Shabbat Tetzavveh

Wednesday, 08 March 2006

IN NO OTHER week are there so many clothes. On Shabbat, we read about the garments of priests and high priests; on Purim, we hear of the garb of kings, queens and courtiers.

These different contexts remind us of the varied meanings of clothing. As every child discovers, there are those we have to wear and those we choose to wear.

There are those, like the priest's, which come with office, and there are those, such as Haman craves, which go with ambition. There are clothes which are true, and there are clothes which are false.

The most frequent Hebrew word for an article of clothing is beged, a garment. Yet beged in the Bible occasionally means, and always puns with, "treachery," from the root bagad, to deal deceitfully.

Thus, the very word raises the question: what is the relationship between people and the clothes they wear?

In the world of the Megillah, people are constantly dressing up, and being dressed up - a practice we copy on Purim. Esther is dressed for the beauty contest, dressed again as queen, and dresses herself in royalty to intercede for her people. Haman seeks power and wants to try on the royal robes. Mordechai rises from sackcloth to silk. Clothes are roles; most people are posers, and the wise know who the traitors are.

But what if it is the other way round and the robes really go with the station; and, far from craving them, the wearer feels unworthy? Posers in part of us perhaps, we may actually feel quite anxious about the robes and roles we bear. The garments may be real or figurative - nurse's uniform, mantle of parenthood, office suit, cloak of responsibility. Are we worthy of them? Are we worthy underneath them? One wonders: did the priests have the same worry?

My contemporaries from school have all entered their 40s. Many conversations have gone the same way: "We're not children any more. We're considered responsible. We're out there and people trust us. It's terrifying!"

Never mind what job we do. To be a person is itself a priesthood; and humanity is a hard garment to wear well before God.

The custom of dressing up on Purim was widespread among Ashkenazi communities as early as the mid-16th century.