(17) Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt—(18) how he surprised you on the march, and cutting down all the stragglers in your rear, when you were famished and weary: he did not fear God. (19) Therefore, when Ad-nai your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that Ad-nai your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!

“Could you have chosen a more loaded week?” said my husband with a face that can only be described as both bemused and pitying when I told him that I had agreed to write my first 91�첥 Torah Commentary on Shabbat Zakhor. As the heaviness of the reading sank in, with its commandment to recall Amalek’s unprovoked attack on the Israelites and to “blot out” Amalek’s memory, I became apprehensive.

Like many Torah portions, Zakhor is often used by Jews not only to make sense of history, but to make sense of their contemporary moment. The story has represented a call to fight against evil and complacency; and also as a metaphor for the many persecutions faced by Jews across history, and a convenient label for any and all enemies of the Jewish people. And since October 7th, it has been politicized in ways that have been both surprising and painful when Hamas, and sometimes the entire Palestinian people, have been referred to as Amalek by Israeli politicians and religious leaders, including by Netanyahu in a speech describing the unity of Israelis in the fight against Hamas. Walking through Tel Aviv last month, I found graffiti quoting Zakhor, a sign that it remains a rallying cry to some everyday Israelis. Loaded, indeed.

When I want to understand something in a new way—or when the contemporary resonance starts to overwhelm me—I consult history, looking for answers in the thoughts, feelings, and ideas of Jews past. How did Jews who lived before this intensely conflicted contemporary moment understand Zakhor? A search of the Jewish Historical Press reveals that 1,116 English-language articles in North America cited the word Amalek (and that’s just using this spelling). Reading through several, it was clear that, for Jews in the early twentieth century, Amalek as metaphor served them well for describing enemies of the Jews in Europe.

“One can readily understand… that Amalek is not used to designate a particular people, but rather as a synonym for every and any art of cruelty, oppression, hatred and bigotry, whenever and wherever encountered,” wrote Ben Aronin in the American Jewish newspaper The Sentinel in 1932. Jews have learned “that in every generation there arise many of the ‘hosts of Amalek’… We have only to mention men of the stamp of Herod, Hadrian, Haman and Hitler to emphasize the peculiar fanatical suspicion and hatred of the Jew which have characterized those proponents of cruelty.” But Aronin argued that Zakhor should not just remind Jews to remember the cruelty of the enemies of Jews past, but to commit themselves “to unremitting efforts against the forces of ignorance and evil” more broadly. In other words, they should use Zakhor as a call to fight for a better world. In the midst of a news cycle filled with an overwhelming degree of persecution and violence both at home and abroad, Aronin’s call to commit to the fight against ignorance feels particularly resonant and powerful.

Despite the fact that Yiddish has its own words for remembrance and memory, secular Yiddish speakers also evoked Amalek and Zakhor quite frequently. “Amalek” was mentioned in the American Yiddish press a whopping 1,488 times, an astonishing number considering that most Yiddish newspapers in the early twentieth century represented the growing ethos of secular Jewishness. What were they thinking about the week’s Torah portion? To me, this reveals that, much like secular Israelis no doubt understand Netanyahu’s references to Amalek based on their education and cultural touchstones, so too did even the most ardently secular Yiddish speakers.

Not only did Yiddish speakers understand what Amalek referred to, but they still found use for this framing as a tool for understanding their people’s contemporary struggles around the globe. For a wide variety of Jews in the early twentieth century, it seems, the metaphor of Amalek was clear and uncontroversial: several obvious enemies of the Jewish people and so little reason to interpret them otherwise. For Jews at that historical juncture, the commandment to remember yielded possibilities of hope in a context of rising antisemitism and eventually the Holocaust. It is not as easy today to make contemporary connections to Zakhor that work for everyone in a given synagogue, let alone every reader of a Jewish newspaper. I do not envy the rabbis across the country writing their divrei Torah as I write mine, figuring out how to deal with communities that no longer agree on who the enemies of the Jewish people are or how to remember. And yet, as I scrolled through the thousands of articles, interpretations, and words of Torah published in the Jewish press, I found myself comforted by the generations of Jews with different worldviews, languages, and religious practices that forged relationships to the words of Zakhor in their own unique ways. May we find a way to remember, even as contemporary events continuously shift and challenge our understanding of the text.

We read in , “And you shall make sacred garments for Aaron your brother, for honor and for glory.” On the word tiferet (glory), Seforno asserts that the High Priest will be a kohen-moreh norah, an awesome priest-teacher. He explains שהם תלמידיו החקוקים על לבו וכתפיו, “for they are his students who are engraved on his heart and shoulders.”

This phrase refers to the names of the tribes of Israel, which were engraved on gemstones worn by the High Priest as part of his ritual garb: the High Priest wore avnei-shoham, which were probably lapis lazuli, in the form of an epaulet on each shoulder, each stone engraved with the names of six tribes of Israel, totaling twelve names. He also wore twelve different gems, arrayed in rows on the breastplate of judgment, set in gold. Each gem on the breastplate was individually engraved with the name of a tribe of Israel (, 15–21).

Why was the High Priest adorned with tribes’ names on his shoulders and his chest? We can speculate that wearing the names of his people was meant to keep the supreme religious leader humble, remembering who he represents before God. But Seforno’s comment directs us away from the topic of religious leadership, to the seemingly unrelated field of education.

Seforno borrows the phrase priest-teacher from , in which a troubled era of Israelite history is decried as being “bereft of a priest-teacher and bereft of Torah.” He seizes on this brief biblical allusion to the priest functioning as a teacher to define what it takes to be a master educator.

For Seforno, as I understand him, a master teacher who carries her students’ names engraved on her shoulders takes responsibility for them, for what they learn. This is task-orientation. A master teacher who carries her students’ names engraved on her heart cares about her students. This is person-orientation. A master teacher practices both.

These two essential values in teaching, caring about the subject matter and caring about the student, can conflict. A teacher who is very focused on covering a substantial amount of course material by a set date might overlook how her student learns. As a result, the student might master the data superficially, never connecting imaginatively with material that requires imaginative engagement; or emotionally with material that demands emotional connection; or critically, with material that requires independent thought. Will this student ever love the subject enough to learn more on his own? This teacher’s focus on powering through the material may neglect whether it will become meaningful to her student.

A teacher who focuses too much on the person, on the other hand, may become overly concerned about the emotional comfort of her student, and might relax her demands that the student develop the discipline to learn complex material. This teacher risks not challenging her student enough, allowing the student to evade the hard work of mastering essential content or skills. This teacher’s focus on how the student feels can neglect what the student learns.

Extreme emphasis on either task-orientation or person-orientation is not desirable. The wise teacher works perennially in the creative tension between the two.

Fortunately, teachers can change: they can learn! A teacher can recognize her own teaching preference or bias, identifying whether she is naturally inclined toward task-oriented teaching or person-oriented teaching, and she can work to balance her instincts with what her students need. Such self-knowledge allows the “awesome” teacher to uphold educational standards and be sensitive to the ways different students’ minds and imaginations work. Steady expressions of interest in both—in the content and in the student—make for a stable and rich learning environment for the student.

A month from now, on Purim, we will read, in Megillat Esther, a tragicomic fantasy of royal power, expressed through objects, such as limitless food and drink, lavish tapestries, and couches made of solid gold; and through the objectification of women; all designed to satisfy the whims of an impulsive, powerful fool of a king. The Persian fantasy of royal garb shares some physical similarities with the ritual garb of the High Priest, detailed in Tetzavveh. But in Exodus, the Bible adapts royal extravagance when fashioning the religious leader’s symbolic clothing, retaining some of the dazzle, but carving responsibility into the glitter—adding kavod (dignity) to the tiferet (glory). The rabbinic tradition deepens the Bible’s understanding of what it means to be genuinely awe-inspiring, with comments such as those of Seforno.

Seforno’s insight about the awesome teacher invites emulation. We cannot all be the High Priest, but we can be wonderful teachers. We can ask two questions of ourselves, when we teach in a formal setting, or in our homes with our own children and grandchildren, or as mentors in our workplace. We can ask: When I take this person on as my student, am I genuinely carrying his or her name on my heart? Am I successfully carrying his or her name on my shoulders?

If we can answer “yes” to these questions consistently, then we have directed our energy diligently to the service of the text and the student, and we have achieved deep integrity as teachers. Then we become mamlekhet kohanim vegoy kadosh, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. And that is pure gold.

This commentary originally appeared in 2018.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

In this commentary, I would like to focus on some of the vestments of Aaron that he wore in his capacity as kohen gadol (High Priest). At the beginning of , the Torah commands that the Israelites who are skilled artisans should prepare a specific list of items for Aaron and the priests to wear. These include the breastpiece, ephod, robe, fringed tunic, headdress, and sash.

Let us take a closer look at the way in which the Torah describes how Aaron must function vis-à-vis the “clothing items.” First, the “ephod” (a garment):

They shall make the ephod of gold, of blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and of fine twisted linen, worked into designs . . . Then take two lazuli stones and engrave on them the names of the sons of Israel . . . attach the two stones to the shoulder-pieces of the ephod, as stones for remembrance of the Israelite people, whose names Aaron shall carry upon his two shoulder-pieces for remembrance before the LORD.

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Thus, Aaron is to “carry the names” of the Israelites “for remembrance before the LORD.” Later, we shall return to the question of what “carrying” might mean. Secondly, let us examine another of the items, the “breastplate”:

You shall make a “breastpiece of decision” (hoshen mishpat), worked into a design; make it in the style of the ephod . . . Set in it mounted stones, in four rows of stones . . . The stones shall correspond in number to the names of the sons of Israel: twelve . . . On the breastpiece make braided chains of corded work in pure gold . . . Aaron shall carry the names of the sons of Israel on the breastpiece of decision over his heart, when he enters the sanctuary, for remembrance before the LORD at all times. 30 Inside the breastpiece of decision you shall place the Urim and Thummim, so that they are over Aaron’s heart when he comes before the LORD. Thus Aaron shall carry the instrument of decision for the Israelites over his heart before the LORD at all times.

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Once again, Aaron is described as “carrying” (in these instances, the names, again, and the [breastpiece of] decision). Finally, let us look at the “frontlet” (tzitz) that Aaron is to wear on his headdress:

You shall make a frontlet of pure gold and engrave on it the seal inscription: “Holy to the LORD.” 37 Suspend it on a cord of blue, so that it may remain on the headdress; it shall remain on the front of the headdress. 38 It shall be on Aaron’s forehead, that Aaron may carry any sin arising from the holy things that the Israelites consecrate, from any of their sacred donations; it shall be on his forehead at all times, to win acceptance for them before the LORD.

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Here, too, as in each of the other cases, the Torah describes Aaron’s function as “carrying” the item, using the Hebrew verb נשׂא (nassa). However, in the first series of commands, the items that Aaron is to carry are physical objects (e.g., stones on the ephod) that function in some unspecified way “on behalf of the Israelites,” whereas in the last case Aaron is to carry the sins of the Israelites. Thus, the Torah uses figurative language (a metaphor) to describe sin as though it is a physical burden that is “carried.” As it happens, imagining sin as a “burden” is the most typical way in which the Torah describes sin; in later biblical passages, as well as in the vast preponderance of rabbinic literature, sin is imagined as a “debt that must be repaid.”[1]

What might the Torah mean that the “frontlet” (or “blossom”) on the headdress would enable Aaron to “bear” or “carry away” the sins of the Israelites—an act that is reminiscent of the function of the “scapegoat” on Yom Kippur (see : “Thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness”)?

Rashi had offered the conventional wisdom of the talmudic Rabbis: the frontlet expiated sins that the kohanim may have committed when performing the sacrificial service. However, while Rashi does see that Aaron bears/carries the burden of the sin that had formerly “rested on” the holy things, the phenomenology of the frontlet itself is not as clear in Rashi’s explanation: “Aaron lifts the burden of the sin and (somehow) it follows that the iniquity is dispelled (nimtza mesulak ha-avon).”

Rashbam, Rashi’s grandson, goes out of his way to distinguish his explanation from that of his illustrious predecessor—and from every other interpretation that had been offered. He writes: “My grandfather explained [this portion]. I, too, will explain the items in ways that were never explained before” (Rashbam’s comment on ). In his comment on , Rashbam attempts to explain the way in which the frontlet functioned:

Aaron will take away any sin through the sacrifices: According to its contextual interpretation (peshat), the verse does not speak about the impurity of sacrifices [offered in an incorrect manner]. Rather this is its explanation: whatever sacrifices the Israelites might bring—whole-burnt offerings, purgation offerings or guilt offerings—to atone for their sins, the frontlet will help, together with the sacrifice, to cause them to be remembered before the Holy One, for receiving favor on behalf of the Israelites and as a remembrance for them, so that they will realize atonement.

Now, to be sure, the idea that a specific priestly implement or tool might “help God,” as it were, to “remember” the Israelites during the moment of sacrificial worship, and thereby actually work to create the conditions necessary for their atonement—this idea seems antithetical to the way that most of us think about God. So, however superior Rashbam’s contextual reading of the Torah portion might be to that of Rashi, neither reading may speak to our religious sensibilities, the drash that we need to carry within ourselves (!) when we engage the Torah with religious yearnings in our hearts.

Perhaps another way in which both the Bible and subsequent Jewish tradition have understood the Hebrew verb נשׂא (nassa) may help us out of our predicament—even if it does not precisely fit the language of our Torah portion. For this verb, that we have translated “to carry” or “to bear a burden,” may also mean “to be lifted up,” in the sense of “to exalt” or “to be exalted.” In the case of our Torah portion, as in the case of many of the Jewish rituals we perform to this day, and the Jewish ritual objects with which we adorn ourselves and our homes and dining tables—we know that these implements are not totems or actual “power-containing” tools that will “work” on their own. To believe this literally (whether with regard to mezuzot, tefillin, or any other ritual object) is to commit idolatry; or in the Bible’s own language, “to worship gods of wood and stone.” Ritual objects are not “sacred” in and of themselves—they are only “sacred” if they remind us to perform mitzvot, to become better human beings, to be more compassionate and sensitive towards our fellow human beings, and to be more truly worshipful of the One True God. To invoke an ancient midrash on one of the Levitical tasks (see ): the Levites may have been the ones charged with carrying the Ark—but it was the Ark that exalted the Levites. There are many implications of this alternative definition of the verb nassa, but perhaps the most prominent one for now is: we should try our hardest to make sure that the burdens we carry will exalt us instead of weighing us down.

A version of this commentary appeared in 2010.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee and Harold (��”l) Hassenfeld.

[1] For detailed explanation of the figurative language Judaism and Christianity have employed to describe sin, see the wonderful and readable book by Professor Gary Anderson of Notre Dame University, Sin: A History (Yale University Press).

That God should have commanded the construction of the Tabernacle might seem like a natural development, for we are accustomed to having structures where holy objects are housed, where worship is conducted, where a religious community assembles, and where the divine presence is felt to be concentrated. What may come as a surprise is the amount of attention paid to the garments of the priests, especially those of the high priest. It seems out of harmony with the Rabbinic admonition to concentrate on the wine rather than the vessel that holds it. Our religious sensibilities find ostentation incongruent with reverence. Yet the Torah seems fascinated with the garments of the High Priest, enumerating eight items of dress, all made of precious fabrics colored with precious dyes, sparkling with gold thread and golden ornaments, glittering with precious stones, and collectively known as the golden garments.

How our ancestors loved the High Priest’s glittering garments! Writing around 200 BCE, the wise Ben Sira, an eyewitness to the Temple service, wrote of the High Priest Simeon ben Yoḥanan:

How splendid he was when he peered from the tent,
            Emerging from behind the curtain!
Like a gleaming star among the clouds,
            Like the full moon on a festival night,
Like the sun shining on the king’s palace,
            Like the rainbow appearing in a cloud . . .
When he donned the robes of honor,
            Wore his splendid garments.

(Ben Sira 50:5–7, 11)

The Letter of Aristeas, a possibly fictional first-century BCE account of a visitor’s impressions of the Temple, echoes this fascination with the vestments of a high priest named Eleazar:

We were struck with great astonishment when we beheld Eleazar at his ministration, and his apparel, and the visible glory conferred by his being garbed in the coat that he wears and the stones that adorn his person. . . The total effect of the whole arouses awe and emotional excitement.

(Aristeas 96, 100)

The poets who wrote descriptions of the Temple’s Yom Kippur service for the synagogue liturgy were likewise entranced by the high priest’s robes. Like Ben Sira and the author of the Letter of Aristeas, they waxed eloquent in describing the precious stones of the breastpiece. But like the Rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash, the synagogue poets were less interested in the vestments’ luminousness than in their moral symbolism; they enumerated, in verse of a rather didactic style, each garment and the sin for which it was designed to atone. They reserved their more ecstatic effusions for the high priest himself, who is described as follows in an anonymous poem in the Ashkenazi mahzor:

No mention here of the golden garments, for this is a Yom Kippur hymn; and on Yom Kippur, the high priest wore the golden garments only for the rituals that are performed on weekdays and ordinary festive days—the twice-daily offering of a lamb, or renewing the lamps in the lampstand, for example. For the rituals specific to Yom Kippur, such as entering the Holy of Holies or selecting and sending forth the scapegoat, he wore four white garments, containing no gold and adorned with no jewels, and for this reason called the linen garments. The high priest’s radiance as he emerged from the Holy of Holies is thus not ascribed to his garments but to his person and is entirely metaphorical: he glowed not with the gold of the diadem, the gold thread in the fabric of his robes, the flashes from the twelve gems on the breastpiece, or the gems’ gold settings, but with the radiance of contact with the divine.

In truth, the glitter of the golden garments and the dazzle of the linen garments were only pale substitutes for the luminescence that God intended for all mankind when God bestowed garments of light on Adam and Eve.

The Psalmist says that God wears light as a garment, and the Midrash, in its hyperbolic way, expands that one garment of light to ten. When God drove Adam and Eve out of paradise, he dressed them in some of His own garments of light, at least according to one of the sages of old. Perhaps He did this to console Adam and Eve for their loss of Eden and to protect them from the dangers of the natural world now that they were reduced from their original enormous size (for no wild beast would dare approach the divine radiance). But more likely, He intended His gift as an assurance that they would continue to enjoy the proximity of His divine presence and to partake in His divine nature, if only in a reduced way.

Time passed; Adam and Eve’s progeny multiplied and scattered. Man went about his ways, and God’s light in him dimmed. Then God decided to establish His presence among mankind by demanding that His nation of priests construct Him a dwelling—the Tabernacle. By vesting the priests in garments of light, God’s intention must have been to remind men that they had once worn His own garments of light and that His light had radiated consolation, protection, and a divine character that was their very own. Perhaps in the priests’ luminous garb, men would glimpse the divine light in mankind and strive to deserve its restoration in full.

This piece was originally published in 2016.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

This Purim is precisely a year since another scary and confusing event slipped into our lives. Most of us began sheltering in place, changing our behavior in a dramatic way, distancing ourselves from friends and family, working from home, and protecting ourselves by wearing masks in public. As you read this, we are still wearing masks—and not only Purim masks. These masks are not intended to hide our identity behind some pretended new one. These days, donning masks is for a serious purpose, to protect ourselves and the people around us from the virus threatening our health and well-being. However, even these masks can change our behavior and create a sense of distance and secrecy.

The Torah portion we are reading this Shabbat, right in between the day of Purim most of us celebrate and Shushan Purim (which is celebrated in Jerusalem and a few other cities), deals with garments of the High Priest and, implicitly, with the mystery associated with wearing this opulent attire during the sacrificial ceremonies. The Torah illustrates with extreme precision the priestly vestments and the ordinations of Aaron and his sons. The High Priest’s garments are gorgeous, made from the most expensive fabrics, in stunning colors of gold, blue, and crimson, and adorned with the best precious stones.

These garments play several roles. The precious stones embedded in the High Priest’s hoshen (breastplate) represent the whole nation: “Aaron shall carry the names of the sons of Israel on the breastpiece of decision over his heart, when he enters the sanctuary, for remembrance before the LORD at all times” (Exod. 28:29). Similarly, the names of the tribes of Israel are engraved on two lazuli stones on the shoulders of the ephod. The Gemara (BT Zevahim 88b) cites Rabbi Inini bar Sason who asks, “Why was the passage in the Torah that discusses animal sacrifice (Lev. 1–7) juxtaposed to the passage [in Leviticus] that discusses the priestly vestments (Lev. 8)?” He then explains that just as offerings effect atonement, so too, priestly vestments symbolically effect atonement. He continues to list the specific atonement purpose of each element of the vestments. According to the Zohar, “All the priestly garments were emblematic of supernal mystery” (Zohar 2:231a). This mystical reading focuses on the layered nature of the vestments.

Reading this long and detailed section dedicated to the description of clothing, I wonder about the importance attributed to clothing and to the way we present ourselves in public. The Rambam notes that the commandment to dress the High Priest in dazzling garments is not only to enhance the status of the priest himself and the nation he represents, but also to glorify the name of God. Ralph Lee, an American puppeteer known for his nontraditional masks and costumes, often speaks about aspects of wearing masks and costumes and asks: Does a mask hide certain aspects of the wearer? Or give the person the freedom or/and responsibilities to become someone else?

Asking this question as an educator, I am reminded about a short children’s book, The Egg that Disguised Itself (הביצה שהתחפשה) by Dan Pagis. I have used this story when teaching creative dance to young children during Purim, developing the various images presented in the book into dance phrases. The author was born in Bukovina, Romania; lost his mother when he was four years old; spent his early years in a Nazi concentration camp in the Ukraine; immigrated to Palestine in 1946; and became a literature professor and a poet. He wrote many poems, mostly exploring the Holocaust, but he also wrote and illustrated this one children’s book, a book that might be regarded as a straightforward rhyme about an egg that finds itself in an identity crisis, trying to become something different, and, in the end, surrendering to the natural fate of an egg and becoming a baby chick.

Bored and lonely, the egg is looking to be something else, an artificial identity constructed by costumes; limited by its physical form—a round egg—it is looking to free itself from its shape. The egg tries disguise after disguise, but in vain; its “egginess” always shows until at the end, when, found by the mother hen, it develops into its true self, a baby chick. A deeper look at the poem and the work of the poet, reveals Pagis trying to disguise and conceal himself throughout his life: hiding from the Nazis during the war; trying to rid himself of his Diaspora identity by changing his name to an Israeli name; trying to fit in with the local society. However, his writing reveals understanding and acceptance of his true identity, an immigrant in a new country writing about his old country and his life story.

The masks that we are wearing this Purim, and our unnatural social distancing behavior, are both features of a collective responsibility. We don masks to protect not only ourselves, but also the people around us. As the vaccine makes its way into more and more people, and the pandemic at long last ebbs, will we be able to display the same commitment to care for each other once we no longer need to wear masks? Will we learn that the world and ourselves are not exactly the same as we left it a year ago, just before Purim when we began sheltering in place? Will we be capable of developing, maturing, and realizing that we need to reattune ourselves to our new reality?

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

First we read the detailed description of all of the sacral vestments required by the High Priest: the ephod, breastplate, robe, frontlet, tunic, headdress, and sash; and then the parashah turns its attention to the special apparel of the ordinary priests. While each description of the various appurtenances is enticing and aesthetic in its own right, most striking and tantalizing to the senses is the hem of the robe worn by the High Priest. Exodus 28:33-35 teaches,

“On its hem make pomegranates of blue, purple, and crimson yarns, all around the hem, with bells of gold between them all around: a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, all around the hem of the robe. Aaron shall wear it while officiating, so that the sound of it is heard when he comes into the sanctuary before the Lord and when he goes out—that he may not die.”

Why does Torah emphasize the chiming of these golden bells?

Not surprisingly, there are a number of explanations of these bells. Rashbam (Rabbi Shemuel ben Meir) explains that since the High Priest is the only one who may be present when performing the ritual of atonement, the bells chime to signal to others that they must leave the sacred space. The prooftext for Rashbam is found in Leviticus 16:17 which states, “when he [the High Priest] enters the sacred space to make atonement, nobody else will be in the Tent of Meeting until he comes out.” For Rashbam, the bells are needed to express a message to humans.

Nahmanides (Ramban) presents a different view in his commentary, explaining, “God commanded the sounding of the bells so that the priest enter before his Master as if with permission. For one who comes into the King’s palace suddenly incurs the penalty of death, just as we find with King Ahashverosh (Esther 4:11)” In other words, Nahmanides makes the argument that the golden bells serve as a means of announcing one’s presence to God before entering God’s sacred place. Writ large, these commentaries focus on different audiences: either the bells are for other humans (Rashbam) or they are meant for God (Ramban).

Rabbi Shmuel Avidor Hacohen provides an alternative reading arguing that the bells represent how we as individuals relate to God in our soulful lives. Inspired by the portion of the verse which says that the “sound of it is heard when he comes into the sanctuary,” he asks the question “when a person approaches holiness in their lives, is s/he required to raise her/his voice (especially with regard to prayer) or is it better to whisper and employ a more modest voice?” In response, Hacohen turns to two modes of prayer represented by Rabbi Shelomo of Karlin and Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin.

When Rabbi Shelomo of Karlin prayed with his devotees, he encouraged them to pray from a place of passion—employing heartfelt crying out to God and ecstatic body movements. During prayer, he would even cry out, “Bring the fire! Bring the fire!” Their prayer was chaotic, stormy, loud, and expressive. In contrast, Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin taught his followers to pray with a kol demamah dakah, “still small voice.” (cf. 1 Kings 19:12) He encouraged his devotees to learn the discipline of tending to and nurturing the soulful fire that burns within the confines of one’s soul; and then expressing it in a modest, understated way that is true to one’s self but subtle and modest to others.

Jews pray in a multiplicity of ways—between the poles expressed by Rabbi Shelomo and Rabbi Yisrael. While there are Jews that comfortably locate themselves with one or the other—tending toward loud expressive prayer on the one hand or more modest, restrained demeanor on the other—the majority of us embrace the shades of grey in between. There are times in our spiritual lives when we need to call out with a full voice, and other times when we need to embrace that still, small voice inside of us.

Perhaps the models represented by these two modes find their resonance in the introvert / extrovert tension. Extroverts derive energy from connecting passionately with others and being surrounded by people, noise, and energy; introverts on the other hand need their own space. And though introverts may express themselves with a “still, small voice,” their modesty should not be misinterpreted as apathy or indifference.

Rabbi Shelomo and Rabbi Yisrael (and extroverts and introverts) represent two complementary ways of engaging with the world and expressing one’s unique voice. But more than that, I see this as not only reflecting postures toward prayer but also postures on interfacing with life and our world. We need both—not only in the world of spirituality but also in the larger world—especially when it comes to politics, social issues, American Jewish life, and the State of Israel.

Every single one of us journeys through life with a “hem of golden bells.” These bells are indeed unique to each and every one of us. The challenge we are faced with is finding the proper way for the sound of these bells to be heard. The voice of these bells needs to be heard by others, by God, and, perhaps most importantly, by our inner selves. Parashat Tetzavveh gives us the gift of thinking about how we want our special voice heard in the world. To not accept this challenge is to deprive ourselves and others of a precious vehicle toward expressing the unique Image of God inherent in each of us.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

The most important headline of the week (and perhaps the year) did not appear in the top right column of the New York Times last Thursday. That spot—traditionally reserved for the lead story—was given over to the , a scandal likely to be resolved and forgotten in a matter of weeks. Not so the fact that “” This story is likely to shape human history—and the life of the planet—for many years to come; it now seems indisputable that “the quickly rising temperatures . . . correspond with the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by human activity.” Worse, “what sets recent warming apart in the sweep of geologic time is the relatively sudden rise in temperatures and its clear correlation with increasing levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane produced by human activity.”

That link between “the sweep of geologic time” and “human activity” here and now eerily echoes the connection drawn in this week’s Torah portion between the Israelites’ construction of the Tabernacle and God’s creation of heaven and earth. Indeed, the Sages imagined the divine Author of the Torah making that connection explicit. “Rabbi Meir said: ‘The Holy Blessed One said, “The lights that Aaron lights are more cherished by me than the luminaries that I fixed in the heavens.” (Tanhuma, Par. Tetzavveh, siman 2) We read in the Book of Genesis (2:2-3) that on the seventh day of creation, “God finished the work (melakhah) that He had been doing (asah), and He ceased on the seventh day from all the work that He had done.” The same words resound in the account (in next week’s portion) of the choice of Bezalel to supervise the construction of the Tabernacle. “I have endowed him with a divine spirit of skill, ability and knowledge in every kind of craft (melakhah), to make (����’a���dz�: from the root asah) designs for work in gold, silver and copper….to work (����’a���dz�) in every kind of craft (melakhah).” (31:3-5)

Lest we miss the crucial verbal link between divine construction of the cosmos and human construction of the tabernacle, a paragraph reminding the Israelites about observance of the Sabbath follows. “Six days may work be done” (ye’aseh melakhah) but on the seventh day there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord.” (v. 15)

Why this emphasis on the relation between world and Tabernacle? What can it teach us about the challenge to human ingenuity—and survival—posed in our day by climate change?

Ancient, medieval, and modern commentators on these verses could, of course, not foresee the clear and present danger to God’s world that we face in 2019, a threat caused in large part by God’s human creatures. New conditions demand and elicit new readings of Torah. Several things strike me as I read about the building of the Tabernacle alongside the ongoing and ever-worsening news of climate change.

First: the sheer exuberance of the Torah’s account of human interaction with glorious, bountiful nature through labor that produces spaces and objects of utility and beauty. “Make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold.” “As for the Tabernacle, make it of ten strips of cloth; make these of fine twisted linen, of blue, purple and crimson yarns.” “You shall then make cloths of goats’ hair for a tent over the Tabernacle.” “Make five posts of acacia wood for the screen and overlay them with gold—their hooks being of gold—and . . . sockets of copper.” (25:13, 26:31, 7, 37)

In every case, the act of making—human workmanship applied to elements of nature, organic or inorganic, produces objects that serve human needs and elevate the human spirit. The level of detail in these chapters is staggering—colors, fabrics, metals, woods, precious stones; carving, etching, hewing, weaving. The symmetry and precision on view—this number of cubits here, that number there, not more and not less—bears eloquent witness to what my teacher Philip Rieff called “sacred order.” The ritual must be done just this way, at just this time, wearing these garments and no others. The order is precious, life-giving, holy. It builds and maintains worlds.

The accounts and images of climate change tell the exact opposite story: drought here, flood there, unprecedented forest fires and hurricanes, melting glaciers, a colored shades of bright red and orange to capture “total change in temperature 1970-2018” (as seen in last week’s Times article). Disorder and destruction are everywhere. Human, animal, and plant life are wantonly extinguished or put at extreme risk. that global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius—likely to occur “between 2030 and 2052 if [warming] continues to increase at the current rate,” will pose “risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security, and economic growth.” The report takes care not to exaggerate or indulge in generalities. Its order too seeks to be life-giving. To me, that work is holy in the extreme.

That points to a second parallel between the news reports about climate change and the Torah’s account of the building of the Tabernacle. In both cases, routine prose—technical and repetitious—points to horrific danger. The price paid for higher carbon emissions is drought, disease, death. “If the world is to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, global temperatures must not rise by more than two degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels. It appears highly likely, at least from today’s perspective, that that line will be crossed.”

One can almost forget, as one reads the similarly dry accounts in Parashat Tetzavveh about kindled lamps and priestly vestments, that the Tabernacle will be a site of wholesale killing of livestock. The Israelites are never allowed to forget that they are mortal, just like the animals they sacrifice. Someday their lives too will end. The point of sacred order is not to repress this fact but to contain it in a realm of higher meaning, not to encourage the sort of nihilism one sometimes hears in connection with climate change—what does it matter if the earth goes to hell; we’ll all be dead soon enough anyway—but to insist that life, however short, is infinitely precious, and can be ennobled. God has pronounced this world to be “very good,” and human beings, created in God’s image, have the responsibility to help fulfill that promise, for our generation and all that follow us.

The primary lesson of the Torah’s account of the Tabernacle’s construction, is that the partnership between God and humanity—mediated in this case by the Children of Israel—is needed to sustain and sanctify the world. The scientists cited earlier employ “skill, ability and knowledge” related to that with which God endowed Bezalel. There is no belittling of human agency, capacity, or importance in the Torah in order to highlight the greater powers of God. Quite the opposite. “You shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him . . . gold, silver and copper; blue, purple, and crimson yarns, . . . acacia wood; oil for lighting, spices . . . lapis lazuli and other stones.” (25:3-7) All are gifts of nature, many of them worked by humans minds and hands using skills that are likewise gifts. None of what is brought to the building project—not the materials, not the skills—is entirely “owned” by the human beings who bring it. All of it comes to them on loan, as it were. They give back from what is given to them.

Today, God needs human partners with the knowledge, skill, determination, and wisdom to save the planet from destruction. We will read in Parashat Vayak-hel that “the whole community of the Israelites” responded to God’s call and participated in construction of the Tabernacle. “And everyone who excelled in ability and everyone whose spirit moved him came . . . Men and women, all whose hearts moved them . . . to bring anything for the work that the Lord, through Moses, had commanded to be done, brought it as a freewill offering to the Lord.” (35: 21-29)

Today, when every single one of us is needed in order to keep the increase in temperature at or below 1.5 degrees Celsius—men and women, scientists and construction workers, rich and poor, heads of state and heads of NGO’s and corporations, in our country and in every country, working alone and working together—the all-inclusive call and response of the ancient Israelites takes on new and unprecedented importance.

The construction of the Tabernacle took place immediately after the worship of the Golden Calf. God had threatened to destroy the Israelites because of that sin. They are spared thanks to Moses’s intercession. Their relief and gratitude for life are poured into the gifts they bring. We now stand before, not after, a comparable threat of destruction—this one of our own making. Our resolve will have to be powered by fear as well as gratitude. There is much that each and every one of us can do to stave off the disaster at hand and rebuild the sanctuary we call planet Earth.

This week’s Torah portion ends by telling us that Aaron’s work in the Tabernacle is “most holy to the Lord.” (30:10) The same must be said of our effort to save the Creation after which the Tabernacle is modeled.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

We read in Exodus 28:2, “And you shall make sacred garments for Aaron your brother, for honor and for glory.” On the word tiferet (glory), Seforno asserts that the High Priest will be a kohen-moreh norah, an awesome priest-teacher. He explains, שהם תלמידיו החקוקים על לבו וכתפיו, “for they are his students who are engraved on his heart and shoulders.”

This phrase refers to the names of the tribes of Israel, which were engraved on gemstones worn by the High Priest as part of his ritual garb: the High Priest wore avnei-shoham, which were probably lapis lazuli, in the form of an epaulet on each shoulder, each stone engraved with the names of six tribes of Israel, totaling twelve names. He also wore twelve different gems, arrayed in rows on the breastplate of judgment, set in gold. Each gem on the breastplate was individually engraved with the name of a tribe of Israel (Exod. 28:6–11, 15–21).

Why was the High Priest adorned with tribes’ names on his shoulders and his chest? We can speculate that wearing the names of his people was meant to keep the supreme religious leader humble, remembering who he represents before God. But Seforno’s comment directs us away from the topic of religious leadership, to the seemingly unrelated field of education.

Seforno borrows the phrase priest-teacher from II Chronicles 15:3, in which a troubled era of Israelite history is decried as being “bereft of a priest-teacher and bereft of Torah.” He seizes on this brief biblical allusion to the priest functioning as a teacher to define what it takes to be a master educator.

For Seforno, as I understand him, a master teacher who carries her students’ names engraved on her shoulders takes responsibility for them, for what they learn. This is task-orientation. A master teacher who carries her students’ names engraved on her heart cares about her students. This is person-orientation. A master teacher practices both.

These two essential values in teaching, caring about the subject matter and caring about the student, can conflict. A teacher who is very focused on covering a substantial amount of course material by a set date might overlook how her student learns. As a result, the student might master the data superficially, never connecting imaginatively with material that requires imaginative engagement; or emotionally with material that demands emotional connection; or critically, with material that requires independent thought. Will this student ever love the subject enough to learn more on his own? This teacher’s focus on powering through the material may neglect whether it will become meaningful to her student.

A teacher who focuses too much on the person, on the other hand, may become overly concerned about the emotional comfort of her student, and might relax her demands that the student develop the discipline to learn complex material. This teacher risks not challenging her student enough, allowing the student to evade the hard work of mastering essential content or skills. This teacher’s focus on how the student feels can neglect what the student learns.

Extreme emphasis on either task-orientation or person-orientation is not desirable. The wise teacher works perennially in the creative tension between the two.

Fortunately, teachers can change: they can learn! A teacher can recognize her own teaching preference or bias, identifying whether she is naturally inclined toward task-oriented teaching or person-oriented teaching, and she can work to balance her instincts with what her students need. Such self-knowledge allows the “awesome” teacher to uphold educational standards and be sensitive to the ways different students’ minds and imaginations work. Steady expressions of interest in both—in the content and in the student—make for a stable and rich learning environment for the student.

Next week, on Purim, we will read, in Megillat Esther, a tragicomic fantasy of royal power, expressed through objects, such as limitless food and drink, lavish tapestries, and couches made of solid gold; and through the objectification of women; all designed to satisfy the whims of an impulsive, powerful fool of a king. The Persian fantasy of royal garb shares some physical similarities with the ritual garb of the High Priest, detailed in Tetzavveh. But in Exodus, the Bible adapts royal extravagance when fashioning the religious leader’s symbolic clothing, retaining some of the dazzle, but carving responsibility into the glitter—adding kavod (dignity) to the tiferet (glory). The rabbinic tradition deepens the Bible’s understanding of what it means to be genuinely awe-inspiring, with comments such as those of Seforno.

Seforno’s insight about the awesome teacher invites emulation. We cannot all be the High Priest, but we can be wonderful teachers. We can ask two questions of ourselves, when we teach in a formal setting, or in our homes with our own children and grandchildren, or as mentors in our workplace. We can ask: When I take this person on as my student, am I genuinely carrying his or her name on my heart? Am I successfully carrying his or her name on my shoulders?

If we can answer “yes” to these questions consistently, then we have directed our energy diligently to the service of the text and the student, and we have achieved deep integrity as teachers. Then we become mamlekhet kohanim vegoy kadosh, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. And that is pure gold.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).