By The Vancouver Bayit

This week's portion is parshat Tetzaveh, which means “you shall command”. It garners this name from the fact that the parsha follows God’s commands to Aaron and future generations of high priests on what specific garments to wear when entering the holy of holies, and how to logistically perform certain sacrificial tasks. It goes into pretty intense detail surrounding what types of clothing to wear “for honour and glory”. Literally, line upon line of what to wear, and a solid few lines of pretty gruesome details about killing rams and bulls and where to sprinkle their blood and burn their kidneys.

One of the garments which the high priest must wear is this super rad 90’s chic multicoloured breastplate with 12 different stones bearing the names of the 12 different tribes of Israel. Not only should that kind of kishutim commitment inspire any vaad hatzega, it also represents something pretty cool about the function of the high priest. The high priest represents not only themselves, but the entire am Yisrael, the people of Israel:

“Thus shall Aaron carry the names of the sons of Israel in the breastpiece of judgement over his heart when he enters the holy place as a remembrance before the Lord at all times”.

Whenever Aaron or the Cohen Gadol does the thing that is most important to his tafkid, the sacrificial duties around the temple, he keeps his entire people close to his heart. I think that this is something that we should attempt to emulate when going about the labour that we find most important to us and our movement: the running of our machanot, kenim and seminars. When we act as a dugma, just as the high priest kept the whole am yisrael by his heart, we should keep our whole movement and the Jewish people by our hearts when we engage with our own hadracha.