By Iliana Jaime

Parashat Tzav, similar to Vayikra, teaches the Isralites on how to live their new lives as holy people. It concerns itself primarily with how the priests perform sacrifices and describes the ordination of Aaron and his sons. The word simcha comes up, meaning “to lean, lay, rest, support”. It’s a laying-on of hands. We use it today for the ordination of rabbis, but in this week’s portion we see the word’s older usage - the anointing of Aaron and his sons, the first Israelite priests.

It’s an intense ceremony: it requires Moses, and Aaron, and Aaron's sons, vestments and anointing oil, a bull of sin offering, two rams, a basket of unleavened bread, and the witnessing power of the entire community, gathered at the Tent of Meeting. Sacrifices are performed, offerings are burnt, prayers are said. But what is most striking of this intricate ceremony is the last step, where God instructs Moses to mark Aaron and his brothers with blood in three places - the ridge of his ear, his thumb, and his big toe.

But why these three places? And what can we learn from this esoteric ritual that speaks to our lives?

The ear is the door from which two paths exist: hearing, and listening. We are constantly hearing - streams of stimuli endlessly enters our mind from the outside world, some stimuli becoming part of our full consciousness, others never leaving sensory memory. But listening, in many ways, is different. It involves connection; rather than simply to take in stimuli, we listen to understand someone, to analyze, to connect with them through our thoughts. And when it comes to reaching out to God, the path Aaron and his brothers must take to form a connection with Him is the latter.

While most of us are not priests and we don't hear God in that way that Moses and Aaron do, we must use this ritual to remind us of why

we are taught to 'lend our ears'. Our lives are busy, our schedules hectic, and in the midst of this frenzy we isolate ourselves; I hear what my mother tells my at the dinner table, I hear what my sister says as I walk out the door in the morning, but when I choose the wrong path, I am not truly engaged with them - I am not sharing the intimacy and closeness that genuinely giving an ear and listening to someone provides.

Marking the thumb, God reminds Aaron and his sons that the power of their actions resides in their own hands. Aaron and his sons are now becoming leaders in their community, responsible for killing animals and leading ceremonies. We, on the other hand, our leaders of both our Jewish and greater communities, and through Habonim we carry the responsibility of acting out social change, lending out the hands of social justice to shape and change the world. How can we imagine the change that a movement can create without first realizing the capability of our own hands, without first understanding the unique abilities that each of us possess? As I discover more and more my values and visions and how I wish to actualize on them, I am reminded to look into my palms and see the potential that I have to act on them.

And the toe?

The toe seems insignificant and a little strange, until something happens to it. A friend told me recently that she broke a toe - one single toe - and found herself limping, in tremendous pain, for weeks. Our toes provide us with balance, as well as guiding the path on which we will walk. It brings to my mind questions that

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