Written in honor of Or Shalom Synagogue’s New Member Shabbat.
Tetzavah: You shall instruct.
Tetzaveh is from the same root as the word Mitzvah, which means, “instruction,” “commandment,” and “connection.”
Today I shall rely on Parshat Tetzaveh to help me articulate how our diverse group is “connected,” woven together into a single spiritual community. Tetazaveh’s metaphors of light, spiritual brothers, and crimson worms will guide me.
At the beginning of Parshat Tetzaveh, God tells Moshe l’ha’alot ner tamid –to raise up a ner tamid, a light that is always glowing.
We do that quite literally in synagogues around the world: we raise up a ner tamid, a light that is always glowing.
Often people new to a synagogue will ask me, anxiously, “What happens if the light goes out?” They are imagining some kind of great Jewish series circuit or Olympic torch relay extending around the world. And if our light goes out, we have broken the chain. I love the idea that every Jewish community counts. Still, I explain that the light is symbolic, and if the light goes out, we simply replace the bulb.
Light represents so many different things in the Jewish spiritual tradition. It’s the very first creature, God’s primal presence in the world. It’s the sparkle of the individual person, the spirit of the nation, the enlightening teaching that emanates from Torah.
Of course, Torah itself represents many things.
Some commentators see Torah as a body of moral teachings that based in the text. These commentators say, “Without the light of Torah, we stumble our way through life.”
Other commentators understand Torah as the spiritual pursuit of self-awareness and self-improvement. These commentators say, “Without the light of Torah, our souls are not alive.”
Here at Or Shalom Synagogue, we study both kinds of Torah, in response to at least two kinds of needs.
Sometimes we really want direction. We want to re-shape ourselves in a positive way. With our friends at Or Shalom we have the opportunity to study traditional teachings about humility, or ways of peace, or ethics of speech. These guiding teachings are the light of Torah.
Sometimes we just need to sit with who we are, and observe what’s going on inside us before moving in any specific direction. We know that our colleagues at Or Shalom recognize this state of soul. Together we have studied many Hassidic teachings about the movement of God’s spirit within us. Self-awareness is a prelude to self-improvement. This too is the light of Torah.
After God instructs Moshe about the light, God lets Moshe know that his brother Aharon will be appointed as cohen gadol, High Priest. Some commentators believe that Moshe is devastated. He, with his close relationship to God, had hoped to be High Priest.
Other commentators say Moshe understands that he and Aharon have two different approaches to spirituality, and that a single family has room for both.
As cohen gadol, Aharon follows a structured path. He leads people through formal rituals of offering and prayer. He says little, yet he has a comforting effect on people. When they experience inner chaos, his activity brings clarity.
Moshe follows a wilder path. He is in contact with the raw presence of God. Sometimes he is afraid, sometimes he glows with inspiration, and sometimes he can’t contain his frustration with people who don’t share his spiritual perception. He is incredibly gifted at articulating in words what he receives during his spiritual flights.
At Or Shalom we honor both these archetypal brothers. As our mission statement says, we are “traditional and creative.” We guide each other through familiar life cycle rituals that anchor our lives. And we draw on our own artistic and intellectual flights to understand and personalize the rituals we inherited. This balance helps our community soul come alive with Torah.
After God speaks with Moshe about the division of spiritual labor, God describes the clothing that the cohen gadol will wear.
The cohen will wear garments of wool, dyed techelet, v’argaman, v’tola’at shani – sky blue, royal purple, and crimson. Wool, then as now, comes from the bodies of sheep. Biblical sky-blue dye comes from the bodies of snails. Biblical purple dye comes from the bodies of mollusks. And Biblical crimson comes from the body of a worm. In fact it is called tola’at shani, worm red.
We know how much sheep mean to the Biblical Israelites. Sheep are fine enough to be offered to God; their wool is beautiful enough to decorate the mishkan’s ceiling; they are good enough to eat. In some stories, they represent the people. What we criticize as sheep’s “herd mentality” was understood by early Israelites as sheep’s deep connection with one another. Just as the sheep care for one another, just as the Israelite shepherds care for their sheep, so God cares for the Israelites, with the help of the shepherd Moshe. In that way, a wool garment is beautiful totem garment for the high priest to wear as he helps hold the nation together.
When it comes to understanding how the early Israelites experienced snails and mollusks, I’m afraid there’s little to go on. The mollusk is never mentioned in the Tanakh. The snail makes two appearances. Torah tells us not to eat the snail, and Tehillim, Psalms, say “May the wicked disappear like the slimy trail of a snail.”
Relatively speaking, the worm, tola’at, is some kind of star, making many guest appearances.
Biblical writers don’t claim to understand the consciousness of a worm at all. In fact, the only worm activity they can even recognize as familiar to human experience is eating. In the Book of Yonah (Jonah), a worm enrages the prophet Yonah when it eats a plant. In an oracle of comfort, the prophet Yishayah (Isaiah) tells the Israelites they will be renewed, like a worm with a new set of sharp teeth, nourishing itself. Speakers in the book of Iyov (Job) remind us that ultimately worms will eat us.
Woven together in the robe of the cohen gadol we find an animal claimed by Biblical writers as a kindred spirit along with an alien animal whom we know only as a fellow eater.
Everything in the cohen’s garments is intentional and symbolic. The woven robe expresses the hope that the work of the cohen gadol can encompass every kind of nature, whether we understand it or not.
There will be times in our lives when we really yearn for the woven robe of the cohen gadol to cover us. We will have some easy times, when we feel as comfortable as a sheep among fellow sheep. And we will have some difficult times, when we feel so alien to ourselves and the human species in general, that we feel like a worm among the sheep. At any given moment in the life of Or Shalom, some of us will feel like sheep and some will feel like worms.
And there’s a way in which it does not matter. Because all of us are woven into the single robe of the cohen gadol, a life where easy joys and difficult losses are both shaped and expressed in ritual.
Or Shalom is a mini-mishkan, lit with the light of many kinds of Torah, expressing many approaches to spirituality, weaving together many kinds of people at many different moments in their lives.
Today we welcome into our fabric many new lights, many evolving spirits, many moments in movement.
Shabbat Shalom.
– Laura Duhan Kaplan, 2011
Image: www.uwsp.edu