Tetzaveh: The Gates and the Heart
The Gates
In February of 2005, I rode the bus from Boston to New York City to see the much-talked-about art piece: The Gates in Central Park. The Gates were a site-specific, park-wide installation by the Bulgarian artist Christo Yavacheff and French artist Jeanne-Claude. They were 7,503 vinyl “gates,” gorgeous bright orange flags stretching along 23 miles of the park. This is what they looked like:
(more images can be found here.)
The most magical and unexpected part of seeing The Gates was not the actual structures themselves, although they were beautiful and bright. The best part of the exhibit was that it made Central Park come alive in the middle of the coldest and drabbest month of the year The Gates were so named precisely because they were a gorgeous opening one could walk through that framed and mirrored the natural beauty of the park (and the people moving through it) exactly at the time when it was hard to see what was beautiful about anything.
I thought of The Gates while reading parshat Tetzaveh, which describes in intricate detail the glorious robes and clothing that the high priests were instructed to wear. We are told of gold, blue, purple and crimson wool and linen, decorative bands, gemstone encrusted gold breastplates, with golden bells and colorful woolen pomegranates dangling from the hem. The works!
Moshe is told that the garments are “for honor and glory,
27:2). Moshe is also instructed:
3 And you shall speak to all the wise hearted, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, and they shall make Aaron's garments to sanctify him, [so] that he serve Me [as a kohen].
The ornate clothing for the priests are not about the clothing themselves, but about the sanctification process through the wearing of them. Indeed, the entire role of the Priest – the man and his clothing – is, ultimately, to glorify, honor, serve the Holy One. The beautiful robes elevate the whole, the way that The Gates highlighted and brought forth the beauty of everything around them.
There is something radical in this instruction. The Israelites at this moment are less than one generation removed from slavery. To dress their priests, members of their tribe, in these lavish garments usually reserved for kings and queens is to insist on the value and worth of their own people.
Confusion
But of course, we are human, and humans easily get confused by shiny, beautiful things. The Buddha famously said that his teachings were “as a finger pointing at the moon” and not the moon itself. He warned that “a person who only looks at the finger and mistakes it for the moon will never see the real moon.” We often tend to confuse the moon for the finger. We confuse the pretty orange flags for the beauty of the whole park. In next week’s parsha, we confuse the beauty of the work of our hands (the golden calf) for a God. It isn’t that the finger or the lavish garments or works of art aren’t important vehicles for holiness, but without the holiness at the center, we find ourselves worshiping empty, flat, lifeless things, and suffering as a result.
Reading a fashion magazine or watching television, I can see the glitz and glamor of young, conventionally pretty models in expensive clothes, and I can feel the twinges of “I’m not enough” and the desire to worship at the gates of manufactured beauty. I enter these gates by spending an exorbitant amount of money, trying to change endless things about myself and attempting to subvert the aging process altogether, for the “glory and the honor” of being “beautiful.” Which lasts – on a good day –about a week. Then the cycle of “not enough” repeats itself. It is a palace of emptiness – beauty for beauty’s (and arguably, capitalism’s) sake.
Redemption
So how do we connect to the holiness at the center of beauty? How do we relate to the grandeur all around us and within us without mistaking the vehicle (the beautiful things) for the cargo (the meaning)?
Rambam has an idea. He comments on the “glory and honor” line by stating:
“The Clothes must be fashioned with full intentionality (awareness of their sacred purpose) and possibly even require Kavana (awareness of the complex meanings expressed in them). That is why God said, “And you shall speak to all who are wise in heart whom I have filled with the spiritual of wisdom” (28:3) – that they should understand what they are making.” In Rambam’s view the integrity, heart, and awareness of the creators of the garments, as much as the soul of the Priest himself, imbue the entire process with sacredness.
Avivah Zornberg explains, “Clothing is indispensable, physically, culturally, even in terms of the soul’s needs; but clothing obscures the honest, flinching truth – “the thing itself.” It is perhaps because of this tension that the medieval commentaries stress the continuity of inner and outer, in connection with the priestly vestments: even the tailors and seamstresses must be pure of heart and aware of the symbolic meaning of their art. Only so can the potential inauthenticity of costume, of the trappings of civilization, be redeemed. (The Particulars of Rapture, 367)
So we redeem our love and excitement about beauty by relating to it mindfully, with our full presence, our full heart, and our intention. We keep the lens wide around beautiful objects and people, taking them in as an interconnected, interpenetrated, holy vessel that holds all the beauty and life and godliness of the world, including our own.
see light (Psalm 96)
Blessed are you, God, who clothes the naked.
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s mission is to develop and teach Jewish spiritual practices so that individuals and communities may experience greater awareness, purpose, and interconnection.
Learn more at jewishspirituality.org
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