This week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh, offers instructions about the garb and gear of the Kohen Gadol – the High Priest. The instructions start with the bigdei kodesh – “the clothing of holiness,” or maybe it might be translated as “the clothing of separation,” that the High Priest wears in this very lonely job.
The required haute couture includes an ephod or kind of apron garment adorned with gold and three colors of thread worked into designs, and two lapis lazuli stones with the names of the twelve sons of Jacob etched onto them, so that Aharon the High Priest will remember who it is he represents in his priesting.
Then there are braids of gold. And a breastplate made of all those same materials, plus four rows of three gems – sapphire, emerald, ruby. turquoise, jasper – we don’t actually know what all the stones named in Torah are. But twelve distinct precious stones, each one specifically associated with one of the tribes.
And there are gold rings attaching the breastplate to the ephod so nothing comes loose. So that the names and mineralogical representations of the Children of Israel will be locked in place over Aharon’s chest, whenever he is in the sanctuary, so that God, looking into Aharon’s heart, will first have to pass through and remember the community.
Then there are the urim and thumim, some sort of divination device for making difficult decisions, and these are also attached to the outfit.
Then a pure blue robe embroidered at the collar, and at the bottom hem, needlework pomegranates alternating with actual gold bells. The fact that the bells on the hem make noise seems to be the exact point of them. The noise lets God know that that Aharon is on his way into the sanctuary, lest he catch the Divine at unawares and die in the process.
Then there is a frontlet or diadem called a tzitz, perched on the forehead, etched with the words kadosh Ladonai, “Holy to Adonai,” as a kind of device to draw away and off-gas any sin or shmutz attached to the holy items that the people have brought to the mishkan.
And there’s more. Tunic and sash and turban and pants. This whole ensemble is to be worn when the High Priest approaches the altar to carry out the sacrifices through which the people discharge their sins, or make restitution to the community or to God, or celebrate their healing or good fortune.
I love that fact that Torah – not just Torah, but our people – poured so much care into the regalia of the High Priest. As someone with 21 years of drag experience, I can appreciate the draw of a good outfit. And this is a good outfit.
I think we tend to conceive of the complexity and grandeur of the High Priest’s costume as being for the purpose of display. A show of authority. Like a monarch in crown and robes, or a military general donning leaves and stars and insignia. A demonstration to the people of their power and authority.
Or maybe it is meant to be a reflection of the very Divine that the priest has to engage with. It is a transmutation of the glory, the kavod, of God into sartorial form – a physical, fabric-and-stone imprint of the intangible holiness with which the priest must commune.
This year, reading the portion, I was especially struck by the way in which the priest’s garb serves as a kind of armor. Torah keeps saying it. This outfit, properly worn, will protect the priest from death-by-Divine-proximity.
The suggestion here is that encountering God up close is dangerous. It is mortal danger. We see it later with the death of Aharon’s sons. We see God repeatedly warning humans not to get too close. There is peril in Divine power. And the priest’s suit acts as a kind of Faraday cage, enclosing the priest and deflecting the raw power of the Divine. Inside the suit, surrounded by the stones and gems and gold and the frontlet, the priest is in a protected space. Somehow, in this complicated, heavy, unwieldy getup, the priest still manages to offer sacrifices, with all the physical labor and anatomical reality that that entails.
But the protection that the costume offers runs in a couple of directions. The priest is protected not only from the unchecked power of the Divine, but also from the sins and discontents and suffering of the people. All of the human pain that the priest carries to the altar as messenger: this poses danger too. The priest is, after all, another human being. And how can any person hold other people’s pain and sorrows and joys every day without harm?
This question is alive for me right now. It’s alive for me in my role as rabbi – especially a rabbi serving in pandemic times and fire times; just an awareness of what I am expected – or expect myself – to hold on behalf of the community I serve. But not just me. I’m aware of the emotional burden of so many people serving in modern priestly roles: therapists, social workers, doctors, nurses, chaplains, emergency workers, teachers, and people who, like many in this room, are just helpers and caregivers without having a job title attached to that service. People who respond to suffering and try to alleviate it and minister people through it. How do you do this without succumbing to the pain of it all?
The priest’s regalia, as described in this week’s portion, are not just fancy clothes but protection magic. Designed to deflect, to protect, to allow the priestly service to continue despite the magnitude of what the priest processes.
So I ask you: what is your protection magic?
This is a difficult time we’re living in. We are under so much pressure – climate pressure, pandemic pressure. And then there are health and family and political stresses. All of this makes us tense and messy. How do we protect ourselves from each other’s messiness without closing our hearts to each other’s complexity? What is the protection we need in order to continue to be of service, to continue our Divine service, whatever that service is? What is the equivalent of that frontlet, the tzitz on our brow, that can somehow leach some of the personal harm out of the close contact with others people’s suffering?
I don’t have an answer. I have friends who have given careful study to Jewish protection magic – and we do have quite a tradition of it, from hamsas to written amulets to the Ana B’khoach prayer to bulsikas – little amulet bags with garlic and pungent herbs in them. The mezuzah that we hang in the doorpost, yes, comes from the v’ahavta language about “writing these words on the doorposts of thy house,” but we all, I think, perceive and treat the mezuzah as a kind of protective talisman, and in treating it like that, that is what it becomes, as it guards and reinforces our most literal of boundaries.
I’m not arguing for the objective magical qualities of any of these things. A hamsa might just be a good reminder-to-self of our ability to hold a boundary; to say I will take in this much of your suffering, friend, or this much of your suffering, Earth. But then, the rest of it, no.
I’m not arguing that these items and practices are magical or supernatural. But I am arguing that it is important for all of us to find the practices, visualizations, objects, prayers, or even clothes that strengthen us and our boundaries; that permit us to remain permeable enough to feel compassion, and impermeable enough not to be repeatedly harmed by what we are feeling compassion about.
I’ve been very aware of my own over-permeability for a while now. I take everything in – the pain and also the love – and let very little of it out. It has felt particularly acute for me this week. And then today I had a laugh with our friend Janet Rae on the phone. I don’t even remember what the laugh was about. But I felt the laughter rise up and circle around me, lifting some of my burden and creating a lovely, joy-filled force-field. In that moment I was reminded that protection magic does not need to be ink on parchment or garlic in the pocket. It can be as simple as laughter, companionship, witnessing, good soup, breath, rest. All of these can help us metabolize what we encounter, what we draw into ourselves, integrating what we need to learn and what is important for us to feel, and letting go of the elements that cause us harm.
There is no armor we can wear that is impermeable. Nor would we want to wear it. It would so quickly become stifling and confining, and make us feel more isolated than we do now. But we can draw our loving attention to our own self-care and wellbeing. And invite in the protection that we need, in whatever form we need it, knowing that it, too, will be inscribed with the words kadosh Ladonai – “holy to Adonai.”
And fine: sewing bells onto the bottom of our hems? It probably couldn’t hurt.