Glory as Cover
Adornment in Genesis, Exodus, and Esther
Finally, in the final few class meetings, when Master Gurpreet told us to sit still and focused for only as long as we comfortably could and then waited almost an hour before finally hitting his small bell with the little silver thing to signal the period of meditation’s end, only I and an extremely thin, pale girl who had her own meditation bench that she brought to class with her were able to sit still and focused for the whole hour, although at several different points I’d get so cramped and restless, with what felt like bright blue fire going up my spine and shooting invisibly out of the top of my head as blobs of color exploded over and over again behind my eyelids, that I thought I was going to jump up screaming and take a header right out the window. And at the end of the course, when there was also an opportunity to sign up for the next session, which was called Deepening the Practice, Master Gurpreet presented several of us with different honorary certificates, and mine had my name and the date and was inscribed in black calligraphy, CHAMPION MEDITATOR, MOST IMPRESSIVE WESTERN STUDENT, THE STATUE. It was only after I fell asleep that night…that while I was asleep I had the dream about the statue in the commons and realized that Master Gurpreet had actually in all likelihood seen right through me the whole time, and that the certificate was in reality a subtle rebuke or joke at my expense. (David Foster Wallace, “Good Old Neon”)
And God the Lord made garments of skins for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. (Genesis 3:21)
Make sacral vestments for your brother Aaron, for dignity and adornment. (Exodus 28:2)
The verse states: “When he showed the riches of his glorious [kevod] kingdom and the honor of his majestic [tiferet] greatness” (Esther 1:4). Rabbi Yosei bar Ḥanina said: This teaches that Ahasuerus wore the priestly vestments. As it is written here: “The riches of his glorious [kevod] kingdom and the honor of his majestic [tiferet] greatness.” And it is written there, with regard to the priestly garments: “For glory [kavod] and for majesty [tiferet]” (Exodus 28:2) (Megilla 12a)
God makes clothing for Adam and Eve after they transgress. Cold and naked, God gives them skins. Whether those skins are literal animal hides or more mystical sheens of light, as per the Midrash (which puns on or and ohr), you can think of this as an act of mercy and consolation. Although the first humans have received the punishment of exile, toil, and mortality, God wants them to know that they are loved and protected.
The divinely provided clothing is also a poignant gift given the shame the new humans feel at discovering their literal nakedness and their meta-consciousness, their self-consciousness, that their awareness is the result of theft and disobedience. The clothing hides the nakedness but it also says, “I know what you’ve done,” ironically enough exposing their second-order nakedness in the very moment that it conceals their bodies. “You want a defense mechanism, OK, sure, here, take this.” “If you’re gonna use a fig leaf to hide from Me, at least use use something effective. Here, let me help you.” Against their brief moment of independence, God intervenes to say that, as it were, God blesses it. B’di eved, anyways. That is, after the fact, God must accept the new reality and find a way to move forward. That is certainly a paradox.
One way to think about vestments in the Torah, given their origins in God’s initial act of clothing in Genesis is to assume that they refer back to this Edenic moment. Aaron and his sons are tainted by the sin of the golden calf, a kind of recapitulation of Adam and Eve’s deviation from God’s will. Yet instead of losing their priesthood, they get holy garments. These garments are splendid, glorious. But there’s a biting irony, too—does the priestly get-up not conceal a priestly shame? Does the holy kit not evince a human weakness and vulnerability? It’s almost like Moses and God are seeing through Aaron and his sons (especially given that we know the perilous fate of Nadav and Avihu. “Are you animated by pride? Are you motivated by low-self esteem? Do you have trouble saying ‘no’ to the people because you want to be liked? Do you crave approval? Here, let me get that for you—here are some glorious garments. Aren’t they gorgeous?” The clothes provided by Moses do express straightforwardly the investiture of prophetic legitimacy in the priesthood, but they may also have a connotation of critique: “Is the glory for God, or for you?”
In the Greek tradition, there is nothing wrong with pursuing glory. In fact, the aspiration to and attainment of kleos defines a noble, heroic, and beautiful life. But the priestly model is meant to be one of stewardship rather than ambition. Although meritocracy rather than caste typically serves as a check against complacency and corruption—and there’s a reason you don’t need to be born into a rabbinic family to become a rabbi—one thing that caste does is takes away ambition so you can focus on giving. If you don’t have to earn the priesthood, arguably you don’t need to be as ego-driven in the pursuit of the priestly office. (This insight may loom in the backgound of a Talmudic story that presents priests as so competitive that they kill one another for the honor of ash-sweeping). As we know, though, opposites come together. The apparently ego-less can be the most ego-maniacal. The apparently altruistic can be profoundly selfish. The priest who owns nothing may be more materialistic than the merchant who supports the priesthood. In any case, this is not to single out the priests, but to use them as a case study for the way in which strengths and weaknesses are intertwined. The corrective to character flaw usually lies in a middle path, neither shunning glory nor chasing it. That’s what Moses is doing: he’s surfacing the human desire for glory and honor not to blast it but to protect against its destructiveness when left unconscious.
The desire for glory and honor contains many positives and many negatives. The question for the priests is not an all-or-nothing one of will you be moral saints or will you be craven sycophants, but will you be self-aware enough to keep your biases and personal needs (and neediness) from obstructing your ability to serve others.
The Talmud tells us that King Ahashverush wore the priestly garments. Mind you, the Megilla also features many stories that circle around the zero-sum politics of honor-chasing. Haman is so disgraced when he has to honor Mordechai that he pledges genocide against his entire people. We don’t typically think about the psychology here. But can you imagine being that insecure? What kind of fragile ego would need to destroy an entire people simply because he had to lead another person around on a horse and dress him up in the King’s clothes? But the joke of the Talmud is that even Ahashverush was dressing up as someone else. It’s masquerade all the way down. The priests are also playing dress up. It’s all dress up going back to Adam and Eve. Purim and Tetzaveh are linked by the insight that clothing and adornment can be a form of beatifying the world, but also of hiding from our shame, concealing our insecurity. Left unexamined that insecurity can be destructive. And it doesn’t matter whether it comes from an Israelite priest, a Persian King, or Haman—it’s the same force.
Greek heroes may seek kleos because they feel they are not enough as they are. Renunciates and ascetics aspire to glory through the paradoxical attempt to master a sense of “enough-ness.” But priests must find a middle path by embracing the fact that the ego is neither all good nor all bad. Seeing their flaws and their strengths, they can wear the glorious garments without making the clothes about them. They can embrace their roles and identities without idolizing themselves. They can take off the costume at the end of the day and love themselves as they are.
This Purim, let us laugh at, notice, and appreciate what our costumes say about us. And then let’s adjust so that our affirmation of beauty and glory can be for the glory of the Source of Life.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins
P.S.—Here is my conversation with philosopher Jennifer Frey about friendship and philosophy.