Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Practical Parasha Podcast. This is Rabbi Shlemocon, and I hope you are well.
[00:00:08] Time is just flying by.
[00:00:11] It's almost Purim next week. Monday night, Tuesday, outside of Jerusalem, it's going to be Purim.
[00:00:20] Purim in Jerusalem is on Wednesday.
[00:00:23] But I just can't believe it. I felt like a few weeks ago it was beginning. We're starting out. The Torah Parsha is Paratius. The year is just flying by every week. Another amazing parsha.
[00:00:36] So before we begin, as always, if you have any questions, comments, would like to reach out to say hello. I love getting your emails.
[00:00:45] My email address is rabbi shlomo kon kohnmail.com I'd love to hear from you.
[00:00:51] This week's parsha is parshas.
[00:00:56] Now, the weekly Torah portion is continuing with the discussion of the Mishkan, the tabernacle. But this week, the focus, primarily in Parshas Tetzavah, is dealing with the vestments of the kohanim, the clothing, the special clothing, the big day kahuna, the clothing of the kohanim that the kohanim, the priests would wear when they would do the service in the tabernacle and in the temple.
[00:01:30] And the parsha also details for us how these clothings were to be made, how it's supposed to be set up, the different garments of the Kohen versus the Kohen gadol, the high priest, the regular Kohen versus a high priest.
[00:01:46] Uh, a regular Kohen had four garments. A Kohen Gadl had eight garments.
[00:01:51] And the parsha goes into tremendous detail to give us a picture of how these priestly garments, Big day Kahuna, looked and how they were to be made.
[00:02:05] Additionally, this week's parasha also talks about the inaugurational service, this ritual that would be done when everything was completed.
[00:02:14] And the parasha concludes with the tummid offering, the special carbon that was given twice a day, and the incense altar, the altar where the ketorah would be offered. It tells us that that's how the parsha finishes the special altar where the ketorah, the incense was offered. And we'll talk a little bit later today in the podcast about why is it that the.
[00:02:39] The building of the altar, which seems to be one of the vessels of the tabernacle, should be in last week's parsha. Why is it here when this week's parsha deals with the vestments? Last week we dealt with the actual building of the tabernacle and all the different vessels and the altars that were inside. So why is it seems to be out of place? We'll get to that hopefully a little bit later on.
[00:03:06] Now, the first idea I want to share with you today takes us to the beginning of the parsha.
[00:03:11] Now, the beginning of the parsha, uh, talks about the oil that also is to be used for the menorah.
[00:03:18] But right away, the parsha segues into the kohanim and the vestments that they would wear.
[00:03:27] Now, it's very interesting to note that in the tabernacle, in the Mishkan, only the kohanim, only the priests who were the sons of Aaron, the descendants of Aron Hakohen, that's what a kohen is. A kohanim is someone who descends from Aron Hakohen, from the sons of Aaron, only they could work in the Mishkan to do this service.
[00:03:54] And subsequently, after the mishkan, the temple, only the kohanim were the ones who were, who did the avodah, did the service in the Beis Hamikdash, no one else had the ability or the right to perform the service.
[00:04:11] Even if the king of Israel, if David Hamelech, would want to do the service in the Beis Hamigda, she would be forbidden from doing so.
[00:04:19] Only the kohanim. And in fact, if someone else, someone who is a tsar, a foreigner, meaning someone who is not a kohen, performs the avodah, uh, the service in the tabernacle or in the Beis Hamikdash, they would be liable to death.
[00:04:38] Now, it's not just that, uh, a tsar, a foreigner, someone who is a non kohen, cannot do the avodah, cannot do the service.
[00:04:47] But even a, uh, kohen, a person who was from the sons of Aaron, right, he descended from Aaron Hakohen, someone who normally is allowed to do the service in the Beis Hamiglesh, in the temple or in the tabernacle, if he would perform the service without the special bikte kahuna, without these vestments, these priestly vestments that the Torah commands, the kohen tawir, the kohen who would do this service, he's equated to a tsar, a foreigner, during the service doing the service of the peis hamiglis or the temple of the tabernacle, he's also liable to death for this. Because even though a kohen is supposed, uh, to do the avodah, it's their job. But if he does it not in the special clothing of the kohanim, the big dikuhuna, which we're going to talk about in this week's Parasha, the special begadim, the special garments that were made special for the service.
[00:05:48] He's liable to be punished by death.
[00:05:51] Now, it's interesting about these clothing, these clothing, these items, these garments.
[00:05:59] The money that was used to create them, to make them, to, you know, to fund them, it had to be money that came from the nation. It couldn't come from one person.
[00:06:14] It came from everybody.
[00:06:16] And it's also interesting to note that the clothing themselves, they were extremely beautiful. They looked different. They were, it was, you know, it would blow a person away. The sight of, you know, these priestly garments, the kohanim, the priests, and especially the high priests who had even more garments, these special type of interesting looking garments.
[00:06:40] And really the question that, uh, I want to ask is, like, what's the idea behind these priestly garments? Right. You think for a second I could maybe ask. Because, like, you know, God knows the difference between, you know, which clothes the Cohen is wearing.
[00:06:57] It makes a difference to Hashem, the clothes, uh, the garments that each one of the priests have on while either doing the service. Fine. I could understand that. It has to be the sons of Aaron. They were the ones who merited it, right? Maybe you could say that. But what is it? What's the importance that the kohanim must wear these special garments?
[00:07:19] And they have to be funded from the nation as a whole, and they could only be worn during the service. That was the only time they were allowed to be worn. Right. What's the significance behind them?
[00:07:34] What's the lesson that we can take out of it? The commentaries go into the tremendous depth of each one of these articles of clothing, that each one of them atoned for different transgressions that the nation, um, might have done.
[00:07:56] For example, it's brought down that the mikhnasayim, the pants, the special pants of the kohanim and the koin gadol, would atone for the sin of immorality.
[00:08:08] The mitznefes, right? These, the mitznefes was a special turban that the, uh, coingado would wear.
[00:08:17] Or for a regular cone, it was migbaas. It's these special hats with a tone for arrogance. The Avnate, which was worn over the heart, atoned for improper thoughts and so on and so forth. Each one of the garments, you know, corresponded to a different sin that maybe occurred within the Jewish people. And they atoned. They atoned for the nation.
[00:08:43] But there's another beautiful lesson which I saw brought down by Rav Hirsch.
[00:08:47] Rav Hirsch explains that it was necessary for the Kohanim to wear these garments. Obviously, there is much depth that behind each one of these garments because Hashem g D has commanded us to make them in a certain way and they have a certain effect.
[00:09:05] But aside from that, there's a tremendous lesson that we see from the Kohanim and their obligation to wear these garments.
[00:09:13] He says that when a kohen would do the service in the Beis Hamikdash, he wasn't doing his own service.
[00:09:22] He was doing something for the sake of and for the benefit of the Jewish nation as a whole.
[00:09:30] And therefore it became necessary for him to be a total representative of the nation.
[00:09:38] He couldn't be someone who was viewed as coming for himself and doing a favor for the Jewish people.
[00:09:44] It had to be viewed that he was coming totally and purely for the sake of Claud Yisrael, for the Jewish nation, to do the avodah, to do the divine service, to atone for the Jewish nation.
[00:10:01] And when the kohen, if the kohen would wear his own garments, he would be seen not as an agent, a total agent of the Jewish nation, but rather as someone who was coming for himself with his own personality, with his own flaws, right? Because each one of us, we all dress differently, we all look differently. We all, you know, we have preferences of what we want to wear. And that sort of defines us, uh, in a sense of who we are. So it became necessary for the kohen and the Kohen gadol to, you know, shed their clothes and only wear the garments that were given to them by the nation as a whole, that were donated by the people, everybody, and to use them to act as an emissary of Hashem. And it's brought down, Rav Hirsch brings down that when the kohanim would wear these garments, they would recognize that reality.
[00:10:57] They would recognize how, you know, how flawed they were, you know, because they're wearing the priestly garments. And they would come to a realization of the holy mission that they were on. It's sort of they were being mivatil themselves to the will of Hashem to make sure that the divine service that was performed was not something from them.
[00:11:19] It was something that they were doing for the will of Hashem. There's a difference there. There's a difference there that when I do something for someone else, you know, I'm doing them a favor. But when the kohen would serve in the Beis Hamikdash, he would be a total Emissary of Hashem.
[00:11:34] Uh, he would be a total emissary of the Jewish nation to do the service for Hashem.
[00:11:41] And I think the very powerful lesson we see from this is the importance of how we present ourselves. You know, clothing is, you know, we think about the world around us, the natural world, human beings. We are the only animal, you know, that wears clothing.
[00:12:02] A dog doesn't wear clothing. I mean, sure, you'll find people dressing, uh, their dogs in their favorite team's jerseys, but if you go outside in nature, birds don't have clothing.
[00:12:13] You know, um, wild animals don't have clothing.
[00:12:18] Fish don't have clothing.
[00:12:20] Only human beings, us as people, wear clothing. And we have a need to wear that clothing. Right? If we don't wear clothing, we can get sick and we could die. But even more importantly, let's say if a person would live in an area with perfect weather, people feel the need to wear clothing because it's a certain. It defines us in a certain sense. The clothing we wear indicate to ourselves and to the people around us, who we are, what we represent, how we think of ourselves.
[00:12:56] And I think we see from the.
[00:12:58] From the. I guess the priestly garments, the importance of, you know, putting ourselves together to realizing that the way we dress, the way we present ourselves, is how we're going to respect ourselves and how others are going to look at us as well.
[00:13:17] Now, obviously, there's a concept of don't judge a book by its cover, but for us, ourselves, how we act, how we dress ourselves, that defines to us and to others a lot of the time, who we are.
[00:13:33] Sure. It doesn't mean you can't have an identity and you can't be yourself.
[00:13:39] But I think the easiest way for us to understand this concept is, is that if you look right, police officers, firemen, people in the military, they have uniforms.
[00:13:49] They have the all weird special uniforms. Why? Why, why do they have these uniforms? And the idea is a certain sense of respect. They need to realize who they are and what they're doing.
[00:14:01] And I think that, you know, to make a separation that's similar to what the. The Kohanim were doing, the Bis hamikdash, But on a higher and holier level, I think the message for us is how we present ourselves, whether it be how we dress in a regular way, and I think maybe even on a deeper level of how we present ourselves as Jews, I think sends a powerful message to us and to the rest of the world. Right.
[00:14:28] Do we present ourselves?
[00:14:31] And I think I've said This many times. But I myself, I don't profess to be, um, I'm not a perfect person. I have a lot to work on.
[00:14:39] But I try to carry myself in a way that people could look to me. Right. I'm obviously visibly a Jewish person, but I try to present myself in a way that people will look at me as such and hopefully look up to me. Right. That's what I want.
[00:14:59] Right. So this doesn't just have ramifications of how you dress, but. But even on a Jewish sense, how we present ourselves Jewishly has a big effect on ourselves, on who we think we are as Jews and who others also think we are. And I think this is a very powerful idea we see from the big dekuhuna in this week's Parasha. The second idea I want to share with you today takes us to one of the interesting garments of the kohen gado. The koin gado would wear the special tzitz. The tzitz was a head plate, which was a metal plate which inscribed on it were the words kodesh la hashem, holy to Hashem. And this plate was tied with pieces of, uh, material would be tied around the head and hat of the coingado. Now, the verse says something very interesting. It says in the pasuk, It shall be on Aaron's forehead, so that Aaron shall bring forgiveness for a sin regarding the sacred offerings that the children of Israel consecrate for any gifts of their sacred offerings. And. And it shall be on his forehead always to bring them favor before hashem.
[00:16:27] So we see clearly in the pasuk in the verse that the tzitz, the head plate, was something which gained atonement for the Jewish people.
[00:16:39] But the question is, what does it mean that it should be on his head? Always.
[00:16:43] Should always be on his head. This is not my question. This is the question of Rashi. Rashi asked as follows.
[00:16:51] It's impossible to say that the kohen gadol always had to wear this special tzitz, this head plate, because we know that these garments could only be on the coin, the koin gadol, only during the time of the service.
[00:17:05] So what does it mean on his head always?
[00:17:11] It means it was always there to gain favor. Meaning to say, even when it was not on his head.
[00:17:23] Meaning to say is when the koinggado would wear this during the avoda, during the service, it would even, you know, it would gain atonement for the Jewish nation.
[00:17:30] Even when he wasn't wearing it, just from the fact he did wear it during the service. So now, even when he wasn't wearing it, he still. It would still gain, uh, you know, a kapara, forgiveness for the Jewish nation even when he wasn't wearing, Uh. Seems that there's another opinion here from the Gemara in Yuma that Rashi brings down. The Talmud relates that, no, the tzitz was only mecha. It only gained atonement for the Jewish nation when it was actually physically on the coin gaddol's head.
[00:18:04] But if it wasn't on his head, it would not be able to, you know, do that function of helping gain forgiveness for the Jewish nation.
[00:18:12] So what does it mean that it's. It was always on his head. So we learn out from this Malamit shi yisham, yisham eishboy be' oydoy al um matzchoy shlo yasi ach daitoimimenu. We learned from this that when it says tamid, it's referring to the fact that when the coingado, when the high priest was wearing this tzitz, he would constantly have to touch it to remember what he's wearing, to remember what he's doing to gain that atonement. It was something that he actively had to keep his mind on.
[00:18:39] Now, there's a very beautiful idea which I saw brought down in the. In the Chumash, in the arts world, Chumash.
[00:18:46] He says as follows. We see from these two thoughts from this dispute in the Gemara and Yuma, where we have these two opinions of how the tzitz, how this head plate atoned for the Jewish nation.
[00:18:59] Did it just from the fact that when the kohen wore it, so even when he didn't wear it, it was effective. Then you have the other side of this dispute in the Gemara, which says that only when it was on the kohen gadol did it attain that atonement. And there's two beautiful lessons we see from this, according to the opinion that says that the tzitz gained atonement even when it wasn't on the kohen Godel head. We see from this lesson that when someone does something holy, when you do a mitzvah, when you learn Torah, it stays with you even when you're not actively involved in that mitzvah. It's a beautiful thought, right? We start our day off every day and we go to work. We're submersed in the world around us, and there's so many things that could pull us down.
[00:19:47] But if we're able to learn some Torah before we start Our day, we're able to davenport the mitzvos, the Torah, the learning that we do when we start our day, stays with us, stays with us throughout our day, throughout our week, throughout our life.
[00:20:02] And it could bring us up, it could prevent us from falling down. It can keep us on that spiritual plateau. It could keep us connected. And I think this is a very powerful idea. When we, you know, we're not always able to be involved in learning in mitzvahs, but if we're able to start our day off or do an action and take that action, that mitzvah action with us, take that Torah learning with us, it gives us that sustenance, that spiritual sustenance throughout the day. It's a very powerful idea. Now, on the flip side, for the opinion that says that this tzitz, that this head plate only gained an atonement while it was on the coin's head, what lesson does that teach us?
[00:20:43] And I saw brought down, it also teaches us a lesson that true, you know, when we are involved in mitzvos, we feel exalted.
[00:20:54] But holiness, kedusha, feeling connected is not something we can take for granted.
[00:21:02] We need to actively pursue it.
[00:21:05] We can't just assume it's going to come to us, right? So that's represented by the kohengado, by the high priest constantly touching the tzitz, constantly remembering, ah, uh, this was the kohen gado. This is the high priest. He was a holy person. He was serving in the temple, the holiest place. But yet he still, he still had to remind himself of what he's doing in order to, uh, gain that atonement. Even though we're involved in good things, even though we do mitzvahs and we learn, we have to still try to actively remember what we're doing to keep the holiness. So I feel like these two ideas, they're not a contradiction. We gotta have a little bit of both. We gotta remember that when it comes to holiness comes to mitzvos, the things we do, the Torah we learn, can stay with us. It's up to us to take, uh, it with us. But at the same time, we can't take these actions and this holiness and the kedusha and the connection to hashem for granted. Because if we don't continually work on it, it can g d forbid, go away. The last idea I want to share with you today takes us to the end of the Parasha, when it talks about the Mizbeach Hazav, the special altar that was used to offer the Incense, the Ketorahs. Now, the question I asked in the beginning of the podcast was, why is the Torah listing this Mizbeach? How to build this Mizbeach here at the end of this week's Parasha, in Parasha's Tetzaveh, where we talk about the vestments of the Kohen Gado, it should be in last week's Parsha and Parasha's Terumah fit more appropriately, where in Parshas Truma, we talk about the vessels of the Mishkan, the vessels of the tabernacle, right? It should be there. Why is it here? Right? We know that nothing is, you know, by mistake. And the commentaries discuss at length different reasons why the Mizbechazov. The Ketorah was spoken about in this week's Parasha at the end after the vestments of the Kohanim. And one answer that I saw brought down was from the Ramban, from Nachmanides. And he explains that the Ketorah, right, which was offered on this special Mizbeach, the Mizbeach Hazav, the golden Mizbeach, was something that was given to the Jewish people also to gain atonement. And we see also that Yom um Kippur, the coin Gado, the giving of the incense, was one of the main points of the Avodah, one of the special high points of the service on Yom um Kippur. We see that in the Torah, Jewish nation, that Moshe Rabbeinu, he offers Ketorah to stop the plague.
[00:23:42] As we're gonna see, you know, later on in the Torah, we see that very clearly. There's a special power in the Ketorah to stop, you know, to gain divine benevolence and to stop the attribute of strict justice.
[00:23:58] And one of the idea here that I think we could learn is that Hashem, uh, just gave the Jewish nation a tabernacle, a Mishkan, and he had given them the vestments to do the avodah. And there comes a tremendous risk with having the ability to become so close to Hashem, getting so close to the. To the fire, to the Holy One, to the Divine Presence. And we see. We're going to see from the story of Nadav and Aviu, the sons of Aaron, they came too close and they died.
[00:24:30] So therefore, it became necessary before the service would commence, that Hashem would give a.
[00:24:36] Give the Mizbeach Hazav, the golden altar, to the Jewish nation as a way of protecting themselves from any, you know, from any maybe from Overstepping that they had a way to gain divine, uh, mercy before they would, you know, have this, uh, mishkan and put into use and the vestments. So therefore, it was appropriate now that after everything was done that the Jewish nation is coming close before they start to give the Mizbech hazav, the ketorah altar, the special Ketorah's altar right here. And I think the idea we could take out from this is that it's not just enough for us to stay away from bad, to stay away from evil. We have to put methods and safeguards in place for ourselves to prevent us from falling into the same things that we've done many times. You know, it's not just enough to stay away from bad, but we have to actively find methods and techniques to outsmart our yetzer hara, outsmart, uh, our evil inclination to keep us away from sin, right? So, for example, if a person has a hard time waking up for davening, right, it's hard for him. So he needs to make sure that he goes to sleep early, or if someone knows he falls when he goes to a certain place or he hangs out with certain people, he should set up his circumstances in a way that he's not hanging around those people or he's not going to that place. So I think the lesson we could see from this is that if we want to actually change and we have a hard time with things to set up safeguards to set up techniques for ourselves to help us succeed, and sometimes people in society say, oh, why are you being so, uh, you know, fanatical and, you know, no. Human beings, we have to set ourselves up in a way. We need boundaries. Just like kids need boundaries, we need boundaries. We're just big kids. That's all we are. We also need boundaries, right? A, uh, society without laws is mayhem. We need those boundaries to prevent us from falling down in the first place. So with that, I'm going to finish for today's podcast. If you have any questions, comments, or would like to reach out, feel free to send me an email at Rabbi Shlomo Cohen kohnmail.com have a great day.
