36 | FEBRUARY 22 • 2024 
J
N

W

hy is the Torah 
so specific and 
emphatic, in 
this week’s parshah, about 
the clothes to be worn by 
the Cohen and the Cohen 
Gadol? 
“These are 
the vestments 
that they 
shall make: a 
breastplate, an 
ephod, a robe, 
a knitted tunic, 
a turban, and 
a sash. Make them as sacred 
vestments for Aaron and his 
sons so that they will be able 
to be priests to Me.” Ex. 28:4
In general, Judaism is 
skeptical about appearances. 
Saul, Israel’s first king, 
looked the part. He was 
“head and shoulders” 
taller than anyone else (1 
Samuel 9: 2). Yet though 
he was physically tall, he 
was morally small. He 
followed the people rather 
than leading them. When 
God told Samuel that He 
had rejected Saul, and that 
Samuel should anoint a son 
of Yishai as king, Samuel 
went to Yishai and saw that 
one of his sons, Eliav, looked 
the part. He thought he was 
the one God had chosen. 
God, however, tells him that 
he is mistaken: “But the 
Lord said to Samuel, “Do not 
consider his appearance or 

his height, for I have rejected 
him. The Lord does not look 
at the things people look at. 
People look at the outward 
appearance, but the Lord 
looks at the heart.” 1 Sam. 
16:7
Appearances deceive. In 
fact, as I have mentioned 
before in these studies, 
the Hebrew word for 
garment, begged, comes 
from the same Hebrew word 
as “to betray” — as in the 
confession Ashamnu bagadnu, 
“We are guilty, we have 
betrayed.” Jacob uses Esau’s 
clothes to deceive. Joseph’s 
brothers do likewise with his 
bloodstained cloak. There 
are six such examples in the 
book of Genesis alone. Why 
then did God command 
that the cohanim were to 
wear distinctive garments as 
part of their service in the 
tabernacle and later in the 
Temple?
The answer lies in the 
two-word phrase that 
appears twice in our 
parshah, defining what the 
priestly vestments were to 
represent: le-kavod ule-tifaret, 
“for dignity [or ‘honor’] and 
beauty.” These are unusual 
words in the Torah, at least 
in a human context. The 
word tiferet, “beauty” or 
“glory,” appears only three 
times in the Torah, twice in 
our parshah (Ex. 28:2, 40) 

and once, poetically and 
with a somewhat different 
sense, in Deuteronomy 26:19.
The word kavod, “dignity 
or honor,” appears 16 times, 
but in 14 (27) of these 
cases the reference is to the 
glory of God. The twice 
they appear in our parshah 
are the only occasions in 
which kavod is applied to 
a human being. So, what is 
happening here?
The answer is that they 
represent the aesthetic 
dimension. This does not 
always figure prominently 
in Judaism. It is something 
we naturally connect with 
cultures a world apart from 
the Torah. The great empires 
— Mesopotamia, Egypt, 

Assyria, Babylon, Greece and 
Rome — built monumental 
palaces and temples. The 
royal courts were marked by 
magnificent robes, cloaks, 
crowns and regalia, each 
rank with its own uniform 
and finery.
Judaism by contrast often 
seems almost puritanical 
in its avoidance of pomp 
and display. Worshipping 
the invisible God, Judaism 
tended to devalue the visual 
in favor of the oral and 
aural: words heard rather 
than appearances seen.
Yet the service of the 
tabernacle and Temple were 
different. Here appearances 
— dignity, beauty 
— did make a difference. 

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

The Aesthetic 
in Judaism