Tetzaveh: Sacrificial Labor

MOST IMPORTANT: THIS WEEK’S PARSHA IS NOT TETZAVEH, DO NOT WORRY.

Hello, dear readers! I have been writing this newsletter for two-plus years now; I have written on almost every parsha! Because I love completeness, over the next few months I will be writing and sending out divrei Torah on the parshiyot I have missed. This is the first one! 

Another important thing to know: I am, God willing, getting ordained as a rabbi in exactly twenty days from now! I will be spending the next year in Berlin, teaching locally and online, and writing. As part of that, I’ll be adding a subscription option for folks who want to support my ongoing work!! I’m going to be sending out an email with more about that later today – but the most important thing is, this Torah writing will remain free and accessible. 

And another thing: I’m Instagramming Torah now, too!! Find me here if that’s your jam.

When I was in elementary school, I loved the projects we would do for Parshat Tetzaveh. Paper dolls that we could color in and dress up in the vestments of the Kohen Gadol, carefully filling in lines with blue and purple and red – and many tiny squares for the jewels of the Choshen Mishpat. I loved the colors, the crafty thrill of putting the tiny ephod on the tiny flat High Priest, a holy Flat Stanley. I was sad to age out of this yearly parsha ritual. 

I am learning how to ride a bike. This seems like obvious dvar Torah fodder. To put in effort to learn a new skill in my twenties, one I had previously avoided because I was scared of falling. To schlep to the Bronx to meet two dozen other adults who exchanged equally sheepish smiles as we learned to balance like the kids zooming around us on the flat paved park surface. To take a deep breath and trust in my own balance. 

But I have been feeling resistant to making that experience into a dvar Torah. Learning to ride a bike is part of a life that feels, right now, raw and squishy. I’m grieving, and I don’t actually want to write about it lyrically for a Substack post. It’s my grief, not something that I want to be public. 

In looking for something to write about Tetzaveh, I of course turned to my favorite part, the careful sewing and weaving and dyeing and polishing of the Divinely glamorous bigdei kehuna. But this time, what stood out to me was a garment I never spent much time on when Kohanim were paper dolls: the Priestly underwear. 

These linen pants, which go under the rest of the priestly garments, are mentioned only after the section seems to be completed. After the detailed descriptions of the other garments, the section seems to come to a conclusion:

וְלִבְנֵי אַהֲרֹן תַּעֲשֶׂה כֻתֳּנֹת וְעָשִׂיתָ לָהֶם אַבְנֵטִים וּמִגְבָּעוֹת תַּעֲשֶׂה לָהֶם לְכָבוֹד וּלְתִפְאָרֶת׃  …

וְהִלְבַּשְׁתָּ אֹתָם אֶת־אַהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ וְאֶת־בָּנָיו אִתּוֹ וּמָשַׁחְתָּ אֹתָם וּמִלֵּאתָ אֶת־יָדָם וְקִדַּשְׁתָּ אֹתָם וְכִהֲנוּ לִי׃

And for Aaron’s sons also you shall make tunics, and make sashes for them, and make turbans for them, for dignity and adornment.

Put these on your brother Aaron and on his sons as well; anoint them, and ordain them and consecrate them to serve Me as priests.

(Shemot 28:40-41)

Then, almost as an afterthought to the main descriptions of the vestments of regular and High priests, the parsha tells us:

וַעֲשֵׂה לָהֶם מִכְנְסֵי־בָד לְכַסּוֹת בְּשַׂר עֶרְוָה מִמׇּתְנַיִם וְעַד־יְרֵכַיִם יִהְיוּ׃

You shall also make for them linen breeches to cover their nakedness; they shall extend from the hips to the thighs.

(Shemot 28:42)

It is notable that this commandment to make breeches to “cover the nakedness” of the priests is not integrated with the rest of the description of the garments. The section wraps up, and then we find this addition. 

The medieval Biblical commentator the Chizkuni notices this oddity. He writes:

מכנסי בד לפי שנאמר בם לכסות בשר ערוה, לא נאמר בם לכבוד ולתפארת. 

“Linen trousers,” since it is described [that their purpose] is to cover private parts, it does not describe them as “for dignity and adornment.”

The Chizkuni attributes the added-on nature of the verse about underwear as teaching that the underwear is not a fundamental part of the Priestly outfit. These pants are not needed “ לכבוד ולתפארת,” for the broader project of glory and dignity of the Temple and its workers, but for the more mundane goal of the priests’ privacy. Notl of the parts of these outfits serve the same purpose. 

The journalist Sarah Jaffe, in her book Work Won’t Love You Back, describes the pressures artists face to work out of a sense of passion even without fair or livable compensation. She writes:

It is the artists, still, who have made art valuable, and in so often that is because they have done their work out of love, and in fact have done plenty of other work in order to be able to support their art. Sociologist Andre Ross called this “sacrificial labor,” a way that one gives up certain facets of stability in order to pursue work that is seen as meaningful – more meaningful, perhaps, than even person relationships. (This notion echoes, of course, the conditions of the nonprofit worker.) Artists, after all, must love their work above all other things. 

(Page 194)

It is easy to imagine the Kohen as a paper doll, dressed in colored-in Priestly Vestments for the sake of a class project. But these were real people, doing literal “sacrificial labor” as the burned animals, sprinkled blood, and burned incense. But they got to have underwear – they did not have to devote their entire selves to the Temple, to their passion for sacred work. Much of their clothing was for kavod and tifaret, honor and splendor. But the Chizkuni teaches that some of it was just because people get to have parts of ourselves we keep private. 

The temptations of being a Torah-teaching person (God willing, very soon, “rabbi” will be the word I use) is to bring my love of Torah and am Yisrael into every part of my life – and to offer every part of my life into the Torah I share. I believe so strongly in Torah that speaks to and draws from all the experiences we have, all the experiences we bring – but we still get to choose which experiences those are. 

Sacred work is still work, and part of what keeps it sacred is that it does not demand every last drop of our identities to be profound. I can ride a bike and thrill at the new skill and glow with pride at my own bravery and not compare that to a single pasuk. I can mourn and not turn it into writing for anyone else to read. Priests, after all, got to take off their clothes at the end of the day.