TETZAVEH
TETSAVEH (Exodus 27:20-30:10) “and you shall command” is the parsha in which sacrifice as a major theme of organized Israelite religion is introduced. The parsha opens with a highly detailed (not to say boring, if it is not your thing) discussion of priestly clothing, including the commandment that the priests have to wear breeches underneath their robes because we wouldn’t want them to flash anyone when they climb the steps of the altar (28:43). This is followed by a discussion of priestly ordination. We are introduced to the terms “sin offering” (29:14), “burnt offering” (29:18), “elevation offering” (29:24) and “peace offerings” (29:28). This discussion of sacrifices concludes with a description of the altar upon which to burn incense and its use (30:1-10).
I want to discuss four themes.
Divination.
Rites of passage
Embodiedness and the divine
Implications of the altar having the ability to transfer holiness
Divination is a highly common practice throughout human history. This parsha introduces us to the most ancient Jewish system of the Urim and Tummim that are on the breastplate of judgment of the high priest (28:30). What are the Urim and Tummim? Friedman writes “We have pondered for centuries what they are. They have something to do with inquiring of YHVH for an answer to a question…They are mentioned four times in Torah…We must admit it: we just don’t know what they are.” (p.268)
We want to know answers about the future, they aren’t obvious, so we need some kind of path into this knowledge. Some may say that science gives us tools to predict the future in a way that our ancestors could not. While we certainly have a broader perspective than our ancestors did because we have a ton more information, are we able to predict the future any better? I’m not so sure.
Even with our technological advances, we have an utter myriad of divination practices available to us. We have astrology, psychics of all sorts, Tarot cards, the Oracle of Kabbalah written by my friend Richard Seidman, palm readers, indigenous divination systems of all sorts involving shells, beads, chicken scratches etc. Business is booming.
Some of it is undoubtedly fake or a function of wish fulfillment, but I am inclined to think that some practitioners have an ability to tap into a source of knowledge that I simply can’t. I have no experience at all doing any kind of divination, and completely minimal experience being on the receiving end. I include this here not because I have anything intelligent to say about it, but because I want everyone to know how much divination practices are legitimate indigenous Jewish practices. I also would be remiss to not include an incredibly common and core practice in the human relationship to the divine or to the unknown.
What’s your experience with divination? Do you think the need for it has been replaced by our enhanced technological capabilities and/or scientific knowledge?
Rites of passage are social rituals that effect a change in status of the person undergoing the initiation. “Rites of passage” is a highly ambiguous term in the way we use it today. I want to reserve it’s use for something very specific, and that something is perfectly captured in this parsha in the ordination of the priests. My definition in the first sentence of this paragraph is derived from a lot of years of studying ritual, reading the core academic theoreticians and crystallized by reading Plotkin’s highly salient comments in Journey to Soul Initiation (pp. 361-6).
Think of a wedding. If you undergo the ritual, before you were single and afterwards you are married. Think of a brit milah. Before the ritual you weren’t circumcised and afterwards you are and are a member of the Jewish people in some sense. (basically—it’s more complicated in some cases). Think of a funeral—before the funeral you are in a liminal state—dead, not buried. After the funeral you are buried. These rites all effect a change in the status of the person undergoing the ritual.
Rites of passage may or may not entail any kind of personal transformation. Are you any different on a deep level the morning after your wedding? After the bris of your son? After the funeral of someone? Are Aaron’s sons transformed after they become priests in this parsha? Maybe, maybe not. Deep transformation isn’t the purpose of the rite of passage, the change in social status is.
Rites of passage also tend to be fairly short, with the variation being the preparation period. Think of Rabbinic Ordination or a College graduation. The actual ceremony, the rite of passage usually lasts only a few hours. There’s years of work leading up to it, but the actual ritual itself doesn’t take long.
Why is this definitional work important? I’m a big believer that having more precise and clear definitions of terms can help our thinking. My overall project is facilitating earth based Jewish transformational initiation. Transformational initiation does not depend upon rites of passage, though it may be facilitated by it. Vision fasts in the wilderness are often crucial in transformational initiation, but they simply are not rites of passage because there is no social status change in our society.
Now let’s look at our rite of passage in this parsha. “This is what you shall do to them in consecrating them to serve me [YHVH] as priests.” (29:1) The text then goes on to describe the ritual action consisting of the presentation of the bull and 2 rams, unleavened bread and cakes, oil, priestly vestments and what the ordinands need to do. This is the entire burden of Chapter 29. How long does this last? “Thus you shall do to Aaron and his sons, just as I have commanded you. You shall ordain them through seven days.” (29:35). This is exactly a rite of passage. Before it started, these men were not priests, and upon the conclusion they are. From laymen to priests, a rite of passage.
What rites of passage have you been through? What transformative experiences have you had? What was the difference?
Embodiedness and the divine. We are told three times in this chapter to burn the fat on the altar because the smell pleases YHVH. We will see this repeatedly in Leviticus. Here is typical language “It is a burnt offering to YHVH, a pleasing odor, an offering by fire to YHVH (29:18, see also 29:25 and 29:41). The parsha also closes with the description of the incense altar that is near the ark. YHVH commands our ancestors “On it, Aaron shall burn aromatic incense: he shall burn it every morning when he tends the lamps and Aaron shall burn it at twilight when he lights the lamps—a regular incense offering before YHVH throughout the ages.” (30:7-8)
Sacrifices are a whole body experience. Having herded cattle and sheep in my life, but never having slaughtered them directly, I can tell you that bringing the young bull and the two rams to the altar (the sacrificed animals in this parsha for priestly ordination) wasn’t as simple as putting a harness on your dog, attaching a leash and having him or her come along for a walk. I would be willing to bet that sacrifices had a distinct non pleasing odor of pee, poop and fear from the animals since that’s what happens with scared cows. And that’s before you add the factor of the smell of the blood from the first animal sacrificed. Being at a sacrifice just isn’t the same as sitting in the pews or even outdoors at a service—it’s much more visceral.
The visceral quality of sacrifice and YHVH’s desire for sensuous pleasure is a huge problem for theologians such as Maimonides or the high church theologians who influenced Reform Judaism. They believed that the divine is above all earthly things and wanted a religion of decorum. YHVH, our text tells us, wanted things to smell good and was grounded in an earthly way. Many theologians want to wipe away the text by claiming it is all a metaphor. But I think this reading both disembodies the divine and isn’t true to the text.
Do you think the divine is embodied? In what sense? Relatedly, have you ever experienced full bodied, visceral worship? How is that different than the typical worship experience of sitting in a chair and occasionally standing up?
The alter is consecrated right after Aaron and his sons are ordained. “Seven days you shall perform purification for the altar to consecrate it, and the altar shall become most holy; whatever touches the altar shall become consecrated. (29:37). So it sure seems like the altar has a rite of passage that takes seven days, just like the priests do. Indeed, maybe the altar is holier than the priests, because the text does not imply that the priests can transfer their consecration to anything else at all, let alone everything that they touch or that touches them.
It's really interesting to me that this altar is a human made object. I am an animist, so I believe that a river, for instance, can be sacred and certainly is alive and has equal ontological status as humans. But I have more trouble with things we humans have created. In what sense is the computer on which I type this alive? I think it is Freya Matthews the philosopher who quotes a native Australian thinker who says that of course, the rusted out cars that dot the village are as alive as the trees because they too are come from the earth.
But if our altars are ontological equal to trees and people, why are they more powerful than the priests? After all, if you touch a priest, you are still just an Israelite, you don’t become consecrated. There’s some sense, I think, in which the charged object retains the charge in a way that the priest does not.
Do you believe that human made objects can be holy such as the altar? What, if any, is the significance of the altar being more sacred or more powerful than the priests, if you follow my interpretation of the text?
QUESTIONS
What’s your experience with divination? Do you think the need for it has been replaced by our enhanced technological capabilities and/or scientific knowledge?
What rites of passage have you been through? What transformative experiences have you had? What was the difference?
Do you think the divine is embodied? In what sense? Relatedly, have you ever experienced full bodied, visceral worship? How is that different than the typical worship experience?
Do you believe that human made objects can be holy such as the altar? What, if any, is the significance of the altar being more sacred or more powerful than the priests, if you follow my interpretation of the text?
Urim and Thummim. 12 tribes