The Exodus:5 Project
 
Then take the vestments, and clothe Aaron with the tunic, the robe of the ephod, the ephod, and the breastpiece, and gird him with the decorated band of the ephod.      Exodus 29:5
 
The college graduation season swings into high gear this month and does not wind down until the middle of June.  Tens of thousands of graduates, most of them at the beginning of their adult lives, will have degrees bestowed upon them as they parade in identical robes and silly hats.  The initials of those degrees will land on their resumes as permanently as a tattoo.  With good luck, they will not also come to regret the degree.
 
Not all the graduates will be guided in their work life by the degree they earn.  Even some of those with graduate degrees, including people with professional degrees like doctors and lawyers, will choose a different path early on.  But many will start down a road highlighted on the map of their lives by the education, inspiration and validation they received in undergraduate and/or graduate school. 
 
It is not all the baggage they will take on that journey. Friends, music, books, politics, sports, student loans and other things will follow them during the first years – maybe more.  Some will be lost, others will take their place.  But almost everyone will believe that the person under the gowns they wore at graduation is essentially the same person who, forty or fifty years later, is ready to give up the work of their adult life and return to the person who set off down the road.
 
It is not true.
 
When I read the description of the first robing of Aaron, I cannot help but think of the sunset of his life, when he is stripped of these very garments.  While the pageantry of this dry description is often read with disinterest, the meticulous dressing of the High Priest for the first time as he is officially invested with the authority of his life’s work ahead is filled with foreboding to those who know the end of his story. Day in and day out he will be responsible for the rituals on which the Israelites depend. He will preside over collective transgression, lose half of his children on the most important day of his life and contend with rebellion from within his own kinsmen -- experiences for which his holy instructions did not prepare him.  But they all left impressions, to be sure, that penetrated beneath the tunic, the robe, the ephod and the breastpiece.
 
So connected with his priestly responsibilities had Aaron become that, when it came time for him to die, Moses took him to the top of a mountain and removed the clothing that symbolized his work.  Moses dressed one of Aaron’s surviving sons in those same gowns. And Aaron died.
 
It is a lot of years since I put on a graduation gown to be called “rabbi” for the first official time.  Nothing remains in my wardrobe from that day – the gown was rented, and the suit seems to have shrunk about four sizes. The baggage I took on my journey has changed, but never disappeared. I like to think that underneath my prayer shawl, I remained the same person.
 
It is not true.
 
I talk with a lot of my contemporaries who are asking themselves what their next chapter will be.  Having spent so many years in one kind of work – primarily, but not exclusively, the pulpit rabbinate -- they wonder what else they can possibly do.  They can do a lot of things, is the correct answer, but they may not yet have discovered the ones they want to do.
 
The more poignant question is what has penetrated the tunic, the robe, the ephod and the breastpiece that they think they have removed.  I do not mean what lasting impression the significant moments they experienced have left. Of course we are changed, all of us, by deathbed visits, students whose excellence we have provoked, guidance we have invented for the lost who sought our direction and so much more. I mean what impact on that self-beneath-the-robe has been created by years of leading and not following, of having the authoritative answer, of controlling others’ behavior by telling them to stand or sit or bend their knees. The inside person, so motivated by the spirit of learning and discovery before the authorization of the office, may look forward to returning the robes and taking a seat in the crowd.  Inevitably, it isn’t so easy.
 
I had a profound conversation with a friend and colleague who has had my experience of leaving the pulpit.  He said to me that our Judaism had been deeply altered by the constant demand that we perform it for others.  He has found it impossible to take a seat among every-day Jews and listen to someone else tell him to stand, sit or bend his knee.  No one told us this would happen.  And if they did, we never would have believed them.
 
Maybe things are not quite so pronounced for the doctor or attorney.  May the scientist doesn’t miss the lab, the teacher doesn’t miss the classroom, the social worker doesn’t miss the client, the writer doesn’t miss the assignment.  But I have come to understand that whatever your sacred calling is, it saturates your outer layer and infuses what is beneath in incremental and imperceptible ways.
 
Graduates won’t hear it.  But when they finally take off the ephod, they will know Aaron not only at the dawn of his mission, but also at the sunset.

The Exodus:5 Project
 
They shall receive the gold, the blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and the fine linen.        Exodus 28:5
 
In a compact laboratory in a close-in suburb of Tel Aviv, Dr. Zvi Koren has unlocked the mysteries of snail juice.  He has identified the science behind Biblical dyes that produced purple and blue colors. Certain snails at certain points in their development with certain exposure to the sun and elements produced the range of colors identified as blue and purple, used ritually to adorn the priests and color the fringes of everyday prayer shawls.
 
If you visit the Shenkar Institute, Dr. Koren will show you his work (and other things as well).  You will understand that the rarity of the colors results from the special skill it takes to know how to produce them.
 
Today these colors are mostly intellectually interesting. Some observant Jews have used them (and other hues identified as the colors) for prayer shawl fringes, but mostly they exist to illustrate the past.  We have no more officiant priests who need to be robed in the vestments of their office.  But that doesn’t mean that colored garments are insignificant in our time.
 
Most obviously, clothing of particular colors identifies the wearer as a member of a team.  Sports teams choose a dominant color scheme to identify themselves on the playing field (and to sell merchandise to fans).  Teams of military personnel distinguish among their services by the dress and combat uniforms they wear – green, blue, white and otherwise.  Gangs – teams of a very different kind – choose particular colors of bandanas, sneakers or hats to declare their authority on the streets.  (The classic movie “The Warriors” is especially invested in such attire.)
 
Colors have other meanings as well.  We have assigned meaning to traffic signs and signals – red light stop and green light go (don’t forget that yellow light means slow).  Green has acquired an association with environmental responsibility.  When you are feeling blue (or singing the blues), there is an ache in your heart.  Beige is considered neutral in all sorts of positive and negative ways.
 
But no two associations with color are more controversial these days than pink and blue.  Once universally assumed to distinguish between girls and boys, lots of parents, including some in my own family, have stepped away from the stereotypes that baby clothes and motifs represent and reinforce.
 
I have no idea if there is a science to such associations with color.  My perfect three-year-old granddaughter, raised in an environment of shared parental responsibilities, gender-neutral baby toys and various pastels and primaries across the palette, has a distinct preference for pink and all the frills and froofiness you can think of.  She will clamber up a jungle gym and leap off the third step up, but the colors she chooses are shades of pink.
 
Is there a language to colors that speaks to us in mysterious ways?  Gold, blue, purple and crimson yarns are considered rich and royal.  Did we imbue those colors with their meaning, or do the shade and depth of colors convey something inherent?  Certainly, the priests who were draped in the finest linen dyed with the rarest or most desired hues were identifiable by their garments – not so much what we today would call fashion, but by the adornment with tints that conveyed a message of holiness and chosenness.
 
Someone reading this column will know if there has ever been a study of what the choice of a favorite color means.  Perhaps there has also been a comparison of dominant colors among different cultures.  And we have certainly come to understand in real and symbolic ways that the rainbow that contains every shade of visible color puts no greater importance on the reds or the blues; in fact, the spectrum is incomplete without every imaginable shade.
 
Dr. Koren may have discovered how our ancestors manipulated dyes to create the colors they wanted.  In that regard, he is a person of color.  But in the end, aren’t we all?

The Exodus:5 Project
 
Set the mesh below, under the ledge of the altar, so that it extends to the middle of the altar. 
Exodus 27:5
 
I hope that you recognize the premise of the joke that is contained in the title.  If not, I will spoil it for you.  A nudnik (look it up) in the synagogue keeps imploring the rabbi, “Make me a levi.”  After many conversations about why that’s not possible and a large contribution that is persuasive, the rabbi declares that the nudnik is a levi.  Asked why it was so important, the nudnik says, “It is a matter of family pride.  See, my father was a levi, my grandfather was a levi, my great-grandfather…”
 
A levi, or as he is gentiley known, a Levite, is descended from the tribe of Levi, designated by the Bible to serve the ritual needs of the other tribes of Israel.  A single family from among Levi – descended from Aaron – are the priests.  The Hebrew word for priest is kohen, but for whatever reason, the joke is funnier with “make me a levi” than with “make me a kohen.” Status as a levi or a kohen is mostly family tradition, though if your last name is Levi, Levy, Levine, Levin or Loewy or Cohen, Cowen, Kahn, Katz or Ginsberg (don’t ask), you just might be Levitical.
 
I am of the opinion that there is a little levi in every man.  I say that because of the magnetic attraction we all seem to have to backyard barbecue grills.  Whether the disposable ones you pick up at Walmart, the classic Weber, the gas-fired KitchenAid Land Rover or the Big Green Egg, men like to poke at meat on the grill with a stick. (Vegetarians do not poke at meat but are still drawn to squash and artichokes over charcoal.)
 
I do not know whether the ancient sacrifices provoked the fascination with a seared steak or if the Passover lamb roast just sort of caught on, but the smell of smoke seems to have evoked a sense of comfort among those who were concerned with being in the good graces of God.  Even in traditions that have no legacy of sacrifices, it is not unusual to find incense used to enhance and enable peace of mind. You might call it mass aromatherapy.
 
It is probably considered sacrilege by some that I would refer to the altar in the Tabernacle as a giant pit barbecue, but that is what it was.  Hard to visualize from the very specific and very arcane instructions, the “mesh” in the verse above is really a grill, shaped to sit half-way down the structure and hold the sacrifice over the fire.  Some pieces of the animal were burned up, but the meat was part of what sustained the priests after it was cooked.  The burnt offerings fed not only the spiritual life of the Israelites, but also those who tended to spiritual needs.
 
King Solomon famously observed that nothing was new under the sun, so I am relatively certain that the origins of roasted meat are not in the Biblical sacrifices or even among the early Hebrews.  For reasons I cannot explain, even in the most patriarchal of societies, men seem to gravitate to outdoor cooking.  It may be the urgings of ancient hunter-gatherer DNA or the residual memories of ancient temples, but transporting the receptacle, building the fire and grilling the meat still holds some sacred resonance for so many men.
 
There is a lighthearted tone to this little bit of writing, I know.  However, my message is serious.  Primal inclinations, though transformed and even sanctified have survived to contemporary times.  A stack of firewood, a pile of briquets, or the (decidedly inferior) flaming propane can still draw the spark of a levi out of the most modern of men.  Contending with fire, making it serve our purposes from corn on the cob to burgers to marshmallows ignites some mystical impulse.  The results are most satisfying, both s a meal and from the appreciation of those who partake in the feast.
 
If the weather ever warms up in the spring of 2018, a less and less likely possibility, the grills will fire up again.  Be it vegetables, fish, poultry or meat, men will walk out the back door and into the past to prepare a meal over the fire.  When I take a minute to reflect on what I am doing, it will not necessarily make me a chef.  But for a moment, it might make me a levi.