Identifying with Your Mask

Tetzaveh and Esther on Authenticity as Performance

Tetzaveh is the only weekly Torah portion from the book of Exodus onward in which Moses’s name does not appear. The Book of Esther is the only book of the Hebrew Bible in which God’s name does not appear. These two absences are structurally paired. Tetzaveh and Purim always fall around the same time of the year. The portion of the missing prophet and the holiday of the missing God are linked.

Both absences make room for someone else to get dressed. In Tetzaveh, Moses steps aside so his brother Aaron can be vested in the priestly garments. In the Book of Esther, God steps aside so Esther can put on מַלְכוּת (malkhut, royalty). The same pattern features: withdrawal enables investiture. Someone has to disappear, or seem to disappear, so someone else can play their part.

The Torah commands Moses: וְעָשִּׂ֖יתָ בִגְדֵי־קֹ֖דֶשׁ לְאַהֲרֹ֣ן אָחִ֑יךָ לְכָבֹ֖ד וּלְתִפְאָֽרֶת, “Make sacral vestments for your brother Aaron, for honor and for beauty” (Exodus 28:2). Ramban (Nachmanides, 13th-century Spain) comments that these are literally royal garments, the same ornate style worn by kings. He connects them to the כְּתֹ֥נֶת פַּסִּֽים, the elaborately ornamented tunic that Jacob made for Joseph (Genesis 37:3). In Ramban’s reading, the priestly tunic and the princely tunic are basically the same, and both connected to Joseph. When Jacob gave Joseph the coat of many colors, his brothers witnessed not just preferential treatment, but the transfer of a semiotically loaded object, one that connotes the appointment of a king and, in our portion, a high priest. In other words, the presence of lavish garments signifies a hierarchy or differential, and always threatens jealousy and enmity. In Tetzaveh, Moses, Aaron’s brother–the text emphasizes this word–is responsible for directing the creation of the very garments that, historically, caused fraternal strife.

The ketonet passim provoked Joseph’s brothers to attempted murder. The priestly vestments are worn by one who brings atonement for various sins. In both cases, glorious clothing is proximate to failure. God’s first act of tailoring comes in Genesis: וַיַּעַשׂ יהוה אֱלֹהִים לְאָדָם וּלְאִשְׁתּוֹ כָּתְנוֹת עוֹר וַיַּלְבִּשֵׁם, “And the Lord God made garments of skins for Adam and his wife, and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21). The pattern across the Torah is consistent: rupture, then costuming. The Midrash calls these garments, garments of light, perhaps connected to the Tiferet or splendor we find in Aaron’s clothes.

The Talmud (Zevachim 88b) makes the connection between beautiful clothing and spectacular failure explicit. Each priestly garment atones for a specific sin: the tunic for bloodshed, the trousers for sexual transgression, the mitre for arrogance, the belt for impure thoughts, the robe for slander. The priest doesn’t wear these garments because he is holy. He wears them because the people he serves and represents are broken. It is ironic: the elaborate robe must be perfect in every way, no stains, or the sacrifices of the priest are rendered invalid; and yet, it would all be meaningless if not for human error. The beautiful performance is needed to mask the pain and suffering of the spectators. Aaron’s wardrobe is a prescription, not a reward. לְכָבוֹד וּלְתִפְאָרֶת, so that people will connect to these lofty dimensions and become better versions of themselves.

Maimonides, in the Guide for the Perplexed (III:45), says it plainly: the vestments exist because “the multitude does not estimate man by his true form but by the perfection of his bodily limbs and the beauty of his garments.” In other words, if the people were less shallow, the priest would not need to be so performative. The priestly garments are stagecraft. They exist because we are flawed in how we see, how we value. As they help us move forward, they also entrench the very biases that keep us from real growth. One interpretation we can now formulate, per Maimonides: the priest’s garments point not to the priest’s glory, and not to God’s, but to the people’s psychological need to assign kavod (honor), to ascribe tiferet (beauty). Imperfect beings need to aspire to perfection. But because they are material beings, rooted in the life of gashmiut (material need) they demonstrate this with clothing.

The Talmud (Megillah 12a) observes that the Book of Esther describes King Ahasuerus’s banquet display using the words כְּבוֹד and תִּפְאֶרֶת—the identical terms used for the priestly garments in Exodus 28:2. The verse reads: בְּהַרְאוֹתוֹ אֶת עֹשֶׁר כְּבוֹד מַלְכוּתוֹ וְאֶת יְקָר תִּפְאֶרֶת גְּדוּלָּתוֹ, “When he displayed the vast riches of the glory of his kingdom and the honor of his majestic greatness” (Esther 1:4). Rabbi Yosei bar Chanina concludes from this verbal parallel: Ahasuerus was wearing the priestly vestments themselves—the בִַגְדֵי כְהוּנָּה, the sacred garments of the Temple.

The same words—the same garments—dress both the High Priest and a Persian tyrant. Why would the rabbis of the Talmud draw this connection? Not just to show that Ahasuerus was no friend of the Jews and an active colonizer and sacriliger of their holy objects, but to emphasize how easily beautiful garments can be turned into objects of external pride and narcissism. Holy garments are at risk of becoming vain if not properly directed. The priest’s honor, beheld by lay worshippers, is not a far cry from the honor of the king, beheld by the masses of the empire. Achashverosh is, perhaps, the high priest’s shadow side.

If the costume is the same, what distinguishes the priest from the king? We know from the Talmud (Yoma 9a) that priests could be corrupt, and from Yoma 23a that they were capable of killing each other for the honor of sweeping ashes from the altar. In other words, we know that honor can easily lead to social competition gone amok (a regression to the story of Joseph and his brothers). The difference between holy service and vain display, then, cannot be located in the costume itself or even in the inner state of the wearer.

This brings us to Esther. The text reads: וַתִּלְבַּשׁ אֶסְתֵּר מַלְכוּת, “And Esther put on royalty” (Esther 5:1). Note the language. She does not put on בִַגְדֵי מַלְכוּת—royal garments—but מַלְכוּת itself: royalty, kingship, sovereignty as such. The Talmud (Megillah 14b) seizes on this missing word: it means she put on רוּחַ הַקֹּדֶשׁ, the holy spirit. She cloaked herself in divinity itself. But here’s the point: Esther became herself by playing a role. In contrast to the Rousseauvian ideal which states that “man is born free and everywhere he is in chains,” the Torah offers us a different view: we become great by stepping up. What others might call inauthenticity is actually authenticity. Esther became a prophet when she accepted the weight of her task. When you have a chance to be a hero, take it. Put on the garment of Malchut. In a place where there are no leaders, be a leader. Don’t ask, “Am I worthy to wear this costume?” Become worthy by choosing to adorn.

The Talmud (Megillah 15b) relates that when Esther reached the בֵּית הַצְּלָמִים, the chamber of idols in the inner court of the palace, the divine presence—the Shekhinah—departed from her. She cried out the words of Psalm 22: אֵלִי אֵלִי לָמָה עֲזַבְתָּנִי, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” The divine spirit she had just put on was stripped away. She was performing queenship with nothing underneath. And yet she kept going. The hidden God was hidden from her in the very moment she needed God most. Yet she dared to fill in the void, and to represent God even in the darkest place.

In the end, Esther’s heroism is not that she was filled with divine spirit. It is that the divine spirit left and yet she continued, anyways. Three angels had to intervene, one to raise her neck, one to string grace around her, one to extend the scepter (Megillah 15b). The infrastructure of heaven had to prop up a performance that had lost its inner content. Esther didn’t need to find her true self. She just needed to keep moving.

Costumes comprise a major theme in the Book of Esther. Everyone is dressing and undressing. Esther conceals her identity: לֹא־הִגִּידָה אֶסְתֵּר אֶת־עַמָּהּ, “Esther did not reveal her people” (Esther 2:10, repeated at 2:20). Mordechai tears his clothes and puts on sackcloth and ashes (4:1). Vashti is summoned to arrive in nothing but a royal diadem. Haman designs an elaborate costuming ceremony—bring the king’s garments, the king’s horse, parade the honored man through the streets—and is forced to perform it for his enemy (6:6–11). At the story’s end, Mordechai emerges בִּלְבוּשׁ מַלְכוּת תְּכֵלֶת וָחוּר, “in royal robes of blue and white, with a magnificent crown of gold” (Esther 8:15), a clear literary echo of the priestly garments. The entire book is structured around who wears what and for whom.

Haman’s answer to the question “What should be done for the man the king wishes to honor?” is pure costume theory. He can only imagine glory as something you put on. And his entire psychic collapse, his genocidal rage, flows from being on the wrong side of the costuming. He has to dress Mordechai instead of himself.

The Talmud (Chullin 139b) asks a playful but revealing question: where is Esther alluded to in the Torah? The answer: וְאָנֹכִי הַסְתֵּר אַסְתִּיר פָּנַי, “And I will surely hide My face” (Deuteronomy 31:18). The name Esther echoes the Hebrew root for hiding. And Mordechai? He is found in מָר דְּרוֹר, “flowing myrrh,” the chief spice of the anointing oil used to consecrate the Tabernacle (Exodus 30:23). The Aramaic translation of mor deror is mira dakhya, which phonetically resembles “Mordechai.”

The pairing is exquisite. Esther embodies divine hiddenness. Mordechai embodies priestly consecration. Together they reconstitute the Mishkan (Tabernacle) in exile, a dwelling place for a God who refuses to be named. Recall that the holy of holies was empty. In the heart of the most ornate and aesthetic structure, not a true self, but a no self. We are the stories we tell ourselves, the scripts we run. But where a contemplative or deconstructionist might say that this means we are liars and self-deceivers, Esther’s example shows a different approach. It is because we have no intrinsic core that we are radically free, free to put on malchut.

But what does it mean that God hides? At the burning bush, God gives Moses the name אֶֽהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶֽהְיֶה, “I Will Be What I Will Be” (Exodus 3:14). The Talmud (Berakhot 9b) elaborates: God told Moses, “Go tell them: I was with you in this enslavement, and I will be with you in the enslavement of the kingdoms to come.” Moses objects: דַּיָּהּ לַצָּרָה בְּשֶׁעַתְּהָ, “Enough—let the trouble come at its appointed time.” Don’t tell them everything. Give them only what they can bear. Moses edits God’s self-presentation. He abbreviates the divine self-disclosure: tell them אֶֽהְיֶה alone, not אֶֽהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶֽהְיֶה. This second “I shall be” is a reference, as it were to subsequent trials, but Moshe’s edit points to a deeper point: that although God may be with us in those hard times, it is hard for us to look at God and feel God’s presence, because we associate God only with salvation and the happy ending, not the suffering part of the story, where God also dwells, and where we must find our own voice.

The hiddenness of God in the Book of Esther is not absence. It is the non-reified nature of God, God’s radical freedom, I shall be. A God who can be named, located, and pinned to a single identity is a God who has become an idol. The absence of God’s name in the Megillah is structurally identical to the absence of Moses’s name in Tetzaveh: both withdraw in order to make room for others to act. And both signal that we must become who we are.

The Torah’s sacrificial system is built on the assumption that all spiritual performance is artifice.

What separates the fraud from the priest is that while both may have the awareness that they are wearing a costume, one believes he is therefore a fraud while the other takes the costume as a sign of responsibility and a summons to earn the right to play the part.

Authenticity, in the Torah’s understanding, is not the absence of performance. It is the choice of which role to play and the self-awareness to play it well.

This Purim, the costumes we wear are not a departure from religious seriousness. They are its deepest expression. We dress up to acknowledge that we are always dressing up, and that the question is what is my “honor and beauty” for?

Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Etz Hasadeh