By Rabbi Janine Schloss ,
Temple Beth Am
After having lived most of my life in California, New York, and New Jersey, I took a job in 1993 in St. Louis, Missouri. I had never lived in the Midwest, and St. Louis has a touch of the Southern in its culture, as well. There were so many aspects of my new life there that surprised me. One of them was the way people dressed up: At work, for parties — really, almost any time you had to be out in public.
After 12 years in Missouri, I moved here to Seattle, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. People wear jeans to Shabbat services, fleece in every season, and teenage boys seem to get away with shorts and flip-flops even in the dead of winter.
Does what you wear really matter? Our culture is certainly obsessed with it. All you have to do is look at the fashion models walking down the runways, or the designer fashion lines in every store.
I think that humanity’s fascination with clothing goes back to the beginning of time. So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that this week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh, starts out with a description of the clothes that the priests were supposed to wear. We all know the phrase, “the clothes don’t make the man,” yet in this case, the clothing of the priests were considered incredibly important. In fact, I bet that when the average Moshe or Sarah looked at the priests, they were probably in as much shock as I was when I first arrived in this drizzly land.
Aaron and his sons were each supposed to wear a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a fringed tunic, a headdress, and a sash. Each item was made of gold, blue, purple, and crimson yarns. But it gets even better than that. The breastpiece of decision was supposed to have 12 stones in it. It’s hard to figure out exactly how to translate the names of the stones, but the new JPS translation says: “carnelian, chrysolite, emerald, turquoise, sapphire, amethyst, jacinth, agate, crystal, beryl, lapis lazuli, and jasper, all framed in gold.” Wow! Did normal Israelites walk around in such finery? My guess is no.
When Rashi, the famous 11th-century French commentator, read this passage, he noticed something else unusual. He noticed that some of the stones on this list are rare and valuable, while others are common and inexpensive. Why would this be so? “To remind us to treat the rich and the poor evenly and fairly when we judge a case,” he explains.
When I first read this, I was blown away. Even while the priests were dressed in incredible finery, the 12 stones on the breastpiece were supposed to remind them to treat rich and poor alike. The priests’ clothes were supposed to instruct them, making sure that they did not let their finery go to their head.
I am a Jewish educator, so when I read about the 12 stones, I immediately think about children. After all, if you have a class of 12 children, you will have 12 absolutely unique individuals. But what this week’s Torah portion tells us is that every one of them needs to be respected as an individual. Every one of our children needs to be seen as his or her own little miracle. Every one of them needs to be treated fairly, so that whether rich or poor, shy or outgoing, beautiful or awkward, each of them will be respected, loved, cherished, and helped along the path to becoming menschen.
May our community take to heart this lesson. May it instruct us not only to treat rich and poor alike, but to tear down barriers to opportunities that might only be available only to some children and not to others. May it remind us to treat each individual child in our community as if he or she were made in God’s image. May we treat all of our children fairly, giving them what they individually need to be successful. May we also fill our community with teachers who truly understand this deep in their hearts and their souls. This is the gift of this week’s Torah portion. May we live it and cherish it, and may it make our children shine like the jewels they truly are.
Rabbi Janine Schloss is the director of education at Temple Beth Am in Seattle.