Tetzaveh: Dress for Success
Inspired by the class of my Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Gershenfeld
What is the purpose of clothes?
In Parshas Tetzaveh, the Torah takes a deep dive into high fashion - Or, shall we say, Holy fashion. In the opening lines of the parsha, Hashem gives Moshe the overarching commandment to tailor the High Priest's attire: “Make holy vestments for your brother Aaron, for honor (Kavod - (כבוד)) and beauty (Tiferes - (תפארת))” (Shemos 28:2). What are these two aspects - Kavod and Tiferes? Why does Hashem need to specify them as the defining characteristics of the High Priest's clothing? And, perhaps most relevant to us today, what do the Torah and this Parsha in particular teach us about the purpose of our own clothing and the way we're meant to carry ourselves here on planet earth?
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the great 19th century Torah leader of Germany, explains that Kavod (כבוד) refers to the aspect of clothing which reveals the spiritual and moral content of a person, whereas Tiferes (תפארת) sets the requirement that the clothing also satisfy the sense of beauty, in that they decoratively distinguish the High Priest in his position. Let’s explore these two definitions of Rabbi Hirsch in order to uncover their profundity.
To fully understand Rabbi Hirsch's explanation of Kavod, let’s go back to the origin of clothes in the Torah. If we recall, Adam and Eve were born naked and yet were not ashamed. The Sforno, one of the great commentators on the Chumash, explains their lack of shame as follows: "They used their limbs solely for the service of their Maker, not the pursuit of base pleasures. Therefore, they considered marital relations no different than eating and drinking and their reproductive organs no different than their mouth or hands." On a deeper level, the Zohar tells us that Adam and Eve, before the sin, were shining spiritual beings with a faint hint of a physical body. But, when they sinned by eating of the forbidden fruit, their bodies became heavy and corporeal, covering up all but a faint hint of spirituality. Then, for the first time, Adam and Eve felt shame. Their physical bodies transformed from a means to serve God into the trigger-point for primal, animalistic desire. To help them cope with their degradation and temper their newly awakened carnal instincts, God made them clothes. These clothes enabled Adam and Eve to relate to one another through their humanity, as opposed to the animalistic tendencies unleashed by the Tree of Knowledge. The word for an article of clothing in Hebrew is "beged".1 The word shares the root with the word "boged", which means "traitor". The appearance of our physical bodies betrays our true essence. So, we fight fire with fire, sending in a double agent – clothes – the betrayer of the betrayer which flips the focus back on our true, spiritual selves.
We can all relate to the elevated quality of Kavod. Do any of us really want to be loved for our good looks? Our six pack? Our height? Of course not. We want people to appreciate our values, wisdom, and other spiritual qualities. What do we use to express our inner world? Definitely not our abs or our thighs. Rather, we use our face, mouth, and hands. That’s why, in observant Jewish communities, you’ll find that the modest attire of men and women covers up everything but their face and hands. By covering up what is physical, we refocus others on the spiritual.2 That's Kavod.
So, what is the Beauty - Tiferes - aspect of clothing? The Sforno explains that the aspect of Tiferes in the Kohen Gadol's clothing was in order to inspire awe among the Israelites. When I first came to Yeshiva in Israel, I wore a rotating combination of eccentric athletic shorts and t-shirts. I prioritized comfort and functionality above all else. As I became more observant, I began to appreciate that my clothing reflected my dignity. Imagine if you went to a province where the prince went around wearing shabby clothes. What would you think about the king? The Talmud teaches that a Torah scholar who goes outside with a stain on his shirt is worthy of the death penalty (not meant to be taken literally, but the message is clear!). When you represent the King of Kings, you're obligated to dress the part. This is Tiferes; the beauty of expressing internal greatness with external majesty.
One last story to illustrate how we can apply Tiferes to our own lives: During the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s in Europe, the general populace of Jews and non-Jews looked down on anyone who learned Torah as their full-time profession. To a society obsessed with production, full-time Torah learning did not fit into the new "religion" of material progress. To combat the low self-image created by the society, Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, the headmaster of the Slabodka Yeshiva, would take every new student shopping for the sharpest fashion available. When his students questioned him on this uncommon practice, he explained that the yeshiva's mission was to bring out the greatness of each and every person. By giving students and the outside world an external reminder of their greatness, students would be more passionate in their quest to unlock their greatest potential. His efforts bore incredible fruit, as an overwhelming percentage of Torah scholars today and for the past few generations draw their lineage back to Rabbis who learned in Slabodka.3
The takeaways for this week are twofold - 1) Kavod (Honor): We live in a world obsessed with physicality. Many have lost touch with their humanity beneath cultural pressure to express nothing but their bodily image. Remember that your physical body and animalistic instincts are not what define you. Rather, cover up these aspects of yourself so you can radiate to the world who you really are. 2) Tiferes (Beauty): You are the son or the daughter of the King of the Universe. Let dignity and royalty define the way you carry yourself in order that your external appearance reflects your esteemed position on earth.
The action of the week is to find some aspect of your external appearance - your clothes or even the way you conduct yourself in certain public settings - and see if you can add just a little bit more modesty and refinement. By expressing ourselves properly, we bring honor and beauty to ourselves, our nation, and our God.
Shabbat Shalom!
Avraham
The word for clothing in the Torah is “Beged.” There are two important insights we can draw out from this word. The first is that, in verb form, the word means betrayal. A “boged” is a traitor. Clothes hint back to the original reason for clothes - our betrayal of Hashem. In fact, Rabbi Sacks brings a whole list of different ways that clothes are associated with betrayal in the Torah: “There were the coverings of fig leaves Adam and Eve made for themselves after eating the forbidden fruit. Jacob wore Esau’s clothes when he took his blessing by deceit. Tamar wore the clothes of a prostitute to deceive Judah into lying with her. The brothers used Joseph’s bloodstained cloak to deceive their father into thinking he had been killed by a wild animal. Potiphar’s wife used the cloak Joseph had left behind as evidence for her false claim that he had tried to rape her. (Joseph himself took advantage of his Viceroy’s clothing to conceal his identity from his brothers when they came to Egypt to buy food - I don't like this example as much as the others because there's no explicit mention of it in the Torah). So it is exceptionally unusual that the Torah should now concern itself in a positive way with clothes, garments, vestments. The very word reveals this fact: Beged is made up of Beis, Gimmel, and Daled - the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th letter of the Hebrew alphabet. What’s missing? The Aleph. Aleph is the first letter, representing the Oneness, the Ineffable - Hashem (for more on this idea, see Rabbi Marcus’ absolutely brilliant exploration of the letter Aleph). That’s what Adam and Eve ignored when they sinned. To fix up the effects of their sin, they needed to use clothes.
The other word for clothing is “Lavush.” Our sages teach us that this is a contraction of the words “Lo bosh” - Don’t be embarrassed
There’s another absolutely magnificent story of the late Rabbi Shimon Schwab: On Shushan Purim 1936, the Rav was the subject of a libelous accusation that he had, in one of his sermons, publicly maligned Hitler, yemach shemo, and was brought before the Gestapo to explain himself. Making direct eye contact with the Nazi official, he forcefully explained that this was an outright lie. He had used the German word "vermittler" in his disparagement of the sin of the Golden Calf, which a spy had misunderstood as "Hitler." After this explanation, he was told that his case would be reviewed and that he would be advised of the outcome. Needless to say, the Rav feared for his life after that meeting. The Rav records in his diary that he was advised in the middle of Iyar that the matter had been dropped. During this period of some two months, the Rav slept only fitfully, with his clothes on, for fear that he would be arrested in the middle of the night, taken to jail, or out in the woods to be beaten and left to die - as had already occurred to several others. If this was to be his fate, he would face it with dignity - and with his clothes on - as would befit that of a Jewish leader.