people together. They stand together when confronting Pharaoh. They perform signs and wonders together. They share leadership of the people in the wilderness together. For the first time, brothers function as a team, with different gifts, different talents, different roles, but without hostility, each complementing the other.

USCJ & RA, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 504

This chapter deals with the priestly garments. Again drawing a parallel between the creation of the world and the fashioning of the tabernacle, commentators have noted that God made the garments for Adam and Eve after creating the world and that God describes the special garments to be worn by the priests after fashioning the tabernacle. 'Just as humans are the only creatures in the universe who do not rest content with their natural skin,,.the sons of Aaron who minister in their priestly office in the House of the Lord do not serve God in their ordinary, every day garments.' (N. Leibowitz) A uniform simultaneiously invests the wearer with special authority (only special people can wear it) and diminishes the person's personal authority (anyone searing it acquires the sense of being special). 'Without these prescribed garments, the kohen is meerely an ordinary individual and his ritual act becomes a personal gesture.' (Hirsch)

Rabbi David Kasher, Parshanut, p. 171, Kindle edition

Here, in the service of God, beauty is okay. Not just okay – required! And not just plain beauty – but ornate, lavish, radiant beauty! This is supposed to be the most awe-inspiring beauty imaginable.

USCJ & RA, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 504

The literal meaning of the phrase translated as 'skillfull' [hakhmei lev] is 'wise of heart.' There is a wisdom of the heart, an emotional maturity born of age and experience, that is different from intellectual knowledge and is specially suited to fashioning holiness.

Rabbi Shefa Gold, Torah Journeys, p. 88

As priests and artists of the holy, we are commanded to honor that holiness by awakening the wisdom of the heart.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 367-8, Kindle edition

The craftsmen are to bridge the gap between representation and reality by the exercise of kavvana, of contemplative power, in their work...Implicit in these demands is an awareness of the treachery, the “insincerity” of the material world.

Rabbi Leah Lewis, in The Mussar Torah Commentary, p. 125, Kindle edition

In many ways, the idea that “clothes make the man” takes its root in Parashat T’tzaveh.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 352, Kindle edition

The unusual form, ve-atta, “and as for you …” becomes more insistent—and perhaps more challenging—when we notice that it recurs twice within the first five verses of the Portion...In relation to two more instructions, Moses is placed at the epicenter of God’s address: initiating his brother, Aaron, into his dynastic role as High Priest, and instructing the craftsmen who will fashion the priestly robes. In all three cases, Moses is singled out as the vehicle of God’s will: “And you … and you … and you …” In all three cases, paradoxically, Moses is to assume a direct responsibility in an area that is specifically not his own: it is his brother Aaron who will tend the Eternal Lamp, who will function as High Priest, who will wear the priestly robes. A tension, therefore, accumulates around God’s address to Moses: some mysterious train of thought is continued, running against the grain of assigned function. Implicitly, enigmatically, it is Moses who represents the dynamic out of which the priestly function takes its vital force.

USCJ & RA, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 506

Aaron the High Priest was to carry the names of Israel's tribes on his shoulders 'like a father carrying a young child on his shoulders to keep the child safe.' (B'er Mayim Hayyim)

Put out of your mind the thought that Moses was distressed because he was not willing to go. That is not so. He actually was concerned about Aaron’s prestige. Moses said: Before I was designated (to go), my brother Aaron prophesied in Egypt for them for eighty years, as it is written: And I made known to them in the land of Egypt (Exod. 20:5). How do we know that Aaron prophesied for them in Egypt? We know this from the verse: And there came a man of God unto Eli and said unto him: “Thus saith the Lord: Did I reveal Myself unto the house of thy father, when they were in Egypt?” (I Sam. 2:27). It was for this reason that Moses said: Throughout all these years my brother prophesied, and if I should now intrude into his area (of service) he will be deeply distressed. That is why Moses did not wish to go. The Holy One, blessed be He, replied to Moses: Aaron will not be offended. In fact, not only will he not be displeased, but he will rejoice. You know this is so, for He said to him: And also, behold, he cometh forth to meet thee; when he seeth thee, he will be glad in his heart (Exod. 4:14).

Rabbi Shefa Gold, Torah Journeys, p. 87

We see that all the same colors and materials that went into building the Mishkan now adorn our bodies. Each of us is clothed in the garments of the Holy Indwelling, reminding us again that God has made Her home within us. We are blessed with wisdom of the heart, and from that wisdom flows forms of expression and creativity that radiate beauty and honor.

George Robinson, Essential Torah, p. 382, Kindle edition

The placement in the narrative of the description of the priestly garments, immediately following the parashah in which the Mishkan’s component parts are described, then followed by parashat Ki Tisa with its powerful narrative events—Moshe’s climb up Sinai, the incident of the Golden Calf, the smashing of the Tablets, Moshe’s pleading for the people— suggests that we are to consider the priest’s uniform, even the priests themselves, as an integral part of the Mishkan as a whole. The midrashic collection Pesikta de’Rav Kahana says that the Shekhinah, the feminine manifestation of the Divine that accompanies the Hebrews on earth, could not occupy the Mishkan until Aharon entered as kohein. It was necessary for him to be there to light the menorah.

USCJ & RA, Etz Hayim: Torah & Commentary, p. 507

Hirsch notes that the linen...is white..the color of purity. The wool...is red...represents the lower animal stage of life, and a darker crimson...the human level. Blue...directs us to the Godliness that has been revealed to us. A modern thinker expands on those comments: 'Human beings reflect a combination of those four levels. At one time or another, an individual may be living at the lowest level of existence, just getting by. Or an individual may be mobile...able to impose some order on life. Then there is the individual who lives with full humanity, behaving in a moral and ethical way. Finally, there are those who sense God continually. When the priest wears all the colors together, when the Israelites see all the colors together, they are reminded that the people Israel comprises all these indivudals, that the priests serve them all, and that at any time any one of us may be in any one of those four stages."

Aatributed to the Baal Shem Tov, referenced in USCJ & RA, Etz Hayim: Torah & Commentary:

Remembering is the source of redemption, while forgetting leads to exile.

George Robinson, Essential Torah, p. 380, Kindle edition

What is significant is not the mechanics of the urim and tumim or their composition but the fact that they were an integral part of the High Priest’s garb and—even more important—his duties.

CCAR & URJ: The Torah: A Women's Commentary, p. 1245, Kindle edition

No translation is given for these terms because their meaning is so uncertain. They refer to stones, perhaps similar to dice or lots, to be kept in the breastpiece. Their function seems clear: they served as a medium for ascertaining a divine ruling on human problems.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Torah and Commentary, p. 1299, Kindle edition

What is important is that several different biblical sources indicate that there was a belief that it was possible to ask questions of God and get an answer, and that this was done through a priest, not a prophet. It was a mechanism other than prophecy to learn the will of God.

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, The Everyday Torah, p. 138

What is the religious implication of the loss of the Urim and Thummim (which coincided with the end of prophecy)? Whereas biblical Israel could claim explicit verbal communication from God, thereby eliminating uncertainty and confusion, Jews of later ages cannot. We don't have explicit divine words to tell us which path to follow, and we don't have devices that can dope out God's will once and for all. All we have are our inherited traditions; our sacred writings; the world around us; and the small, still voice that speaks within each one of us. Those four legs are the base on which we stand, the compass by which a Jew can chart a proper course in life, the path for us to walk...

Without the Urim and Thummim, we cannot disdain the viewpoints of other honest and well-intentioned Jews who may differ from us in their understanding of the covenant or the way they seek to embody God's will. Instead, we can learn from each other, even in our disagreements, and encourage each other, even though we may follow different ways. In the end, it may be that God removed the Urim and Thummim because we could not resist the temptation to be a little too sure, a bit too certain, and a little too smug.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 379-80, Kindle edition

Rabbi Yaacov Leiner, in his commentary, Beit Yaacov, builds on Ramban’s reading. The bells, clappers jangling from a hollow center, symbolize a mode of spiritual ecstasy: literally, a standing outside oneself, an overwhelming consciousness of the nothingness of the human person within the priestly robes. The High Priest as he enters the sanctuary loses all sense of his own density, of the contingencies, the idiosyncrasies of his own existence. The bell becomes an image for a hollowness that resounds almost unbearably with God’s presence. “My heart is hollow within me,” cries the Psalmist (109:22)...The bell resounds with the wild clangor of transcendence; the human being loses himself in the presence of God; the human image is entirely effaced; one is absorbed into the fire of the divine... However, continues R. Yaacov, such ecstasy can be overpowering: who would want to return to himself, from out of such rapture? Therefore, the robe resounds with its double message. In an exquisite paradox, it is the pomegranate that the High Priest “hears” as he enters the intoxicating space of holiness; it reminds him throughout his service not to surrender entirely to the fire. Even in the midst of his fervor, he must retain the desire to return to his individuality, to his dense humanity.

And the frontplate of the High Priest atones for brazenness. This is derived from the fact that with regard to the frontplate it is written: “And it shall be upon Aaron’s forehead” (Exodus 28:38), and with regard to brazenness it is written: “And you had a harlot’s forehead” (Jeremiah 3:3).

Rabbi Shefa Gold, Torah Journeys, p. 87

When we get distracted or confused, it is possible to look at the forehead of a friend and see their lives inscribed for Holiness and remember what we too are working for, and why we are alive.

USCJ & RA, Etz Hayim: Torah & Commentary, p. 510

anointing. This ceremony served to bring about the transition from the profane to the sacred.

Rabbi Shefa Gold, Torah Journeys, p. 87

Tetzaveh describes the ceremony of consecration, as we become priest and priestess in service to Shekhina, the Indwelling Presence of the Divine in our lives.

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, I, location 3796, Kindle edition

The hunger to be close to God can be one of the most powerful human desires, but it can also be among the most dangerous. Some psalmists pine for God so intensely that they dream of living in the Temple, God’s earthly abode. In one well-known psalm, the psalmist speaks of his longing to “dwell in the house of the Lord for many long years” (Ps. 23:6); in another, he asks “to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of [his] life” so that he may “gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” (27:4). Such longing for proximity to the divine presence is arguably fundamental to God-centered religion. And yet such yearnings can also be perilous, because, consciously or not, people all too often try to domesticate God, to reduce God to something they can comprehend, predict, and even control.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Torah and Commentary, p. 1324, Kindle edition

29:45–46. I shall tent.... And they will know. In case anyone might get lost in all the details of these many chapters on the Tabernacle and the priesthood, this powerful statement comes in the middle of the section. Once these things are established, then: YHWH will meet with Moses and the people there, YHWH will be present among the people, YHWH will be their God, and they will know that YHWH is their God. It is one of the most crucial passages in the Torah. It is the basis of all of the law and most of the episodes that will come in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, The Everyday Torah, p. 142, Kindle edition

With that insight, we enter the inner core of real relationship—reciprocity. We perceive the sanctity of the Tent of Meeting when we encounter God there, and God reveals holiness in the tent when we are present. Each party to the covenant is honored and glorified by the presence of the other. Holiness emerges between God and Israel, among God and Israel.

The baraita continues: With regard to offerings of lesser sanctity, their slaughter is anywhere inside the Temple courtyard, and collection of their blood in a service vessel is anywhere inside the Temple courtyard. If one stood outside and inserted his hand into the courtyard and slaughtered the offering there, his slaughter is valid. If he collected the blood in a similar manner, his collection is not valid. And if he inserted his head and most of his body into the courtyard and collected the blood, it is as if he had not entered it at all.

USCJ & RA, Etz Hayim: Torah & Commentary, p. 516

One is tempted to understand the question in spiritual rather than purely physical terms. A person can be physically present at a service but emotionally and spiritually absent. One's head may be elsewhere. Such a person is not considered a true participant.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Torah and Commentary, p. 1325

priests. The burning of the incense is now listed first among their priestly functions. And they are commanded not to offer “unfitting incense.” But that is exactly what Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu will do in the frightful story of the events on the day of their inauguration (Lev 10:1). The order of the commands concerning the incense altar here sets the stage for those coming events. And it establishes the extreme importance of precise obedience to the ritual commandments, especially by those who are closest to the realm of the holy: the priests.

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, v 1, locatioin 3863, Kindle edition

This may well be part of why it is so important to the Torah to emphasize both that God dictated every last detail of the plan for the mishkan and that the people executed it exactly according to God’s instructions. The key point is that Israel is serving God rather than imagining that God is serving it.