I would like to focus on only one little word in this week’s parashah, the one that opens Tetzaveh, a mere pronoun — “ve-’atta” (And YOU). It is not that the description of the accoutrements of the tabernacle and the details of the priestly clothing are deadly boring; quite the opposite. The more detail that inundates the Torah reading, the more focused one becomes on innuendo and the more room there is for imaginative play. While I do not quote Avivah Zornberg verbatim, I would like to credit her with the sources and flow of ideas in this drash, based on her weekly teachings which I was privileged to attend for years in Jerusalem.[1] The parashah opens with God’s address to Moshe in the 2nd person:
And as for you, you shall instruct the Israelites [וְאַתָּה תְּצַוֶּה אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל ] to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, for kindling an eternal lamp…(Exod. 27:20)
Surprisingly, there is no introduction to these words of instruction with regard to the ner tamid, the eternal lamp. There is no preamble as in other openings: “vayedaber ha-Shem el Moshe le’emor [And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying...]” (cf. Exod. 25:1, 30:11). Instead, we abruptly drop into a conversation between God and Moses, instructing the prophet with regard to the making of the Tabernacle. But is it not obvious that Moses would be the conduit for these instructions? Why single him out “ve-’atta [and as for you]“, while leaving him nameless? The same direct address introduces Moshe to his role of initiating Aharon and his sons into the priestly office and relaying the instructions concerned with their attire. Like a trope, the phrase “ve-’atta” – and as for you – is repeated again twice:
And as for you, you shall bring forward your brother Aaron, [ וְאַתָּה הַקְרֵב אֵלֶיךָ אֶת אַהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ ] with his sons, from among the Israelites, to serve Me as priests: Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron….. And as for you, you shall speak [וְאַתָּה תְּדַבֵּר ] to all who are skillful, whom I have endowed with the spirit of wisdom to make Aaron’s vestments, for consecrating him to serve Me as priest. (Exod. 28:1, 3)
The threefold expression, ve-’atta tetzaveh (you shall instruct), ve-’atta hakrev (you bring forward) and ve-’atta tedaber (and you shall speak) all stand in stark contrast to God’s more common form of address to Moshe, as in Exod. 27:1: “ve-’assita et hamizbeah [you shall make the altar]“, and in the next verse, 27:2 , “ve-’assita et karnotav [and you shall make the horns of the altar]“, and again in 27:9 “ve-’assitta et hatzar hamishkan [you shall make the enclosure of the mishkan]“. The second person pronoun, ve-’atta, just ain’t there! Why then does God here use this strange, seemingly superfluous, phrase, “ve-’atta [and as for you]“, in addressing Moshe and how does it reflect broader themes in the book of Exodus?
The expression, ve’atta, first comes up in Genesis, in the context of God’s curse of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As Rav Zadok HaKohen of Lublin (1823-1900) suggested, the very first occurrence of a term in the Tanakh determines its significance, its semantic weight. Following the transgression, God addresses the wily Serpent first in the series of curses:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They shall strike at your head, But as for you (ve’atta) you shall strike at their heel [וְאַתָּה תְּשׁוּפֶנּוּ עָקֵב].” (Gen. 3:15)
The term, ve-’atta (as for you) introduces an about shift, a counterpoint to the symmetry of enmity between the snake and the woman. On the one hand, humans will have the upper hand, striking at the serpent’s head since it is reduced to a belly-crawl, now the most cursed of all creatures, eating the dust of the earth unto eternity; “But as for you, you shall strike at their heel [וְאַתָּה תְּשׁוּפֶנּוּ עָקֵב]“, suggests there is recompense; it registers the surprise effectiveness of the snake-bite, striking as it does at the heel.
In opening of this week’s parashah, the threefold expression “ve’atta” also introduces a ‘surpise attack’, an about-shift. On the one hand, the expression singles out You, Moshe, and, at the same time, it anticipates that the prophet will eventually be displaced by the very role he now initiates into service – he will not be the Cohen, but his brother, Aharon, will serve as Cohen in the Mishkan. Furthermore, Moshe’s name is never mentioned in this parashah, while Aharon’s name is mentioned an auspicious seven times in the first seven verses (27:20-28:5). Moshe is, paradoxically, present and yet occluded; he remains anonymous, while his bother is insistently named. Why? The occlusion and focus on Moshe is reflected in liturgical practice. This week’s parashah invariably falls on the week in which, according to legend, Moshe was born and also died – the 7th of Adar.[2] He enters as well as exits the stage of history at this auspicious time. The Baal HaTurim, on the other hand, relates the absence of Moshe’s name to his demand that God wipe him from the book, in his appeal for the people’s forgiveness after the Sin of the Golden Calf: “And now bear their sin, and if not, wipe me out of your book which you have written [מְחֵנִי נָא מִסִּפְרְךָ]” (Exod. 32:32).[3] That is, if God is wholly bent on destroying his people in his wrath, Moshe wants no part of it – no record of his name in the annals of Jewish history. Though, in the end, God does bear their sin (that is, He forgives the Israelites), a token price is paid by absenting Moshe from this one parashah. It is the only chapter, since the Exodus narrative in which the prophet’s name does not appear. So Moshe is symbolically, and also literally, erased from the book here. According to the Zohar, “this is an example of the curse of a sage [being fulfilled] even when it is conditional.”[4] Yet the erasure of his name from print is expressive of a deeper spiritual layer, which requires some excavation.
What psychological reason lies behind this literary Houdini act – Moshe’s strange “appearance-disappearance” in Parashat Tetzaveh? Perhaps it reflects an ambivalence Moshe may feel in initiating Aharon into his role as Cohen, anticipating his inevitable displacement from office. The phenomenon of Moshe’s occlusion is consistent with his role in the Mishkan. While he serves as the one who instructs its assembly and conducts the ceremony of sacrifices for the first eight days of initiation (miluim), once the Mishkan is consecrated, Moshe is excluded from service. Both the omission of Moshe’s name in this week’s parashah and his exclusion from the Mishkan, in the chapters to come, foreshadow the tragic decree: the leader of the Exodus will never enter the Land of Israel. So he repeatedly experiences initiation and exclusion – weighed with tremendous responsibility and, at the same time, held at arms length. The tension over Moshe’s role as the initiator who is later displaced is most poignantly expressed by a midrash:
And as for you, you shall bring forward your brother Aaron [ וְאַתָּה הַקְרֵב אֵלֶיךָ אֶת אַהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ" (Exod. 28:1). It is written, "If your Torah had not been my plaything, I should have perished in My poverty" (Ps. 119:92). When God told Moses, "As for you, you shall bring forward your brother Aaron", He did him an injury. God said: "I had possession of the Torah and I gave it to you: if it were not for the Torah I should have lost My world!" This is like a wise man who married his relative and after ten years together, when she had not borne children, he said to her, "Seek me a wife!" He said to her, "I could marry without your permission, but I seek your cooperation [יכול אני ליטול חוץ מרשותך אלא שהייתי מבקש ענותנותך].” So said God to Moses: “I could have made your brother High Priest without informing you, but I wish you to be great over him [שתהא גדול עליו].” (Exod. Rab. 37:4, A. Zornberg’s trans., Particulars of Rapture, 2001: 353).
God demands of Moshe an impossible task, impossible that is for one with less forbearance than him. While God gave him the Torah, he also “did him an injury” (in Hebrew: her’a lo), for he demanded that he resign from office, to be replaced by Aharon as Cohen. The mashal, allegory, likens this to a man who asks his beloved wife, who could not bear him children, to sanction his taking another, perhaps younger, more fertile wife. (Can you imagine, after years of fertility treatment turning to your middle aged wife and saying: Dear, would you mind looking for a second wife for me on J-date?) What, I wonder, could God and Moshe not bear together as offspring? God is described as “a wise man, who married his relative” – perhaps they knew each other too well, while Aharon was less like God, more human, “of the people, for the people” – as it says in M. Avot 1:12: “Hillel would say: be a student of Aharon, loving peace and pursuing peace [ohev shalom verodef shalom]” (cf. Ps. 34: 15). According to the midrash, God asked Moshe for his cooperation or forbearance (in Hebrew: ענותנות, related to the word ‘anavah, modesty) in initiating Aharon into the priestly role. Yet, in asking for his permission, God assures Moshe that he will be greater than his brother: “I could have made your brother High Priest without informing you, I wish you to be great over him” (in Hebrew: gadol ‘alav). You will still be “his elder”, figuratively, the greater, the first wife, the chosen, favoured one. After all, Moshe was given the Torah. But, at the same time, he is placed in a psychologically difficult position – to endorse the introduction of a second wife into the home, to initiate Aharon into service as the Cohen. This epitomizes the prophet’s unique character, as it says: “And the man Moshe was very humble, more so than any man on the face of the earth [וְהָאִישׁ מֹשֶׁה עָנָיו מְאֹד מִכֹּל הָאָדָם אֲשֶׁר עַל פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה]” (Num. 12:3).
What do we learn from Moshe’s humility, expressed by his displacement from priestly office and the simple threefold expression ve-atta, ve-atta, ve-atta in this week’s parashah? Moshe Rabbenu, our teacher, the Redeemer (ha-goel), the inscriber (ha-mehokek) of ethical imperatives on our hearts, models for us the possibility of an ego-less existence. Yet, there is no man on the face of the earth like him, as it says: he was “more modest than any man on the face of the earth” (Num. 12:3). Ranier Maria Rilke once wrote of the artist’s paradoxical role, describing it as “pride in being a tool” – how can one be “proud” if one is merely a “tool”, a conduit for the muse? Perhaps it is not the poet, but the divine that speaks through him/her. One could read Moshe’s biography as tragic: the leader of the Jewish people held at bay from serving in the Mishkan, excluded from entering the Promised Land. Yet this is necessarily the fate of the one who is the conduit for the Torah, as the “tool”, the “vessel” for the words of God. He will bear the Torah to the people, but he will not bear the people into the Land of Israel. As in the allegory, it will be Aharon and his descendants, the priests, who will bear the children in that intimate family. The priest will bear the people, in wearing the breastplate of judgment [hoshen mishpat], with each of the Israelite tribes represented by a unique stone, worn over the priest’s heart (cf. Ex. 28:29). He bears the people by carrying the possibility of their atonement and God’s forgiveness into the Sanctuary, through the very clothing he wears.[5] I would like to bless you all this Shabbat with the ability to recognize the greatness of Moshe’s forbearance, while acknowledging that we, all-too-human, are still being carried, born by virtue of the priestly breastplate (hoshen mishpat) – symbolizing the possibility of forgiveness – which decorates the Torah scroll to this very day.
[1] See also the discussion in Avivah Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture (New York: Double Day, 2001), 351-397.
[2] Cf. Megillat Ta’anit, last chapter. It is listed with the rest of the ancient fast-days in Tur Orah Hayyim 580. An exception holds for a shanah me’uberet [leap year], in which Parashat Tetzaveh is read in Adar I, and Moshe’s Yarhzeit falls in Adar II.
[3] This reading, of course, assumes that the instructions for the Mishkan were given after the sin of the Golden Calf – see, for example, Rashi on Exod. 33:11 and the Tanhuma Terumah 8:8. Ramban, however, presents a different chronology (cf. his commentary on Exod. 25:1).
[4] Midrash Ne’elam, Shir HaShirim 4.
[5] See the discussion in b. Zevahim 88b, where each part of the Cohen’s clothing represents atonement for a different sin – the tunic (ketonet) atones for bloodshed, the breeches (mikhnesayim) for sexual transgressions (gilui ‘arayot), the mitre (mitznefet) for arrogance, the sash (‘avenet) for impure thoughts, the breastplate (hoshen mishpat) for civil offences (dinim), the ephod for idolatry, the coat (me’il) for slander, and the headplate (titz) for brazenness.
