Said to Myself

Clothing

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In Tetzaveh, this week’s Torah portion, we read about the vestments of the High Priest. There we read:

And you shall make the robe of the ephod all of blue. And it shall have a hole for the head in the midst of it; it shall have a binding of woven work round about the hole of it, as it were the hole of a coat of mail that it be not rent. And upon the skirts of it you shall make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the skirts of it; and bells of gold between them round about: a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the skirts of the robe round about. And it shall be upon Aaron to minister; and the sound thereof shall be heard when he goes in into the holy place before the Lord, and when he comes out, that he die not.

Exodus 28:31- 35

The entire enterprise of having priests is an exercise in crafting holiness. Focusing on the clothes seems painfully superficial. Why does the Torah spend so much verbiage on the clothing of the Cohen Gadol?

I was thinking about this when I came across this quote:

If words are the clothing of our thoughts, what is the Torah teaching us about the graphic detail of the clothing of the Cohen Gadol?

In a world that is so broken we need to make sure that our thoughts are understood. We need to take extra care to dress up what we want to communicate. We should similarly aspire to have holy thoughts.

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Quote of the week

But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then erase me out of the book you have written.

~ Exodus 32:32

Said to Myself

About

My name is Rabbi Avi Katz Orlow. I have always had a deep love for the Jewish people and making the world a better place. It was while building community in the Former Soviet Union for YUSSR that I realized the transformative power of being a rabbi. After spending time learning in Israel, I moved to New York to be a charter student in Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, the Open Orthodox Seminary. After graduating in 2004 until 2008 I served as the Rabbi and ran the program at St. Louis Hillel at Washington University. Now I have the great pleasure of thinking about how Judaism is seriously fun. In my mind I am up at camp every day in my work at the Foundation for Jewish Camp. My wife, Cantor Adina Frydman, and I are the proud parents of Yadid, Yishama, Emunah, and Libi.

Said to Myself

When my son Yadid was four years old he came home from daycare and reported to me that he got into trouble. He got put into timeout for throwing sand at another child. Yadid said,” Myself said to myself, I do not want to be in timeout. Myself said to my cry, I do not want to cry”. And with that we started a conversation about his conscious life. It seemed only fitting to continue that conversation with a blog with the same name.

אָמַרְתִּי אֲנִי בְּלִבִּי

My son spoke in the words of Ecclesiastes, “I said in my heart: ‘Come now, I will try you with mirth, and enjoy pleasure’; and, behold, this also was vanity.” (Kohelet 2:1) My mission is to model a life that is personally meaningful, universally relevant, and distinctly Jewish. I aspire to be frank and to speak of Torah in real life.

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