TI Torah Study: Parashat Tetzaveh It's the Contents inside, not the Vessel... or is it?

"Rabbi Meir said: Do not look at the vessel, but rather at what it contains; there may be a new vessel filled with aged wine, or an old vessel in which there is not even new [wine]." (Avot 4:20)

The description of the clothing is quite elaborate! If you are interested in reading the details (God is said to live there) you are reading Exodus 28:1-43

Can Clothes be Divine? Godly?

But all of this seems to suggest that Clothing is important, that it can send a message, be symbolic, make an impression. Yet our tradition seems to always emphasize the counter - that it is the human and the content of their character that should be judged.

Enter Rabbi Sacks...

Clearly, the Mishkan (the Tabernacle), and later the Mikdash (the Temple), were exceptions to this. Their emphasis was on the visual, and a key example is the Priests’ and High Priest’s sacred vestments, bigdei kodesh.
This is very unexpected. The Hebrew for “garment,” b-g-d, also means “betrayal,” as in the confession we say on penitential days: Ashamnu bagadnu, “We have been guilty, we have betrayed.” Throughout Genesis, whenever a garment is a key element in the story, it involves some deception or betrayal.

There were the coverings of fig leaves Adam and Eve made for themselves after eating the forbidden fruit. Jacob wore Esau’s clothes when he took his blessing by deceit. Tamar wore the clothes of a prostitute to deceive Judah into lying with her. The brothers used Joseph’s bloodstained cloak to deceive their father into thinking he had been killed by a wild animal. Potiphar’s wife used the cloak Joseph had left behind as evidence for her false claim that he had tried to rape her. Joseph himself took advantage of his Viceroy’s clothing to conceal his identity from his brothers when they came to Egypt to buy food. So it is exceptionally unusual that the Torah should now concern itself in a positive way with clothes, garments, vestments.

Clothes have to do with surface, not depth; with the outward, not the inward; with appearance rather than reality.

The vestments of the officiants and the Sanctuary/Temple itself were to have the glory and splendour that induced awe, rather as Rainer Maria Rilke put it in the Duino Elegies: “ For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure.” The purpose of the emphasis on the visual elements of the Mishkan, and the grand vestments of those who ministered there, was to create an atmosphere of reverence because they pointed to a beauty and splendour beyond themselves, namely God Himself.

Thus there is a place for aesthetics and the visual in the life of the spirit. In modern times, Rav Kook in particular looked forward to a renewal of Jewish art in the reborn land of Israel. He himself, as I have written elsewhere, loved Rembrandt’s paintings, and said that they represented the light of the first day of creation. He was also supportive, if guardedly so, of the Bezalel Academy of Art, one of the first signs of this renewal.
Hiddur mitzvah – bringing beauty to the fulfilment of a command – goes all the way back to the Mishkan. The great difference between ancient Israel and ancient Greece is that the Greeks believed in the holiness of beauty whereas Judaism spoke of hadrat kodesh, the beauty of holiness.

I believe that beauty has power, and in Judaism it has always had a spiritual purpose: to make us aware of the universe as a work of art, testifying to the supreme Artist, God Himself

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks