Before describing the ceremonial clothes of the priests, the Torah talks about keeping a flame alight in the Tabernacle (the eternal flame). The symbolism is a powerful one, that the spirit of God and of the people, burns constantly. The flame symbolizes the human spirit, that can burn or be extinguished. It symbolizes God. Something that combines the spiritualism, the…
Sefer Shemot
Serving the Community
But what of the priests? Apart from the symbolism of calling up a Cohen and a Levi first whenever we read the Torah and the custom of redeeming first born boys from the priesthood, the whole paraphernalia of the priesthood has not been part of Judaism for two thousand years. Rabbis are not priests. Ironically the idea of priests has…
Preserving an Old Idea
The very idea of a hereditary priesthood strikes us nowadays as belonging to a previous era, not unlike the hereditary monarchy. Nowadays we believe in meritocracy. And indeed Judaism itself has moved way from being a priest based religion to one that elevates scholarship and is open to those who choose to study. It is the rabbinate that now replaces…
Supporting the Priests
This week’s reading from the Torah follows on from last week’s description of the Tabernacle. It is concerned with the clothes of the Priests, the Cohanim, whose full-time task it was to run the ceremonials of the Tabernacle on behalf of the community. They were compensated by being given a share in the sacrifices that everyone brought and in exchange…
Donations
The Torah offers two models of contributions to the community. The word Terumah is a general word, like charity. It has several usages, for Priestly privileges and for mundane donations. Here it means the voluntary contribution that people would make towards the construction of the Tabernacle. People gave, whatever they could and of things that they possessed, such as gold,…
The Shekel
The word Shekel literally means something that is weighed and its use pre-dates the Torah. Early coins were simply weights and measures and used initially in barter. But as we know from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice the word shekel became one of abuse. As if only Jews used coins and money. The first bankers were the Assyrians and Babylonians over…