Welcome to The Morning Scroll! I'm Rabbi Deena Cowans from Mishkan Chicago and you're listening to what will be a quick dive into this week's parsha. If you’ve been meaning to brush up on your Jewish literacy, or you’re looking for some inspiration, you’ve come to the right place. This week, we read Parashat Tetzaveh, “Command”, which… guess what we get a lot of. We’ll start with a brief recap:
God commands the Israelites to use special olive oil to light the menorah, and to dress Aaron and his sons, the priests, in special clothes. We then get a pretty detailed description of the clothing for the high priest: an ephod, a sort of apron with precious gems along it; the choshen mishpat, a breastplate with a precious stone for each tribe; the urim v’tumim, a parchment inserted into the choshen mishpat with God’s name written on it; the me’il, a special robe with bells on the bottom and embroidered pomegranates; and the tzitz, a headband. In addition to this special garb, the high priest wore the same outfit that all the priests wore: a tunic, turban, sash and pants. The parsha continues with a description of how to consecrate the priests: they are to be brought to the Mishkan, immersed in a mikvah, and dressed in their special clothes. Moshe then offered some special sacrifices on their behalf, and this whole thing is repeated for 7 days. We then learn about the sacrifices the Israelites made every day: one lamb in the morning and one in the afternoon, and God says if they do all this, God will live in the Mishkan forever. Finally, we learn about the incense altar, and the priests are commanded to burn incense on it twice a day.
When I was a kid, I remember one of the Torahs at the synagogue where I grew up had a breastplate that it wore that, at least in my kid brain, looked exactly like the breastplate the high priest was commanded to wear, with 12 different stones inlaid to remember each of the 12 tribes. As I got older and learned this parsha, with its description of the garb of the high priest, I thought it was so cool that we dressed our Torah up like the high priest, who in turn was dressed to remind God of the 12 tribes. That is, according to the Torah, the purpose of the choshen mishpat, the special breastplate: each stone is meant to remind God of the ancestors of each of the 12 tribes- the 12 sons of Jacob, which the commentators say is meant to jog God’s memory of their merits and cause God to look favorably on the Israelites.
Except… we just read the story of the 12 sons of Jacob and all I can think is… what exactly are we hoping God will remember? The time they threw their brother in a pit and sold him into slavery? The time they massacred an entire town against their father’s wishes, like Shimon and Levi? The time they did things like abandon their daughter in law, like Judah, or sleep with their step-mom, like Reuben? If we’re trying to get by on “merit of the ancestors”, I’m not sure this band of brothers is the ones I want to be calling up. But apparently, even God experiences “rosy recollection”, and a few centuries later, God commands the Israelites to create something that will remind God of the brothers and apparently that’s a good thing.
Now, I couldn’t find a single commentator who said something like “wait but these brothers weren’t what we would call the picture of moral integrity”, which leads me even further to believe that the lesson here is “the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice”. Were the brothers perfect? Far from it. But also, they were the ancestors of these tribes, and their memories are preserved in the way Israelite society organized itself. Meaning, we wouldn’t be here without them. Maybe, the best testament to their memories is that their descendants are still around, still trying to live according to God’s will, still in relationship with each other. In other words, trying to do better at the things the original 12 sons tried to do but often failed at. I imagine the Israelites hearing the early parts of the Torah and maybe having some feelings of “Yuck! Shimon seemed like a bloodthirsty and impulsive guy! I don’t want to be a Shimonite!” and then having to find a way to live with their history and be ok in the present, and I want to bless them for that work. And, as many of us grapple with the identities we were born into, and the identities we feel we’ve been handed, may we be blessed in the work of improving on the lessons our ancestors learned and taught us.