Parsha Tetzaveh

This week's Torah Gems were prepared by
Larry Sochrin

Parsha Tetzaveh



Children who have little patience for textbooks will happily sit in front of a computer reviewing the same lessons, and that's often true for others who prefer looking at news on a computer screen or iPhone rather than reading a newspaper. There are several interpretations of part of this week's Parsha, Tetzaveh, one of which appeals to the same technologically fascinated people among us, but raises some issues.



In Tetzaveh, G-d gives Moshe directions to create garments for Aaron to wear when officiating as the Kohen Gadol (High Priest). Among those quite colorful but somewhat strange sounding garments is something called a Choshen or Breastplate of Judgment. This has twelve stones mounted on it, each inscribed with the name of one of the tribes.



"Ruby, chrysolithe, beryl... turquoise, sapphire, diamond... ligure, agate, jasper.... emerald, shoham, jade." (28:17-20)



As reported at aish.com, this English rendition is but one of several possible translations of the Hebrew "odem, pitedah, bareket, nofech, sapir, yahalom, leshem, shvo, achlamah, tarshish, shoham, yashpei." It notes that a comprehensive anthology of renditions is presented in "The Living Torah" by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (Moznaim 1985).



According to a Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah 2:7), in addition to the names of the tribes, the stones also contained the words, "Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Shivtei Yeshurun (righteous tribes)," so the Breastplate contained all 22 letters of the Holy Tongue (Talmud).



When in use, the Breastplate held something extra. "And you shall put in the Breastplate of Judgment the Urim and the Tumim." (28:30)



As confusing as this all is, it seemed to have captured the imagination of many. There are homemade and antique versions of the Breastplate of Judgment being sold these days on eBay, at flea markets, by church sisterhoods, and elsewhere.

Commentators have at least three different views of how this worked.



According to Etz Chaim's commentary, the Urim and Tumim may have been the actual mechanism that Aaron used to make decisions, lots he drew or something similar. This may have been the equivalent in biblical times of Aaron reaching into the breastplate and seeing whether he'd drawn the short straw. Many feel that the rocks on the Breastplate were there just to remind Aaron of all the people, and to keep that reminder close to his heart.



One translation has G-d telling Moses that after he puts in the Urim and Tumim, when Aaron goes in before the Lord, he "will hear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart continually." So in this case, it appears to be a mechanism to allow Aaron to hear G-d's judgment.



But many others saw the entire setup as a visual display communication device for G-d to use to communicate his decisions to Aaron, possibly the computer of those days.



The Urim and Tumim ("illuminator and verifier") was an inscription of the Name of G-d. Inserted in the folds of the Breastplate, it caused the letters inscribed on its stones to light up in response to queries posed by the community leaders, as it is written (Number 27:21): "And [Joshua] shall stand before Elazar the priest, who shall ask counsel for him after the judgment of the Urim before G-d: by this word shall they go out, and by this word they shall come in, both he, and all the children of Israel with him." This is why it was called the "Breastplate of Judgment," since it decided and determined things for the people. (Rashi; Talmud)



When Aaron needed to judge a situation, some stones would light up on the Breastplate and then he would have to decide how to assemble the letters on those stones. The Urim, parchment with G-d's ineffable name written on it and inserted by Moses each time Aaron needed to judge, would cause the stones to light up, and the Tumim would help Aaron to decide which way to assemble those letters to get the correct judgment. Amazingly, the light bulb was actually not invented until thousands of years later, first by Humphry Davy in 1860, then improved upon by several people including the best known in 1879, Thomas Alva Edison. So if the Breastplate truly worked by having letters on stones light up, the people must have marveled at seeing such a phenomenon, as miraculous as other G-d created miracles in the Torah. But just as many of G-d's other miracles, such as the plagues, relate back to G-d's work at Creation, perhaps we can relate this one to the first day of Creation, when G-d said "Let there be light."



So anyone who might consider the Torah anachronistic should think again. At least one respected interpretation of this week's Parsha makes it truly ahead of its time, with G-d providing a computer or communications aid for Aaron to use thousands of years before such technology would be discovered. Just as computers and cell phone texting devices manage to hold the attention of today's people, especially children, it appears that G-d may have had his own way of capturing the attention of his people, B'nai Yisrael, the children of Israel. Or maybe Parsha Tetzaveh presents a time when G-d just wanted to give everyone a preview of things to come.