Do the Clothes Make the Man?
Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988), the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist, would often recall the lessons he learned from his father, Mel, as a young boy:One of the things that my father taught me besides physics – whether it’s correct or not – was a disrespect for certain kinds of things… One time we were looking at a picture of the pope and everybody bowing in front of him. My father said, “Now, look at those humans. Here’s one human standing here, and all these others are bowing in front of him. Now what’s the difference? … this difference is the hat he’s wearing.” (If it was a general, it was the epaulets. It was always the costume, the uniform, the position.) “But,” he said, “this man has the same problems as everybody else…” [Richard P. Feynman, What Do What Do You Care What Other People Think?, 18]This week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh, which describes in minute detail the various garments worn by the Kohanim (Priests) during their service, would seem to raise this very question. Indeed, contemporary readers can easily find themselves asking Mel Feybman’s question: why all the fancy clothes? Who would be fooled into thinking there was something special about these Kohanim just because they wear a special outfit?
That question resonates in large part because of our celebrity culture – think about the upcoming Academy Awards and all of the attention that will be paid to the “red carpet” and the stars’ outfits. But for the ancient Israelites, things were quite different. Even as God designates the Levites and Kohanim to serve in the Mishkan, we are just weeks out of Egypt; the same people who now take on an important leadership role were, not too long ago, toiling in the sun along with everyone else. By what right do they now separate themselves from the rest of the Israelites, living by a higher standard of purity and religious devotion?
Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin of Volozhin (Russia, 1817-1893) answers this question with a powerful insight into human behavior: the way we dress and the way we act are closely related to one another. If the Kohanim – until recently, ordinary Israelites just like everyone else – were to start holding themselves to a different measure of religious practice, they could easily appear arrogant to the other tribes. Only by donning the uniform, an external signifier of the role they were to play, could they take on their special practices while maintaining the respect of their peers.
Of course, the inverse is true as well – and herein lies the importance of what Mel Feynman taught young Richard: in order to merit that respect, people who wear a uniform, be it military, civil, or religious, must live in a way that earns the honor the clothes are meant to confer. While the conventional wisdom suggests that “the clothes make the man,” both Mel Feynman and Rabbi Berlin remind us that, perhaps even more so, the man or woman – through his or her actions – make the clothes.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Abe Friedman
