Tzav - The need for a language of ritual
Leviticus 6:1 - 8:36 | Jeremiah 7:21 - 8:3, 9:22 - 23
Summary: Parshat Tzav features the ritual initiation of Aharon and his sons as konahim. The ritual is beautiful and elaborate and represents the kind of ritual many of us actually need as a rite of passage. But because our cultural has very much lost access to the language of ritual, this parsha feels foreign and unapproachable.
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Aaron and his sons were going to be the kohanim, the priests (for lack of a better word) of the Jewish people. They were going to serve as facilitators, catalysts, and consultants for the Israelites as they journeyed through this crazy thing called life, needing patches in their ongoing and sometimes-tumultuous but never-boring relationship to the Divine.
Though no other family’s members could serve as kohanim, Aharon and his sons didn’t simply put on the clothes and get to work. The original “team” had to go through a ritual of initiation - what the Torah calls milu’im. The word implies a process of “filling up” - ostensibly the thing that would be filled up would be their very hands, which would be empowered to do this holy work.
The invitation ceremony that they went through is most likely vastly different from anything any of us has experienced - blood smeared on ears, fingers and toes, oil smeared on same, fats burned, meat eaten - so reading about it feels somewhat foreign. It very much feels like an ancient ritual designed to empower an ancient people to accomplish an ancient task. But it also reminds us that many of us - most of us - have not been through any meaningful ritual of initiation at all. And for this, we are deeply impoverished.
We have miniature rituals of transition - parent gives child keys to car for first time, cousin gets child a beer at some family function or other, parent has “the talk” with child, parents leave child at college and then drive away. But I maintain that we could do with much more symbol, ritual, and ceremony at such times. I’m not calling for ritually slaughtered animals and the smearing of blood on ears, thumbs and toes. Some thoughtfully designed movements and performance at such times could do a lot to provide parents and children with things they really might need at that time: a sense of greater purpose, a way to express hope and fear, an opportunity to experience one’s self as part of a lineage and playing an archetypal role, not just a financial or transportational one.
Some people speak of their bar and bat mitzvah as a ritual of initiation. I envy anyone who was given more than what I got for my bar mitzvah. Anything - anything that anyone could have done to give me a sense of why it mattered, of what it meant to take this next step - would have been deeply appreciated. And I do think bar and bat mitzvah could serve as a locus of transition and ritual of initiation. But it seems there is a forgotten language - the language of ritual - that needs to be remembered and reinvested.
Does a people whose tradition is so rich with an abundance of fabulous rituals need to be retaught this language? Only if those rituals no longer work. If bar and bat mitzvahs do not feel initiated, then yes. If the passover seder feels like nothing more than a long, annoying formality that must be done in order to please the Deity, then yes. If matzah feels like nothing more than a digestive risk, then yes. If opening the Ark evokes no more emotion than opening your closet to pick an outfit for the day, then yes. If reading the Megillah on Purim and yelling when we hear Haman’s name feels like it’s for children, then yes.
Depth-ritual needs to be learned and relearned. It is interesting that, as Moshe initiated his brother Aharon and Aharon’s sons into the priesthood, he did so seven times. They repeated the ritual each day, because it was important that they experience this ritual not merely as some magic day but as an event saturated with meaning and depth, with ideas and values that they were meant to internalize.