Tetzaveh: the evolution of ritual

Tetzaveh: the evolution of ritual

Tetzaveh deals with active ritual, people ( mostly Priests) doing things in deference  to Gd.

In the previous parsha, a structure centered around the Tablets that Moses brought down from Sinai was described. The altar, the sacrificial place, is presented as an addendum to the courtyard ( the annex) to this shrine. The ritual aspect served the archival.

 The first sentences in Tetzaveh  instruct the people to provide pure olive oil that the Priest uses to light the menorah/candelabra every evening. An interaction of sponsors (the taxed people) and the actor (the Kohen/priest) is established. This is completely in keeping with the materials supplied until now for the the constructions described in Teruma; and the source of materials for the priestly vestments described in Titzaveh.

  Up until now, there was no human interaction with the temple and its courtyard.  The table, with the show-bread, implied that someone would eat the matzoh on display;  the menorah/candelabra  implied  that it would be lit and illuminate the sanctuary; the altar in the courtyard suggest that some form of burnt offering is coming. Now, the delegation of Aaron and his descendants as those assigned to light the  menorah is the beginning of  Israel's representative  spirituality; The ritual as theater.

The Priestly costume, which takes up most of the parsha, is a necessary part of this process.  The High Priest/Kohen gadol  carries the names of their tribes, engraved in  gems, on his shoulders.  The oraclular breastplate displays the tribal names.  These objects announce the Kohen Gadol's representative role. The priests bring the concerns and sins of the people before Gd through ritual. 

The mishkan complex served two purposes.  It was the repository for the tablets with their numerous layers of protection. In the courtyard, the altar stood. The public service on the altar (and the more hidden rituals surrounding the menorah and show bread) were the scenes for action.

The  ritual  lasted longer than the museum. In the second Temple, built by Ezra  and Nehemia during the Persian hegemony after the tablets had been lost, the sacrificial rite continued. The hiatus in the sacrificial practice, lasting70  years (between the first and second temple), asserted the tie between the locus of the temple, what had become holy spot, and the sacrificial rite.  These rituals could be performed only at the place where the temple had stood in Jerusalem. The previous history of location independence, established by the moveable Tabernacle, and  reinforced by the move from Shilo to Jerusalem, had been negated. Real estate had become pre-eminent.

Surviving as a people for 70 years without the animal sacrificial rite also weakened this ceremony’s hold on the nation. There was now enough distance to question the process.  Investing the activity in a representative was not enough.  The Talmud (Taanith 26(4)) describes a democratization of the ritual; a method for  public participation was  added - the Ma'amodoth.

 

וְכִי הֵיאַךְ קׇרְבָּנוֹ שֶׁל אָדָם קָרֵב וְהוּא אֵינוֹ עוֹמֵד עַל גַּבָּיו?

But how can a person’s offering be sacrificed when he is not standing next to it?

 

Local, non-Cohanic representatives, along with Levites in Jerusalem, were now  a part of the ritual…for as long as it lasted. The representatives of the people would fast and read from Genesis at the time of the sacrifices.  Time became the detail that prescribed ritual.  This was a gateway to prayer

   When the second temple was destroyed, only (private) prayer and the congregational reading of the Torah remained as devotional acts. The meaning of the temple and its rites were distilled to these activities at the edge of comprehensibility. We are left with a remnant of the process that captures its essence.