VAYAKHEL: Feminine Firepower

Biblical Acrobatics


Finally, after weeks of discussing plans and blueprints, the building of the Mishkan (Temple) has been set into motion!  Moshe made the announcement to the nation that construction was to begin and that donations were needed, and within moments, the camp was a flurry of excitement to get started: artisans, metalworkers, woodcutters -- everyone wanted to be involved.  The Torah records an account of a stunt they did for Opening Day of Mishkan Building that was so grand, spectacular and over-the-top that it makes Barnum & Bailey and the Cirque de Soleil look like a Jewish day school musical: hundreds of thousands of Jewish wives walked out towards Moshe with their husbands balancing on their shoulders!!!  


You don't believe me?  Read for yourself:

וַיָּבֹאוּ הָאֲנָשִׁים עַל הַנָּשִׁים

 ...כֹּל נְדִיב לֵב הֵבִיאוּ חָח וָנֶזֶם וְטַבַּעַת וְכוּמָז כָּל-כְּלִי זָהָב

"The men came [to Moshe] on the women; 

every generous heart brought bracelets, 

nose rings, [finger] rings and kumaz..." (Shemot 35:22)

Spectacular, but obviously not what the verse means if one would just think about it for a few seconds.  Sorry -- at least it captured your imaginations!  


Which begs the question: what does it mean?

Our first stop is Rashi:

" 'On the women' [means that the men came] 'with the women' and relying on them."

Rashi is of course not satisfied with just fudging the על "on" with an עם "with;" for some reason, the Alm!ghty chose to write that the men came to give their donations with the women in a way which could be described as "on" the women.  Otherwise, write "with!" Why risk us thinking it was a circus act!?!


The Ramban expounds even further: 

"The reason [it says] that 'the men came on the women' is in order [to express] that the generosity to give their jewelry was more prevalent among the women -- they all had jewelry [as did the men], [but the women] immediately took off their nose rings and [finger] rings, and came [forward] first...the reason it says 'on' is because the women who were first [are considered primary in this case] and the men secondary to them." 

[The Ramban goes on to bring proofs from the rest of Tanakh of other similar uses of על 'on' meaning 'first and primary.']

It turns out that figuratively speaking, our original circus image was not so far off -- the men's generosity was ignited by the enthusiastic gifts of the women -- the men's greatness was great, but "on the shoulders of giants (i.e. the women)."


They too were part of the miracle!


The Talmud in Pesachim 108a says that even though women are normally exempt from time-dependent positive mitzvot, they are obligated as surely as men are to drink the four cups of wine at the Pesach seder.  Why make an exception to the usual rule?  

 שאף הן היו באותו הנם 

"They too were part of that miracle!" (108b)

Rashi, always there to lend a helping hand, explains by way of a gemara from Sotah 11b:

"As a reward for the righteous women that were in that generation were [the Jewish people] redeemed [from Egypt]."  

So too in every major redemption of our people from national danger, the women played the primary role -- whether it be Esther in Purim or Yael in Channukah. 


The Tosofot on the spot jump on Rashi -- it does not seem, they claim, that women played a primary role from the words of the gemara.  The gemara's carefully chosen words read: "they too were part of the miracle," implying that their participation was minor but sufficient to obligate them in the mitzva of 4 cups that commemorate the 4 stages of redemption.


I want to suggest a defense on behalf of Rashi.  


Let's zoom into three of the acts of greatness that were performed by the Jewish women in Egypt in order to perhaps understand better why the gemara phrased it שאף הן היו באותו הנם "they too..."

1)  At the root of our suffering in Egypt we find the root of our future redemption.  Pharoah had commanded the Jewish midwives to kill all Jewish male newborns; the midwives quietly yet heroically resisted the king's decree.  Two of these women were singled out: שפרה Shifra and פועה Puah.  שפרה is so named because she would not only refuse to let the children die, she would משפר meshaper them, beautify them, making sure that they were physically tended to, healthy and clean.  The Torah calls the second one "Puah" because she would woo "pu pu" to the infants, cooing and speaking to them to take care of their emotional needs.  All of this was somehow accomplished under the terrifying magnifying glass of the Egyptian government.  Even though that by the end of the 10 plagues, the dramatic confrontations of Moshe & Aaron with Pharoah,  and the epic splitting of the sea, this episode has long since faded into the background of our memories, if we flip back to the beginning of it all, we find that the Torah highlighted this act of quiet heroism, choosing to open the Book of Shemot with it (1:15, see also Sotah 11b).

2)  For fear of being the indirect cause of the death of Jewish boys who would be slaughtered by Egyptian soldiers after birth, the men divorced their wives so that they would not get pregnant.  Miriam, the daughter of Amram, the leader of the generation, convinced her father that to do so was worse than Pharaoh -- not having children at all would be a decree against the males and the females, dooming the Jewish nation to disappear entirely.  Amram was so moved by her appeal, that he issued the mandate for every man to remarry his wife (Sotah 12a).  Moshe, who of course grew up to redeem the nation, was born from Amram's re-marriage to his wife Yochebed (2:1-2).   

So too, we find that it was a unified movement by all the women to fight the oppressive decrees of the Egyptians by keeping themselves looking beautiful and arousing their tired, battered husbands into creating and keeping life going despite the holocaust around them (Rashi Shemot 38:8).

3) Lastly (naturally, these are just 3 examples of many), we find the following at the splitting of the sea, just after the men sang:

וַתִּקַּח מִרְיָם הַנְּבִיאָה אֲחוֹת אַהֲרֹן, אֶת-הַתֹּף--בְּיָדָהּ; וַתֵּצֶאןָ כָל-הַנָּשִׁים אַחֲרֶיהָ, בְּתֻפִּים וּבִמְחֹלֹת

"Miriam the prophetess, Aaron's sister, took the drum in her hand, and all the women went out after her with drums and dances" (Shemot 15:20).

 The Midrash Mechilta asks the obvious question:

Where did they get drums from in the [middle of the] desert?!?   

                                              ...rather, these righteous women had total faith, and knew that the Alm!ghty would do miracles and powerful acts for them, and when the time came to leave Egypt, they took drums with them.

It was the women whose faith was so vibrant and tangible that it was obvious to them that you can't follow G!d into the desert without instruments!  How are you going to rejoice and celebrate properly when the time comes without them?

Small is Big


John Gray, in his popular book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus writes:

A man thinks he scores high with a woman when he does something very big for her, like buying her a new car or taking her on a vacation. He assumes he scores less when he does something small, like opening the car door, buying her a flower, or giving her a hug. Based on this kind of score keeping, he believes he will fulfill her best by focusing his time, energy, and attention into doing something large for her. This formula, however, doesn't work because women keep score differently. When a woman keeps score, no matter how big or small a gift of love is, it scores one point; each gift has equal value. Its size doesn't matter; it gets a point. A man, however, thinks he scores one point for one small gift and thirty points for a big gift. Since he doesn't understand that women keep score differently, he naturally focuses his energies into one or two big gifts. 

A man doesn't realize that to a woman the little things are just as important as the big things. In other words, to a woman, a single rose gets as many points as paying the rent on time. Without understanding this basic difference in score keeping, men and women are continually frustrated and disappointed in their relationships (Chapter 10). 

Hashem, Who fills and encompasses the world with His infinite light looks at small things exactly the way women do.  Held in the light of the infinite, what is the quantitative difference between big and small?  Indeed, we would propose that the number one quality that women most look for in their spouse is for him to "thoughtful" -- to think about the small things as much as the "big" things: to leave her love notes, to wash the dishes without her asking, to surprise her from time to time with a fun outing.  For a woman, the BIG emotions and BIG thoughts of Love and Commitment and Appreciation are only valuable if they express themselves all the way into the nooks and crannies of everyday life.


Moreover, anything BIG can only become BIG if it is made up of small parts.  A national revolution can only be ignited by the small mini-revolutions of individuals.  This is something only a mother can deeply understand.  Only a mother watches her son at his college graduation sheds tears as she simultaneously remembers how many times she cleaned his tush as a baby, while the father is usually busy thinking about who he is going to become.


We now can understand that it was the women who started the cascading domino effect of donations and participation at the building of the Mishkan.  When the opportunity arose to take action for Hashem albeit with the tiny earrings in their ears, the women jumped first.  The men, still wishing they had been picked to be the architect of the project, had to be overwhelmed by the large-scale demonstration of commitment of the women in order to be moved to follow suit.  


We now see that this was just another example of the women being the driving force -- the igniting force of the Jewish people's burning desire for life to persevere in the face of death.  From wiping Jewish babies behind their ears, to inspiring their husbands to keep having children, to remembering to bring instruments into the barren desert -- from beginning to end, the women were there.


This is what Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi means when he says, 

 שאף הן היו באותו הנם 

"They too were part of that miracle!"  

Remember, he's speaking to men.  He is turning our natural tendency on it's head.  We, who may have only paid attention to the large-scale public activism of Moshe and Aaron and all the other adult Jewish men, must realize that "the women as well were part of that miracle!"  As Rashi explained, their role was equally primary, and in some sense, more primary in that throughout, the women were the spark plug for the men to take action!   

This is some of the appreciation for the נשים צדקניות the righteous women of our people in the writings of the Ramban and Rashi, writing 1,000 years ago, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, almost 2,000 years ago, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu writing before the creation of the universe.  It is an appreciation that hopefully we can integrate towards our wives, mothers, sisters and daughters and every small thing they do for the greater good.     

KI TISA: A Matter of Time

The Depressing Regression


The DSM-IV criteria for depression include the following: 

"Depressed mood all day, everyday,"  "diminished interest," "decreased appetite and libido," "indecisiveness..."  

It could be suggested that all of these symptoms emerge from an underlying perception that life is going nowhere...constantly.  Indeed, if a person were to look around, and come to a realization that he is just watching the same script being played over and over again, and he is powerless to change it, he will inevitably descend into a down.  Moreover, the down will deepen according to the depth of his perception that he cannot get off the merry-go-round that is his life.  


If encouraged to participate in an activity, he will tend to respond: What's the point?


We as healthy and happy people should answer this question for ourselves lest we come to ask it from a place of despair.  What is the point?  Where is everything headed?  And where am I headed in the midst of everything?   


The sun rises.  The sun sets.  The sun rises.  The sun sets.  The alarm goes off, hit snooze, goes off again, wake-up, go to work, eat lunch -- same soup & sandwich combo from two days ago, back to work, commute home. You turn on the TV, and there it is: the Shawshank Redemption running for the 5th time this week, on the next channel is a re-run of a Friends episode you've seen too many times to count.  You could swear that you've lived this day before, as the patterns repeat themselves like the infinite reflections between mirrors.  The same plot with the occasional change of set, costumes, props, and extras.


A clever child might tap into this to push off his homework: "Why do I have to do these math exercises?" he will ask.  "So I can get into the AP math class? So I can get into a good college?  So I can get a good internship, and then a good first job, so I can get a good recommendation for a good grad school, so I can get an even better job, so I can support a family and pay for the math education of my child so he can do his homework???  Forget it!  This vicious cycle stops here!"  


...The kid's got a good point! 


In fact, a quick survey of ancient civilizations will reveal that the vast majority of them (if not all of them), conceived of time itself as an eternal circular flow.  From the Indian peninsula through Mesopotamia and the Greek Pythagorians and Stoics, even on the other side of the Ocean, among Mayas, Aztecs, and Native North Americans, time was seen as an endless repeating cycle.

Ouroboros, the Greek alchemist symbol for eternal recurrence 

The recent resurgence of this vision of reality was spearheaded by the Existentialist philosophers, with Friedrich Nietszche at the helm:

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' (The Gay Science, §341).

In addition, Albert Camus framed his famous essay The Myth of Sisyphus around the Greek mythical character, Sisyphus who in return for his attempt to override death, was doomed by the gods to eternally shlep a boulder up a mountain, at which point it would roll down to the bottom, and he'd have to go down and fetch it and start over.  On this, Camus writes:

"The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious" (Ch. 4). 

Camus establishes that the reality is that life is as absurd as Sisyphus' eternal punishment.  However, we are not necessarily doomed to depression because we can acknowledge the futility of life, laugh at its absurdity, and artificially "imagine" our own reasons for being happy.


As dismal as the existentialist vision is, it is arguably the most pervasive underlying worldview of our generation.  And all "imagining happiness" aside, we cannot leave the question unanswered: what is the point?


Time in Torah  


Can all these people be wrong?  


             Yes.


A quick look around the natural world will reveal that absolutely everything is apparently cyclical: the Water Cycle, the Carbon Cycle, the Kreb's Cycle, the Life Cycle of a Star, the Economic Cycle -- even in fashion, what was never imagined to be possible, happened -- the 80's came back into style.  


Almost everything that is measured by science is cyclical -- a closed system.  The whole modern movement to find the "Unifying Theory of Everything" is predicated on the assumption that we will be able to encapsulate all of the inner workings of the universe in a neat little package.  There is something very aesthetically compelling about this -- which may be what Nietsche calls "divine" -- a certain symmetry that we wish to discover, combined with a potent arrogance that we're capable of finding it.  It is therefore not so surprising that this is a prevalent view throughout world history.


We should not move on to the next point without mentioning that for 2,000 years, since Aristotle formalized it, the consensus in science, was precisely this: the world is eternal, without beginning and without end -- a closed system.  So powerful was this understanding that Albert Einstein himself upon seeing data that the galaxies were drifting apart from one another, implying that if you were to rewind the film, the universe had a beginning -- "fudged" the numbers to avoid that conclusion!  He later famously smacked his forehead when Edwin Hubble crunched the same numbers properly in 1929 and came to the unavoidable conclusion that the universe has a beginning, a previously "mythical" idea articulated by the Torah in the first word: בראשיח "In the beginning..."  

~~~~~

For weeks we've been reading about the building of the Mishkan, our Temple in the Desert.  Everyone got involved.  Everyone donated money, some people precious stones, others their personal jewelry.  There were those who decided they could be even more active: weaving, dyeing, embroidery, smelting, woodcutting -- you name it -- there was a lot of work that need to be done.  This was a huge project, and it sure beat lugging bricks over quicksand in Egypt.  More than that, Hashem Himself said that its completion was of the utmost importance, ultimately leading to the Shechina, the Divine Presence "dwelling amongst [us]" (Shmot 25:8).


Just as the instructions were concluded -- on the verge of the camp exploding into excitement at the opportunity to build this Mishkan "for G!d" so-to-speak, we received the following message from Hashem:

...אַךְ אֶת שַׁבְּתֹתַי תִּשְׁמֹרוּ כִּי אוֹת הִוא בֵּינִי וּבֵינֵיכֶם לְדֹרֹתֵיכֶם לָדַעַת כִּי אֲנִי ה' מְקַדִּשְׁכֶם      

...'שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים יֵעָשֶׂה מְלָאכָה וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתוֹן קֹדֶשׁ לה...

However, keep my Shabbats because it is a sign between Me and you 
for generations to know that I am Hashem the One who makes you kodesh
...for six days do work 
and the seventh is Shabbat Shabbaton for Hashem...(Shemot 31:13-15).

Shabbat trumps the Mishkan!  After all that build-up for the building of the Mishkan, and Shabbat rises paramount above it?!?  


There must be a many precious gems of wisdom buried within this nugget of Torah...

In terms of הלכה Halacha, this is actually the nerve center from which all the laws of Shabbat emanate.  Every physically creative process that was done to create the Mishkan must be prohibited on Shabbat, otherwise why wouldn't we work around the clock, 7-days-a-week for this momentous task we've been given?

But in terms of חכמת חיים Life Wisdom, consider the following:

Last week, we spoke about those concepts that fly so close to us that they evade our conscious radar.  "Time" is one of them.  Because, as we mentioned, the natural world and the existentialist underpinnings of our modern worldview scream that time is like a circular river that cyclically washes over us, we are unconsciously forced into looking at it this way.  But if we look carefully at the Hebrew word for "time" that was quietly waiting for us to pay attention to it, we see that the reality of time is very very different.

The Torah refers to time as זמן.  The root may look familiar: a הזמנה is an invitation to arrive at a certain place at a certain time, to be מזומן is to be ready for a particular goal...  The Torah sees time not as an aimless river, but rather pointing towards a definite nexus -- an endpoint.  As surely as the Torah said with certainty, against the winds of worldwide speculation that the universe had a beginning, it says that the arrow of history is pointing towards a place where all the plot-lines intersect.  

In addition, in the words of Rav Tzvi Hirsch Broide zt"l:

Time does not wash over man; Man travels through time.        

This implies that when the Jews were commanded to keep their first Shabbat in the desert, that stop in which the entire nation encamped together, was symbolically established for eternity as the space we return to every week called "Shabbat" (Michtav meEliyahu II 21).  Shabbat is the time of the week in which we are meant to actively step into the world of arrival, of reaching our goals, of celebrating the present, and of re-centering our sense of meaning.  And our whole week is oriented in preparation towards it.


Even though ostensibly one's life may look more-or-less the same from week to week, it is only because he's so stuck in the rat race of phone calls, e-mails, to-do lists, and meetings that he cannot just sit together with his family and perceive the inner dimension of life that is clouded by the maelstrom around it.  But, the person who keeps his eye on that inner world all week, on what his mission is, of course when he will sit back at the Shabbat table the following week, he will perceive, appreciate and celebrate his growth -- regardless of whether or not the cholent tastes the same -- life tastes different.  


Without a doubt, on any given Shabbat you haven't reached your ultimate life goals, and if you have, there are plenty of people around you who could use your help -- this is why Shabbat is called מעין עולם הבא "a microcosm of the world to come."  We are to relate to it as if we've arrived at our ultimate destination.  The Halacha even says that on Shabbat, one should not speak about things he needs to do during the week, and certainly not to prepare for the coming week.  Every Shabbat stands alone in that sense.  This is because it is so hard to drill into our hearts that life has an end goal.  But of course, through keeping Shabbat every week we are able to continually tap into where are we going and celebrate every step along the way.  When we dive back into the flow of traffic of the next week, we now have our eye on reaching that next Shabbat, and all the baby steps along the way to rejoice in our growth.    


The gemara in Shabbat 88b says that the Jewish people are compared to an Etrog tree -- just like the etrog tree sends forth its fruit before its leaves, so too do the Jewish people think first about the ultimate goal, and then worry about the technical details (see Maharal Tiferet Yisrael 29, Netiv haTemimut 2).  So often we get caught up in the world of technical details because we have not properly defined what is of essential and ultimate importance to us.  What will we want to have accomplished at 120 on our deathbeds?  Once we have defined this, then we can chart out how we can responsibly attain it with all the nuts and bolts involved.  Otherwise, we may find ourselves buried in nuts and bolts, without a clue at to what we're building.  


This is not just a religious/not-religious thing!  We see clearly that even the holy work of the Temple is suspended for Shabbat.  At any stage along the way, we can lose the forest for the trees if we do not continually search and focus on our goal through the fog.  


Simcha-Joy is the state of awareness that one is approaching the object of his desire (Vilna Gaon).  If Shabbat by Shabbat, we define our personal mission with more clarity, and week by week we work on assembling all the pieces of our Mishkan that point us towards that goal, then we are pointed towards a life high above a world running in circles.           

TETZAVEH: Close to Our Skin

The Neglected Unconscious


If you've studied a little bit of philosophy, you've probably noticed that the seemingly most "obvious" and "self-evident" words are the ones which give us the most trouble.  "Is" "I" "Good" "Right" "Beauty" -- tomes and tomes of literature have been dedicated to defining these words.  If you think they are actually obvious, we would definitely suggest spending some time pondering your own definitions and discussing them with a friend.  It won't take long to realize that there is nothing obvious about them.  


Where is your "I?"  Is it your body?  Is it your brain?  If so, where exactly would you look in the brain to find it?  Is your personality you?  Could you have been born with a different personality and still be you?  These questions just begin to scratch the surface.


All of these concepts (e.g. the self, identity, good/evil, etc.) live so close to us with such constancy, that we hardly notice them.  Like the smell of air, they go unnoticed and transparent to our mind's eye.  It's fascinating once you start to ponder it -- the words we most frequently and nonchalantly use, are the words which represent the deepest and most elusive concepts in reality.  Note that more complex words like "mitochondria" or "disenfranchisement" have much more concrete definitions.


Parallel to the above, there are similarly physical things in our lives that are are in extremely close and constant physical contact with us: our body, our clothing, our breathing, what we eat, our house, etc.  These are things that we actually spend a good deal of time thinking about, but rarely, if ever, in a deep way -- we take care of them technically.  We go to the gym, we go shopping, we go on this diet or that diet, clean the house, paint the walls...  "Just do it," as they say -- and indeed, a responsible person does have to take care of the "equipment in his factory" and make sure everything runs smoothly -- nevertheless, we must call our attention to the gaping hole of awareness the is left vacant within us despite any technical know-how we may possess. 


There are two levels of awareness of these basic life-elements that generally slip under our radars by virtue of their omnipresence in our lives: 1) what-awareness, and 2) why-awareness.  For example, only recently have we begun to witness a resurgence of food-awareness in America.  It started with general health concerns thinking about fats and carbs, and since progressed to an explosion of contemporary literature hammering our misconceptions -- fruit, it turns out, doesn't grow in plastic containers in the supermarket, but is cultivated by some poor farmer somewhere.  This is the beginning of what-awareness.  What are you actually eating?  How did it get to you?  Wake up and smell the coffee industry.  


There is a deeper level that is Why?  I may be counting calories, but have I ever thought about why Hashem made life in such a way that I need to spend so much of my day eating?  Why didn't He just make a one-size-fits-all bland mush that has everything we need?  Why was I made to speak from the place I eat?  Why is it that our primary mode of socialization is sitting around a table and consuming foodstuffs in front of one another?


These two levels of awareness are by-and-large absent from our thoughts with regards to everything which forms the basics of our daily routine.  We are on autopilot for the vast majority of our day. 

~~*~~  

If we put these two main observations together, that the most obvious words we use, and the most mundane things we do are the most mysterious to us, it turns out that we may very well understand more about the geopolitical situation in the Middle East and the world maize market than the most fundamental realities closest to our skin and inside ourselves.


Close to our skin


A מצוה "mitzva" cannot simply be translated as "commandment," otherwise it should be called a ציווי "tzivui."  Rather, the deeper sources explain that aside from the basic understanding of a mitzva being a commandment, it is a vehicle of connection צוותה (see Sfas Emes on this week's parsha, Brachot 6b).  Mitzvot, of course, function as points of meeting between us and Hashem, as well as us and other Jews, but they also amazingly function as bridges between our outer selves to our inner selves and back again.  The outer self that is unaware as it eats and wears clothing is mapped through mitzvot into the inner self that is doesn't know how to define all the simple, yet ethereal concepts we've been speaking about.


Whoa -- that's a bit of a high idea in and of itself.  Let's try and bring it down to earth.


Here's a metaphor.  My daughter is 2 months old.  Astonishingly, she is not really aware yet that she has hands.  (I know -- it's nuts -- babies are unbelievable.)  However, we have this neat little bracelet with a rattle on it, and when she moves her hands for one reason or another, it makes a noise and she can even scare herself.  But slowly, she is starting to put 2 and 2 together and realizing that these heavy things to the left and right of her are her arms!  And she can do all sorts of things with them, and is consequently thrilled beyond words.


A person could scoff at the Torah on two accounts: 1) how am I going to find spirituality in such mundane things like wearing that or eating that?, or 2) you want me to strap that scary-looking thing on my arm and hang those goofy tassels off my shirt!?!  When, really, that "weird thing" that you're going to do in connection with that "mundane act" is the rattle on your wrist!  


If you study the inner wisdom (Torah) of these things we do (mitzvot), over time you will start to perceive that what's rattling is something inside of you that you would have gone unnoticed for your whole life.  The very fact that the "mundane" "everyday" things we do are mundane and everyday is precisely what makes them so powerful.  They are deeply programed into our inner circuitry.  In them lies the our ability to understand ourselves and bring our inner world to expression.  


This is a key to unlocking the mysteries of this week's parsha.  In it, the Torah describes the eight garments of the kohanim in the Mishkan (Temple).  The Talmud (Erechin 16a, Malbim) explains that each of these garments correlates to a distinct part of the human psyche, the garments of the soul.  As tempted as I am to go into them, I think for our purposes, we should wrap up with a few words on clothing in general.


Let's leave aside tzitzit and tefilin and yarmulkas and sheitles...let's just talk about clothing.  Given the principles we've layed down, the fact that the first and last thing we do everyday is put on and take off our clothing must yield a profound effect on how we see ourselves.  


Certainly, if you walk into Google and see vice-presidents and interns alike walking around in shorts and t-shirts, or into a Cohen, Greenberg & Goldstein where even the security guard is wearing a three-piece suit, you will notice that clothing has an impact.  That is the basis for any dress-code in the first place.  


Similarly, if you take our imaginary character "Vinny" who without-fail wears a white linen shirt with the top 5 buttons unbuttoned everyday, he will understandably consider his chest, chest hair, and the gold charm embedded in it all essential to who he is.  He'll tell you, "Dress code?  What do you mean!?!  This is me -- Vinny!"  He wouldn't feel himself if they were covered up.  


"Cindy," on the other hand, considers herself a very bright, bubbly, and open personality.  Wanting to "express herself" she wears bright colors and open shirts.


What's the problem?  We don't want to think of ourselves as judgmental people, but as humans, we can tend to lose the forest for the trees.  When we look at Vinny, all we see is his exposed chest and chest-hair-encrusted necklace, instantly assuming that he is just like every other mobster character we know so well from movies.  Similarly, when we look at Cindy, a man will not necessarily see her bright, bubbly and open personality; he will just see her bright, bubbly and open clothing, and lack thereof.  Hence, the English term "objectification."    


It's an intrinsic problem with clothing.  Not coincidentally, the word for clothing is בגד, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th letters in the Aleph-Bet.  They represent the external garments that cover the 1st letter א.  While the א always represents the ineffable, Divine "I" אני (the א is the only letter which makes no sound -- it represents the indivisible Oneness as the 1st letter), לבגוד means "to betray."  The problem of clothing is that they betray the ineffable "I" behind them.  We cut the person off and define them by how they appear superficially -- put them in a box -- fit them into a stereotype.  We quite commonly call people by their outfit: "preppy" "nerdy" "trendy" "metro" "effeminate" "hipster" "mizrachi" "hareidi" "modern" ... the list goes on.  More often than not, clothing will block a potential conversation rather than lead to one.


We are of course not suggesting nudism as the alternative.  A person has to wear clothing because otherwise people will just see him as a fleshy, earthy animal as surely as we can't get past Vinny's not-so-subtle chest hair.  


The Torah concept of tzniut is to dress and act in a way which tries to avoid the betrayal of clothing, thus allowing one's true self to be expressed.  Clothing, then, is our meta-metaphor.  It is so close to us that we hardly notice it's side-effects, but the flip-side is that it is tremendously powerful.  The Torah allows us to harness clothing as an opportunity to access our true self and the otherwise obscured self of others -- the א within.  When we wake up to the reality closest to our skin and see words of Torah on our doorposts, an indication of the hidden world on top of our heads, Divinely-bestowed enjoyment on our plates -- we will open our eyes to opportunities all around us.