The Clothes Make the Man

  There are many words in the Torah that are focused on the vestments, dress of Kohen Gadol, the Great Priest.  Whole chapters are devoted to the minute details of how he was to present himself before the people at all times. 

     Why is this so important?   Ramban, the mystic and scholar, noted that kings also wore clothing that was not dissimilar to the Kohen Gadol. The Ramban then remarks that dress gives definition to our stature in the eyes of other people.  In the instance of the Torah, B’nai Yisrael became aware of the grandeur of its leader Aaron, through his specified and ornate clothing, as they gazed at him.

 

     Another commentator, Benno Jakob, believes that clothing connotes something far more powerful than dignity. Remember that the Holy One, blessed be He, personally made clothes for primordial man in the Garden of Eden?  This act separated the man and woman from the beasts of the world.  While the animals wore only their natural fur, shell or skin humanity was now cloaked in vestments that were foreign to their bodies. The clothes Adam and Havvah wore differentiated them from beasts.  Of all the things that God could have given humanity – food, shelter, gifts of all sorts - He chose to only make for them clothes. 

 

     What Benno Jakob is telling us is that not only do clothes change the way we are seen they also have an impact on how we view ourselves.  They separate us from animals, lower life.  Yet, it is not only clothes alone that separate us from the beasts of the earth because we could wear ornaments that would only magnify the worst aspects of animal instinct.  Clothes can also have the ability to separate us from our worst, most base animal instincts.  For this reason, Judaism places great emphasis on dress, how we present ourselves

 

      Modesty of dress is one avenue of connection to the world and to the Divine.  Modesty means that we respect borders and privacy.  The way that we dress, for one example, is about limiting others from accessing our privacy.  It is the outward symbol of our desire to connect with other people positively and then as a result connect with the Divine One.  That is why the prophet Micah urges us “to walk with modesty before God.” 6:8

 

     How we present ourselves in the holy Sanctuary of Or Atid is one aspect of our physical carriage (provocative clothing is a no-no) but every time we venture out into the world we make a statement about our morals, values and what we wish to communicate to pothers about who we are.

 

     Moshe personally clothed his sibling, Aaron.  It was his task to appoint and dress the first Kohen.   When people saw Aaron wearing his Kohen garb they would accept him for his powerful office and high status. At the same time, Aaron would also feel special because the clothing would remind him that he was different. 

 
          Clothes are distinctive reminders of our being.  A tale of Nachum of Chernobyl tells of when he once lost sensation in his legs on a Shabbat. He looked down and discovered he was still wearing his weekday trousers. The soul of the tzaddik was sensitive to Shabbat and the great division between the mundane and the kodesh.  His subconscious was mindful of the holiness that his Shabbat clothes provided.

The Mikveh

A mikveh is a pool of water.  In fact, the word mikveh literally means pool, or collection (of water).  The very first time it is used is in the opening passage of the Torah, Genesis 1: 9-10, where God commands the waters be gathered together (mikveh) to reveal land.

The primary stipulation that separates a mikveh from say a swimming pool is that a mikveh must be composed of “living waters.”    The “living waters” have to flow from some naturally occurring source of water:  It cannot be static. 

Water purifies.  It is the source of our being.  After all, our body mostly made of the stuff.  We instinctively recognize that the intrinsic qualities of water as where we all came from.  For all those months of gestation we were rocked in fluid, protected in a soft cocoon of water inside our mother.  Just hearing the sound of water calms infants and loosens up the mental calluses from adults.  That is why so many of us head for the beach during vacation.  We are soothed and buffeted by the return to the primordial waters.

Judaism recognizes the need for a return to the place of our beginning as well as renewing the ground of our being.  One beautiful midrash tells of Adam’s deep pangs of loss after the exile from Eden.  He wept.  What did Adam do to ease his angst?  He went to one of the rivers that shot from the center of the Garden and immersed himself in the waters as an act of teshuvah, repentance.  And later, in Temple times, the kohanim, priests, used to dip themselves into the waters of the mikveh before their religious rites.  The waters helped to transform the mundane into the holy.

Travel through Israel and Europe and visitors will be astonished to find mikvehs appended to or close by all the ancient synagogues.  It was the practice of our ancestors to immerse in its cleansing waters before approaching the Holy One in prayer.  Each morning they would arise, place themselves into the cool waters and pray for a clean and whole heart before approaching their Maker.

Eating is a holy endeavor.  So many folks bring their new pots and pans to the mikveh to immerse them in the unique “living waters” to make them suitable for blessing and consuming the foods prepared on them. 

Those who convert to Judaism are required to immerse themselves into a mikveh.  The act of submersion in the waters becomes a moment of transformation; of leaving the old self behind and taking on a new identity. 

Blood is a powerful force in our faith too.  After their period, many women attend the mikveh as a demarcation line between death (blood, represented by the body’s flushing of a potential birth) and life.   In this sense, the mikveh represents the difference between the grave and the womb.  The laws governing this immersion are called “Family Purity” or Taharat haMishpacha.   In a similar way, people who have experienced bodily trauma also visit the mikveh as an act of renewal.

None of this is sensible in ways that can be logically explained or that are scientifically meaningful.  The mikveh is not about cleanliness or staving off infection or germs.  The mikveh is about comforting the soul.  It is about having personal time with God.  It is about acknowledging that we have a part of us that yearns to be set free from the mind-set that cements us to our real or imagined past.   We are soulful beings that need to be whole.