Who Needs Wisdom in a High Priest?

This week’s Torah reading, Tetzaveh, provides a detailed priestly dress code. It follows two other instruction manuals: Mishpatim on civil and criminal law and Terumah on how to build the Tabernacle.

Why does a nation of priests need a specialized priesthood?

The Covenant at Sinai was made with every single soul there, not only with Moses or the leadership.

Mishpatim is an ethical code directed at each and commanding respect for all.

The Tabernacle was also a democratic project; every Israelite was invited to donate according to their heart.

But Tetzaveh is directed towards the garb of Aaron, the first high priest, and of his successors.

Has the bible suddenly taken a turn towards elitism?

Not really. The role of the Priest is to carry out rigid duties, not exercise discretionary power. The duties involve performing the rituals of the Tabernacle in accordance with strict instructions from God himself. A priest cannot depart from the instructions, on pain of death. God warns the priests that an error may cause death. Two of Aaron’s own sons were instantly executed by God for bringing “strange fire” to a ceremony. Aaron said nothing.

The role of the priesthood did not involve the exaltation of your distinctive personality. You were forbidden from bringing your own creative powers and imagination to the tasks. You were to suppress the expression of your deepest personal emotions. A king’s whims and passions might be indulged; a priest might be killed for them, and his family denied the opportunity to mourn.

As a priest, you carried out communal rituals on behalf of all of Israel. The High Priest wore a breastplate over his heart with the names of the tribes. The rituals in the Temple made it a place where the people could connect with the divine spirit. It was a representation of a universe that was graceful and structured, a world that bears the imprint of a supremely powerful Creator.

The first High Priest, Aaron, often exhibited an ungrudging willingness to take on assigned duties. God tells him to be a spokesperson for Moses before the Pharaoh, and he does. Prophets like Moses always started by telling God they did not want the mantle of prophethood, that they felt unworthy of the task. Aaron the Priest does not balk; he just does the job. When his sons are struck dead for performing a ritual, Aaron says nothing.

Aaron was known as a peacemaker, not a leader or a fighter. When the Israelites are panicked at Moses’ disappearance up a mountain, he suggests they channel their energies into building a golden calf. He explains to Moses that the agitated people might have done far worse if left to their own devices. Aaron is not yet a high priest and is apparently forgiven for his role in this fiasco.

Aaron had at least one querulous moment after becoming the High Priest. He and Miriam asked why God was only making revelations through their brother Moses, and not them. God’s answer is simply that Moses had been chosen for the task. The larger message is that a Priest has to stay in his lane; Moses was not the High Priest but rather the chief prophet and political leader. At the same time, Moses was not the High Priest.

If you had to write a job description for a high priest, it would contain words like “dutiful, dignified, disciplined.” It would avoid words like “creative”,  “imaginative” and  “charismatic.” Yet when the Talmud speaks of the High Priest, it proposes that he not only look the part—to be a handsome man wearing the magnificent clothing—but that he be wise.

Whatever for?

Why would you need a High Priest—a man whose duties are to strictly follow divine orders throughout a yearly cycle, in which everything repeats?

I recall once being at a meeting of lawyers and judges. At the social hour, a crusty old judge held forth. He sardonically proclaimed that the new judges were having problems. They were appointed at a younger age than the old days and selected for their intelligence. This was a bad idea, he explained. These up-and-comers soon discovered that most of what judges do is tedious and routine, and they became frustrated. The answer, said the crusty old judge, was to hire mediocre old guys like him.

The Talmud, however, had the benefit of looking back over many centuries when the Temple still stood. And they realized that the holy building, the Temples and Tabernacles, were representations of a divinely ordered and graceful world. But these structures were made out of materials of the real world, and they were subject to the natural elements of destruction, like wind, fire, and rain. More importantly, they were subject to the destructive power of the enemies of Israel. Both temples were destroyed by foreign conquerors. Looking back, the Israelites did not only blame the invaders. They blamed themselves for moral failings, like lapses into idolatry, that made them worthy of conquest. They blamed themselves for internal quarrels that prevented them from uniting in defense.

In the book of Genesis, there are two accounts of creation. The first one, beginning with the separation of light and day, images a universe that is structured—divided into separate parts—and that God considers to be good. We are told almost nothing of the nature of the God who creates the world. He does not interact with the human beings he has created.

The second creation story begins with the creation of man and woman. They immediately cause trouble. They are rebellious. They disobey the instruction not to eat the forbidden fruit. They evade responsibility. The Israelites may have produced the priests, but the people themselves are not known for being quiet and obedient. The first Israelite, Abraham, is an iconoclast who ends up arguing with God, not just smashing idols. The Israelites who flee Egypt are a stiff-necked people; some of them complain, others outright rebel against God and his chosen leader Moses. The surrounding peoples are often murderously hostile. Pharaoh wishes to kill the Israelites in Egypt. The Amalekites attack them in the desert.

The Jewish bible presents both visions—of the orderly, structured, just and good world envisaged in the first creation story and the emotionally charged, tension-filled, conflict-ridden world initiated by the second creation story and the emergence of unpredictable, creative and willful human beings.

A Priest must be wise because the two worlds intersect. The Priest attempts to make the ritual world a microcosm of the orderly universe—while defending it from quarrels among the Aaronite priests, tensions with the Levite priests, lack of spiritual or material support from the rest of Israel and external enemies who can be seductive in their idolatries or physically violent in their hostilities.

The Talmud tells a legend about when Alexander the Great came to Israel, he met the high priest Simon the Just. The reputation of the High Priest was such that Alexander adopted a respectful attitude in meeting with them and during the encounter. He asked the High Priest if a statue of Alexander could be placed in the Temple. The High Priest diplomatically said no, but what if all the children born for the next year would be named Alexander instead? Alexander accepted.

(Such traditions, by the way, weave in and out between sacred and folk culture. A famous 19th century German-American statesman was named Alexander Moritz Simon.)

According to Josephus, the high priests as a group had fallen when the Romans ruled the holy land. Their appointment was often influenced by the political rulers. They were not necessarily learned or wise. The Jews were faced with the awful dilemma of how much to compromise to the Roman rulers. Was any tolerable compromise possible, as with Simon the Just and Alexander? Perhaps if there had been some supremely wise High Priest…

We now live in a real world where there are synagogues instead of a temple and rabbis and political leaders of Jewish communities in the Diaspora and in Israel. Today’s leaders must help us find a path between the vision of the ideal and accommodating practical realities. Jewish continuity depends on finding leaders—and communities—who are capable of understanding, remembering and reasserting our most ancient ideals and visions and who are able to preserve and defend them, and adapt them as necessary, to life in a world that is often as hostile to the Jewish people as the Pharaohs, the Amalekites and the Hamans of old.

Think back to the Coronation of King Charles III. He recited his oaths with body language and vocal tones suggesting a weary feeling of “I suppose, if I have to.” He was taking on two essentially ceremonial roles—as head of state and leader of the Church of England. In that capacity, he is required to project dignity, follow prescribed ceremonies, and suppress the expression of his own personal and political views. Much of the tragic and farcical elements of the royal family in England is the tension between upholding ancient dignities and responding to demands to be human and relevant.

In Israel, there is a President, not a king. The task is mostly ceremonial but sometimes calls upon its holder to speak out as the voice of the whole nation, perhaps the whole Jewish people. Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, is an admirable example of someone who is both reverent of the ancient ideals and responsive to contemporary realities. He has managed to maintain his nonpartisan credentials while acting as an eloquent and effective advocate for the people of Israel and the Jewish people worldwide.

There is a future we imagine, in which the ideals and the real can be harmonized and reconciled—that is the time of the Messiah. The Tradition tends to see the messiah more in terms of a king than a priest; but who knows? Who knows? Since temple times, scholars—rabbis, we call them now—emerged as the leadership of a people with a state and without a temple. In the Lubavitch group, there are some who view the Rebbe as an already-arrived and departed messiah.

In the meantime, congregational leaders in the Diaspora and officials in Israel must struggle with the reconciliation of visions of perfection and the irrationality, emotions and conflicts of the second creation of the world of Adam and Eve and their successors. Between the exile from Eden and the return of the Messiah, we still have our sacred texts, rituals, and blueprints for holy structures. We have memories of the Priests and keep track of their descendants, but our real world in the here and now leaders—from local rabbis to the President of Israel—must dwell in both worlds. There is the image and aspirational world of the highest sanctity. There is a reality of chaos and menace.

Legend has it that when Simon the Just died, the era of miraculous signs in the Temple ended. There is something of a miracle, though, that there is still a people who remember him, still visit the remnants of the Temple, and still pray every day for a Messianic era in which the world will achieve a sacred and peaceful harmony.