This sheet on Leviticus 8 was written by Bradley Shavit Artson for 929 and can also be found here
What an august and majestic moment it must have been! Gathering the people together at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, with Aaron and his sons in waiting, Moses brings out the anointing oil, the priestly vestments, the bulls for sacrifice, the basket of matzot and engages in an elaborate ritual of washing, clothing, and anointing the priestly family who will make the offerings on behalf of the children of Israel from that day forth.
All in silence!
Anyone who has witnessed the coronation of the Kings and Queens of England, for example, or the ceremonies launching a new Pope, or the inauguration of the President of the United States, are accustomed to a great many words. Those words make explicit the intended message of the moment – what is signified, and how we are to understand that actions transpiring before us.
But all those words, in addition to being a bit coercive (in telling us what we must think or how we ought to understand what is happening) also reveal a lack of trust. Someone doesn’t have faith in the power of ritual, its capacity to enlist the imagination, its magical ability to mean for each observer something slightly different, a distinct message designed uniquely for each particular person.
The Torah doesn’t make that mistake. Instead, it describes without comment, the glorious and dramatic events of the initiation and consecration of Aaron and his children into the posts of High Priest and officiants for ancient Israel’s sacrifices. And it respects the individuals – those in attendance then, and those reading the texts today – to bring the entire person to the moment. Each of us is given leave, indeed, is forced, to read our own meanings into this sacred transition. And in refraining from comment, the Torah expects us to step into the ritual and bestow precisely the significance we each need to derive from the moment for our own spiritual thriving.
The lesson is clear: a minimum of preaching, and a maximum of interpretation. A verbal tsimtsum (withdrawing) to make room for expansive soul formation. That has been the genius of priestly Judaism, bestowed through its heirs, the rabbis, to the Jewish people across the ages. We are invited to the party, not as passive spectators, but as active participants.
Rabbi Dr Bradley Shavit Artson is the Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and is Vice President of American Jewish University in Los Angeles.
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