Parashat Tetzaveh
March 2, 2023
Rabbi Harry Pell, Associate Head of School
This Shabbat, when we read Parashat Tetzaveh, there will be an obvious question implicit in the text, and yet we may never have asked it before. Toward the beginning of the parashah, in the first pasuk of perek 28, God commands Moshe that he should bring forward his brother Aharon, together with Aharon’s four sons, and they will serve as God’s priests. Aharon will serve as the Kohen Gadol, or High Priest, and his children will serve as regular priests, and no one else from within Bnai Yisrael will be eligible to serve as a priest, not even Moshe.
The obvious question, which is rarely asked because we so take for granted that it is Aharon’s role to be the Kohen Gadol, is this: If Moshe is so great, why doesn’t God make him the High Priest? And if not the Kohen Gadol, why isn’t Moshe at least eligible to be a regular priest? Surely he is qualified at least to do that — after all, he’s Moshe!
The obvious question, which is rarely asked because we so take for granted that it is Aharon’s role to be the Kohen Gadol, is this: If Moshe is so great, why doesn’t God make him the High Priest? And if not the Kohen Gadol, why isn’t Moshe at least eligible to be a regular priest? Surely he is qualified at least to do that — after all, he’s Moshe!
The Sefat Emet, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, who lived in Poland in the second half of the nineteenth century, picked up on this question and shared a beautiful answer. Moshe was entirely qualified to be a priest, and could have been the High Priest, as he was even greater than Aharon, but this would have been devastating for Bnai Yisrael. According to the Sefat Emet, Moshe had already been entrusted with the Torah, and at the same time, to be a priest meant being separated from the people for significant stretches of time. Moshe could have been a priest, but to do so, he and the Torah that he had absorbed and that he had to share, would have needed to be separated from the people, and that would have been untenable.
According to the Sefat Emet, the message of Parashat Tetzaveh is clear — the place of Torah is with the people and accessible to the people. Torah is not meant to exist in an ivory tower, it is meant to be a part of our lives, and to inform our actions. This was true back in Moshe’s day, and it is just as true today.
Shabbat Shalom.