This week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh, is almost entirely devoted to clothing.
Not ordinary clothing. The Bigdei Kehunah — the priestly garments — described in painstaking, almost overwhelming detail. Fabrics, colors, threads of gold, precise measurements, engraved stones, woven patterns. Page after page of wardrobe specifications.
Make holy garments for your brother Aharon, for honor and for splendor (Shemot 28:2).
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch notes that Kavod — honor — expresses the essential moral and spiritual content of a person’s character. Tiferet — splendor — is the external beauty that makes that inner character visible and esteemed as it should be. The garments were not mere decoration. They were a visible manifestation of the meaning of the Kehunah itself.
In fact, the garments were not optional. A Kohen who performed the service without them was disqualified. Without the garments, he was just another individual acting out of personal impulse. The sanctuary was not meant to showcase personality. It was meant to embody submission to God’s Torah.
Rav Hirsch emphasizes that without the priestly garments, the individual personality of the Kohen — with all its inevitable weaknesses — would stand exposed. Clothed in the sacred vestments, however, he does not appear as he is, but as he ought to be according to the dictates of God’s Torah. By donning the garments, he becomes conscious of his own inadequacy and of the higher standard he represents. The clothing transforms the man from private individual to representative of a sacred ideal.
Clothing is never just clothing. It expresses identity, shapes perception, and can reveal essence — or obscure it
Clothing, in this sense, dignifies not by concealing weakness but by calling the wearer upward.
Rav Hirsch goes even further. Clothing, he reminds us, began in Gan Eden. God Himself clothed Adam and Chava before sending them into the world. Clothing separates the human being from the beast. It is the first and most conspicuous indication of man’s moral calling. It proclaims that a person is more than instinct, more than impulse, more than flesh.
Clothing, at its best, dignifies.
At its worst, it does the opposite.
Which brings us to Purim. In the Megillah, clothing plays a starring role. Esther dresses carefully when she approaches Achashverosh — first to enter the palace, later to find favor before revealing her plea. Mordechai dons sackcloth in anguish. Haman is forced — against every fiber of his pride — to dress Mordechai in royal garments and lead him through the streets. And at the end, Mordechai emerges:
וּמׇרְדֳּכַי יָצָא מִלִּפְנֵי הַמֶּלֶךְ בִּלְבוּשׁ מַלְכוּת תְּכֵלֶת וָחוּר וַעֲטֶרֶת זָהָב גְּדוֹלָה וְתַכְרִיךְ בּוּץ וְאַרְגָּמָן
... in royal apparel of turquoise and white, with a large gold crown
and a cloak of fine linen and purple.
The text lingers over the fabrics and colors.
- Clothing signals humiliation.
- Clothing signals power.
- Clothing signals reversal.
On Purim itself, we dress up. We wear costumes. We put on masks. We present ourselves as something other than what we appear to be the rest of the year. Sometimes it is humorous. Sometimes thoughtful. Sometimes profound.
Purim reminds us that reality is layered. The Divine Name does not appear in the Megillah, yet God’s hand is everywhere. Identities shift. Power reverses. The outer garment rarely tells the full story.
And then there is techelet — the blue thread of the tzitzit, discussed in recent weeks in Daf Yomi. The Torah commands us to place a thread of blue upon our garments, “so that you shall see it and remember.” The Sages explain: the blue resembles the sea, the sea resembles the sky, and the sky resembles the Throne of Glory. A single thread of color, woven into cloth, becomes a ladder of consciousness.
Garments can anchor memory.
Clothing can elevate vision.
Fabric can point heavenward.
Taken together, Tetzaveh, Purim, and tzitzit suggest a single idea: Clothing is never just clothing.
- It expresses identity.
- It shapes perception.
- It can reveal essence — or obscure it.
I learned this lesson personally.
When I first entered the rabbinate, I resisted what I thought of as “rabbinic costume.” I wanted to help people, teach Torah, be authentic. I did not feel higher than anyone else. I told my wife — only half joking — that if I ever started talking about a Homburg hat and long frock, she should shoot me.
But over time I realized something humbling the hard way: it was not about how I felt. It was about what my congregants needed to see. The rabbi does not dress only for himself. He represents Torah. Dignity in dress was not ego — it was responsibility. Clothes do not make the man, but they frame the role he occupies. They signal aspiration. They communicate seriousness.
And yet — here is where we must tread carefully — clothing can also mislead.
In these difficult times — filled with pain, adversity, and far too much animosity between fellow Jews — Purim offers more than celebration. It offers direction.
In our own society, clothing has become a boundary marker. One group sees black hats and long coats and assumes a monolithic worldview. Another sees jeans and short sleeves and assumes spiritual indifference. We reduce individuals to uniforms.
But the Kohen’s garments teach something subtler. The clothing represents an ideal — not the flawless personality of the wearer. The mistake is not in dressing differently. The mistake is in imagining that clothing tells the whole story.
Purim exposes that illusion. The mask hides — but it also reveals. It reminds us that beneath every costume is a human being of complexity, struggle, and potential goodness. Beneath the royal robe may stand a threatened Jew. Beneath the sackcloth may stand a future leader. Beneath the external presentation lies a soul created b’tzelem Elokim.
In these difficult times — filled with pain, adversity, and far too much animosity between fellow Jews — Purim offers more than celebration. It offers direction.
Haman described the Jewish people as “a nation dispersed and separate from one another” (Esther 3:8). Chazal understood that accusation not merely geographically, but spiritually and socially. Fragmented. Suspicious. Divided.
It was only after Esther’s urgent call — “Go, gather all the Jews” (4:16) — that the tide began to turn. First they gathered to fast and pray together. Later they stood together to defend themselves. Unity preceded deliverance. Shared purpose preceded salvation.
And then came the transformation:
לַיְּהוּדִים הָיְתָה אוֹרָה וְשִׂמְחָה וְשָׂשֹׂן וִיקָר
For the Jews there was light, joy, gladness, and honor. Honor — yikar — the very word that echoes the language of kavod and tiferet in our parsha.
Purim is not merely about masks and merriment. It is about rediscovering what happens when a people once described as scattered and separate chooses to stand together.
If clothing can mislead, let it not divide us.
If garments can symbolize aspiration, let them call us upward together.
If masks remind us that reality runs deeper than appearance, let them teach us to look for the shared soul beneath every external difference.
In these challenging days, may we seize the opportunity Purim represents — to see beyond the surface, to gather rather than fragment, to recognize one another as fellow bearers of Divine image. And may we merit once again to live the verse not as history but as hope: Layehudim hayta orah v’simcha v’sason v’yikar — light, joy, gladness, and honor — not as isolated camps in different costumes, but as one people rejoicing together.
Published in the Queens Jewish Link
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